Senate and House spending negotiators face a seemingly endless list of hurdles in getting agreement on all 12 of the major 2026 appropriations, so it’s easy to miss one of the most unexpected and puzzling deadlocks anybody has seen on Capitol Hill in years.

Normally, the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act of 2026 would be the least likely spending measure to include a spending issue on which Senate and House negotiators are at loggerheads. This legislative branch bill sets how much lawmakers can spend hiring staff and running their offices, as well as the operating budgets for the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP), the Architect of the Capitol (AOC), Library of Congress (LOC), the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

In any other year, how much to give to GAO — the investigative arm of Congress — would be nowhere near a front-line issue for debate for anybody in the annual battle of the federal budget. But then, 2025 is anything but a normal year, so this time around there’s an unprecedented $396.5 million gulf between the House and Senate on the GAO budget. The GAO had requested $933 million, an increase of $122 million over the 2025 total.

The Senate version of the legislative spending bill keeps GAO at its present spending level of $811 million, while the House version of the measure takes the blunt axe approach by chopping GAO’s budget by $396.5 million, or 48%. Even if Senate and House GOP negotiators simply split the difference, GAO would still end up losing $198.25 million out of its operating budget, for a 24.4% reduction.

Here’s the backstory that helps put this situation into an understandable context. Earlier this year, when President Donald Trump began moving seriously to impound funds previously appropriated by Congress, GAO went to court to challenge several of the chief executive’s actions. Trump complained to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and other House Republicans.

The result was a House version of the measure included a provision withdrawing GAO’s authority to challenge certain presidential actions in federal court. Regardless of how one views Trump’s impoundment actions, Congress clearly can authorize GAO, as it did years ago with the 1974 Budget Control and Impoundment Act, to call in the lawyers whenever it is thought the president is violating that law. Or Congress can tell GAO to mind its own business and leave the president alone.

But that’s not all the House measure did. As noted above, House appropriators cut out nearly half of GAO’s budget. If that budget reduction stands, GAO will be forced to fire huge chunks of its 3,000+ employees and stop doing much of the oversight and investigative work Congress created the legislative agency to do in the first place.

Understand here that GAO, which was created in 1921, is not just another bureaucratic agency. Every workday, GAO auditors and investigators can be found roaming the halls of executive branch departments and agencies looking for evidence of waste, fraud, and abuse, as well as assessing the degree to which congressional intent is being honored. This is why GAO is known as “the investigative arm of Congress.”

How successful has GAO been in fulfilling such duties? Every two years, GAO publishes its “High Risk List” of costly problems it identified throughout the executive branch and notes the progress, or lack thereof, the agencies and departments involved have made. Earlier this year, GAO published the most recent update:

“Since GAO’s 2023 update to the High-Risk List, Congress and executive branch agencies have taken actions resulting in notable improvements across the 37 high-risk areas. These efforts over the last two years resulted in about $84 billion in financial benefits.

“However, the progress made overall varied. Ten areas improved and three regressed, while the others maintained their position, were rated for the first time, or were newly added, as shown on page 5. Lasting solutions to high-risk problems save billions of dollars, improve service to the public, and increase government performance and accountability.”

Another measure of GAO’s effectiveness is seen in the fact that early in the second Trump administration, the newly reconstituted Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) overseen by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk made national headlines by identifying hundreds of billions of dollars in payments under Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid going to ineligible, fraudulent, and even dead recipients.

But GAO was tracking improper payments years before DOGE came along. In GAO’s current summary of its work on improper payments, the congressional investigative arm observed:

“The federal government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud, according to GAO’s government-wide estimates based on data from fiscal years 2018 through 2022. Additionally, federal improper payment estimates have totaled about $2.8 trillion since FY 2003.

“The actual amount may be significantly higher because this is based on a small number of programs that report these numbers. For instance, 16 agencies reported a total of about $162 billion in improper payments across 68 programs in FY 2024.”

Curiously, the House Appropriations Committee report on the 2026 GAO funding proposal acknowledged that “GAO report recommendations have the potential to save billions of dollars and greatly improve government operations.”

So, the report directed GAO to develop a tool for projecting how long departments and agencies should reasonably be expected to implement recommended cost savings and related reforms. But with legions of GAO employees having to be let go, it’s unclear when those who remain would be able to satisfy that congressional direction.

With the Senate pre-occupied this week with moving Trump nominations through to confirmation votes, it’s unlikely the difference with the House on GAO funding will be resolved before Congress returns after Labor Day from its August recess.

The standard procedure for such disagreements is that both chambers appoint members of a conference committee, which then meets and works out a compromise. There is also the possibility of a compromise being worked out informally to be ratified by floor votes in both chambers.

If House negotiators insist on keeping the GAO budget cut and the Senate, for whatever reason, concedes on the issue, then congressional observers may well wonder why the lower chamber would cut off its nose to spite its face.