Number of the Day: Taxpayers' Return on Investment in the Investigative Arm of Congress

By Bryan Rahija

Your number of the day: $87, as in the financial benefit to the government for every $1 invested in the Government Accountability Office (GAO), according to, well, the GAO.

From Thursday's testimony before the House Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch: 

With this committee’s support, in fiscal year 2010, GAO provided assistance to every standing congressional committee and 70 percent of their subcommittees. Our work yielded significant results across the  government, including financial benefits of $49.9 billion—a return on investment of $87 for every dollar invested in GAO.  In addition, we documented over 1,300 other benefits resulting from our work that helped improve services to the public, promote improved management  throughout government and change laws, such as the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010.

Obviously it's difficult to quantify the financial benefits of oversight. But even if the GAO brings $40, $20 or $10 of financial benefit for every dollar of funding, it's worth noting—especially in times of fiscal duress—that investing in oversight can be a boon for taxpayers.

Bryan Rahija edits POGO's blog.

Image by Flickr user Leo Reynolds, used under Creative Commons License.

Comments

[Observer III]

GAO cost savings and cost avoidance claims need a very serious audit. GAO puffs up these estimates by an order of magnitude, or more, just like the IGs. You could never support GAO's savings claims in the tortuous government accounts. And GAO must know this.

That said, GAO does a fair amount of useful work, much of which does not generate cost-savings. But it does it very, very slowly.

[Dfens]

You can be sure the GAO will never ever criticize the most fundamental problem our federal government has with procurement. You will never hear them speak against the government paying a profit on product development. That would be killing the goose that laid the golden egg as far as they're concerned. After all, the more waste, fraud, and abuse there is in procurement, the more we need the GAO, right? They may be worth $87 in their estimation, but as far as I'm concerned, they're just another big sucking bureaucratic hole with no real value to the US taxpayer, but then why should they be any different from the rest of the federal government?