Did the Republican Revolution Hamstring Congressional Oversight? Evidence from 55,000 GAO Reports

Legislative support agencies provide crucial policymaking and oversight assistance to Congress. However, their authority, influence, and scope has diminished in recent decades. The Republican Revolution of 1994 precipitated this decline, slashing sup-port agency budgets and staff. But how exactly did the new Republican majority affect the oversight capacity through the support agencies? Did the ’94 Revolution diminish Congressional oversight capacity, and if so, how was the impact distributed across policy domains? To answer these questions, I compile and analyze a novel dataset:the universe of published reports and testimonies from the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ “watchdog” oversight agency. This dataset contains more than 55,000 unique items spanning back to the creation of the agency in the early 20th century. Employing a regression discontinuity design, I investigate the effects of the Republican Revolution on GAO’s public outputs. I find the Republican Revolution corresponds with a significant reduction in the volume of policy recommendations made by GAO to executive agencies and to Congress. These findings stand in contrast with the picture painted by GAO’s reports to Congress during this period, which suggest increasing productivity despite steep cuts. I reconcile this contrast by outlining qualitative evidence that GAO manipulated reported productivity statistics to avoid additional scrutiny from its new principal.