When Members of Congress Need Answers to Complex Questions—They Come to GAO

Congress faces tough policy decisions that can affect Americans’ lives, as well as national security, defense, and our economy. Before making these decisions, members of Congress may ask difficult questions. And when they need answers, they come to GAO.

Today’s WatchBlog post looks at some examples of the toughest, most complex questions Congress has asked us to answer—and how we did it. 

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What are some of the tough questions we’ve answered for Congress?

Each year, GAO receives more than 600 requests from members of Congress. These requests are rarely straightforward—often asking us to look into topics that no one has explored before. Below are some examples.

How much fraud is there in government spending? GAO has produced many reports about fraud in federal spending. Helping prevent and respond to fraud is a top issue for our auditors.

In 2024, we produced a first-of-its-kind estimate of fraud across federal programs and operations. We estimated that annual loses to fraud could be between $233 billion and $521 billion. Even at the low end of the estimate, losses from fraud could be as large as the spending for the sixth largest federal agency.

Fraud is difficult to estimate because much of it goes undetected. Fraudsters don’t tend to volunteer this information for data collection purposes. But GAO was able to estimate fraud by combining data on what we do know about fraud—including things like confirmed cases of fraud and potential fraud—with mathematical modeling to estimate undetected fraud. We’re able to do this because of the expertise in sophisticated quantitative methods and unique access to data that we have here at GAO.

Fraud estimates can help demonstrate the scope of the problem, better prioritize resources, and serve as a baseline for determining return on investment from fraud risk management activities.

What impacts do regulations have? We get asked all kinds of questions about regulations. For example, have they improved food safety? Did they result in safer lending practices among banks?

Sometimes, we are asked to look at a regulation’s impacts more globally. For example, last year, we looked at whether a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosure requirement on conflict minerals had helped promote peace and security in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Specifically, we were asked to look into whether the disclosures were helping to prevent armed groups in the DRC from cashing in on the sale of conflict minerals.

Unfortunately, we found that SEC’s disclosure rule has not helped to reduce violence in the DRC. In fact, we found the rule may have increased the profitability of certain conflict minerals—like gold.

Our new podcast episode discusses the above examples and many more. Listen to that episode to hear directly from our experts, including GAO’s Managing Director of Applied Research and Methods team, Lawrance Evans, Chief Economist Michael Hoffman, and Chief Statistician Jared Smith.

How is GAO able to answer these questions?

GAO is truly a one-of-a-kind agency with a proud history (100 years and counting) of providing critical oversight into federal programs and spending for Congress. How do we do this?

Unparalleled access. Understanding the important role we play, Congress provides GAO with broad access authority to government records, information and data that other entities don’t have. That unparalleled access allows us to answer questions that others can't.

Our reputation. Just as important is our reputation. GAO isn’t just the gold standard of auditing. We also literally wrote the book (our “Yellow Book”) on the standards for auditing to ensure objectivity, quality work, as well as independence from outside influence and bias. As Lawrance Evans, the head of our methodology team, said in the podcast linked above, “We're not wedded to the answer. We have no skin in the game. We're wedded to creating a process that generates valid answers.”

Our experts. And then lastly, we have the collective talent, human capital, and expertise needed to answer difficult questions for Congress. This allows us to deploy a range of research methodologies such as qualitative and quantitative social science research, data analysis, statistics, surveys, future-oriented analyses, accounting, economics, and actuarial methods.

We have a host of experts in the sciences to help answer questions about emerging technologies and innovations. This includes microbiology, quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, public health, chemical engineering, mathematics, physical sciences, and digital sciences. 

To learn more about GAO’s work and how we answer the really tough questions for Congress, listen to the podcast above and visit us at GAO.gov.

• GAO’s fact-based, nonpartisan information helps Congress and federal agencies improve government. The WatchBlog lets us contextualize GAO’s work a little more for the public. Check out more of our posts at GAO.gov/blog.
   
• Got a comment, question? Email us at blog@gao.gov.