Throughout this week, the Washington Examiner’s Restoring America project will feature its latest series titled “Reforming the Deep State: Reining in the Federal Bureaucracy.” We invited some of the best policy minds in the conservative movement to speak to the issues of what waste, fraud, abuse, and unaccountability exist throughout the federal government and what still needs to be done. To read more from this series, click here.

The deep state does not always hide in the shadows. Sometimes it sits in broad daylight, draped in the language of “accountability” and “oversight,” quietly consolidating power that does not belong to it.

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The Government Accountability Office is one of its most effective instruments — a legislative branch agency that has morphed from watchdog to enforcer, using its structural insulation from presidential control to police the executive branch without ever answering to the voters.

What began as a modest auditing service for Congress has become a political weapon. Under the guise of interpreting the Impoundment Control Act, the GAO now issues legal “findings” against the president, treats its own interpretations as binding, and threatens enforcement, despite being led by a comptroller general who can be removed only by Congress. That is not oversight. It is the execution of the law by a legislative officer — a direct violation of the constitutional separation of powers.

The Constitution draws a bright line between those who make the laws and those who execute them. Article II vests “[t]he executive Power” in the president alone, who must “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” That means enforcement power must be subject to presidential direction and removal authority. In Bowsher v. Synar, the Supreme Court held that because the comptroller general is removable by Congress, he is a legislative officer who cannot execute the law. And in Seila Law v. CFPB, the court reaffirmed that principal officers wielding significant executive power must be accountable to the president. The GAO’s current behavior ignores both holdings.

Even under the ICA’s text, the GAO is not an enforcement agency. Its legal opinions are advisory, not binding. Yet in recent years, particularly during the Trump administration, the GAO has operated as though it can compel compliance. It has declared the president in violation of the ICA for pausing funds, demanded the release of appropriations, and even floated the idea of initiating litigation against the executive branch. No clause of the Constitution authorizes Congress to install its own legislative officer as prosecutor of the laws.

RICHARD NIXON ENABLED THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE

The D.C. Circuit’s recent decision in Global Health Council v. Trump underscores why this is an unlawful power grab. There, the court reaffirmed that even the judiciary cannot enjoin the president’s discretionary execution of statutory authority, nor can the Administrative Procedure Act be used to compel him directly. If Article III courts, vested with the judicial power of the United States, cannot order the president to act, then the GAO, a legislative support agency, certainly cannot dictate executive action. Its “findings” are no more than political statements wrapped in legalese.

The deep state thrives on exactly this kind of mission creep. By shifting power to entities shielded from direct political control, it insulates policy from voters. The comptroller general serves a 15-year term, is selected from a congressional short list, and is removable only by Congress through impeachment or joint resolution. That means a single unelected figure, untouchable by the president, can spend a decade and a half influencing how laws are executed without any democratic accountability.

The GAO’s pocket rescission reversal is a case in point. For over 40 years, the agency acknowledged that the ICA permits the president to transmit a rescission proposal late in the fiscal year, withhold the funds for 45 days, and allow them to lapse if Congress fails to act. It even called this a “major deficiency” in the law back in 1975. Congress never changed the text. Only when President Donald Trump used the authority did the GAO suddenly reverse its interpretation, declaring pocket rescissions illegal. That shift was not a constitutional interpretation but partisan maneuvering, timed to frustrate a president the “permanent class” opposed.

And the favoritism is not subtle. When President Joe Biden froze congressionally appropriated funds for border wall construction in 2021 — precisely the kind of pause that triggered a GAO violation finding against Trump — the GAO declared Biden’s conduct lawful. When Trump paused Ukraine security aid for policy review, the GAO found a violation. When Biden paused border wall funding for policy review, the GAO found no violation. The facts were parallel. The rulings were opposite. This is not even-handed law enforcement. It is partisan lawfare. Such double standards strip the GAO of any claim to neutrality and confirm what many Americans already suspect: The deep state protects its allies and punishes its adversaries.

If Congress believes the ICA gives the president too much discretion, it can amend the law. What it cannot do is deputize its own legislative agent to reinterpret the statute on the fly and enforce that reinterpretation against the executive branch. Such an arrangement collapses the separation of powers and creates exactly the hybrid legislative-executive officer the court rejected in Bowsher.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE ‘REFORMING THE DEEP STATE’ SERIES

The path forward is clear. The GAO must be returned to its original role: auditor and adviser, not enforcer. The ICA’s enforcement provisions should be repealed or rewritten to ensure that any binding legal determinations are made by officers within the executive branch, subject to presidential direction and removal. If the Comptroller General is to wield executive power, he must be removable by the president — full stop.

The stakes are not merely academic. Every time the GAO issues a “binding” directive to the executive, it chips away at the Constitution’s structure. The deep state’s genius lies in doing so under the cover of normalcy, making radical power shifts appear as routine bureaucratic operations. But our liberty depends on resisting precisely these encroachments. Congress can and should investigate, recommend, and criticize. It cannot execute the law. The Founders knew that blending those functions invites tyranny. So should we.

Benjamin Osborne is a legal fellow at the Center for Renewing America.