Posted on 01/16/2020 6:01:15 PM PST by RightGeek
The House impeachment hearings ended a month ago, but congressional Democrats aren’t done inviting bureaucrats to share their negative opinions of President Donald Trump. Now it’s the turn of the Government Accountability Office.
Traditionally GAO does its best to serve its congressional bosses. This is not a swipe at these particular swamp dwellers. Yes, the current head of GAO was nominated by President Barack Obama after a congressional commission presented a list of candidates. But the Supreme Court has explicitly found that GAO is subservient to the legislative branch. The 1986 decision is called Bowsher v. Synar. GAO staff try their best to satisfy requests from legislators.
At the urging of Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Maryland), GAO now says that Trump administration delays in sending aid to Ukraine were illegal. For people who aren’t students of the Washington bureaucracy, it should be noted that few people consider GAO the authoritative word on legal issues. The Justice Department and ultimately of course the federal courts make the big calls.
In a new letter GAO’s general counsel argues that even though the Trump administration made aid for Ukraine available last September 12—before the Sept. 30 deadline for obligating funds—it still should have happened earlier. It’s not entirely clear which date would have made GAO happy but in the agency’s view the White House did not have an unavoidable “programmatic delay” which prevented funds from going to Ukraine.
Just for the sake of argument, let’s assume that GAO is correct now. Wouldn’t the logic of this decision also apply to Vice President Joe Biden’s famous withholding of Ukraine aid until the local prosecutor investigating his son’s company was fired?
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Perfect.
How did our government get this bad?
Our negligence!
24+ years of the wrong people in the oval office
We kept electing the same people to the same positions over and over and over. When those people died we perpetuated the problem by electing their children or relative to the same position over and over and over.
I think Donald J. Trump should wear the Impeachment like a badge of honor, much like how Germans tried to make Jews wear the Star of David as a badge of shame.
How did our government get this bad?
Our negligence!
No Congressional oversight. The Deep State is free to take cheap shots and worse at POTUS knowing full well there will be consequences for their action.
Isn’t this the same GAO that predicted The Affordable Care Act would save Americans money? As one commentator said today, “The GAO can’t even balance a checkbook.”
You can say that again!
Sure is quite a few folks worried about the Ukraine.
It’s just an office not unlike OMB but for accounting instead of management.
So once again, the news is lying. The GAO did not say Trump broke the law.
#NeverEndingImpeachment
OMB does things, GAO doesn’t do anything but pontificate ... in this case on the OMB doing or not doing something at the designated time interval of their specification, to exclude anything possibly involving the Bidens.
One of the contributing factors was the Reign of Error of Æthelblack the Unready.
The law says they have the entire fiscal year to spend the taxpayers hard earned dollars. The money was paid in the September within the year. Does anyone know on what they based their claim of legality, or lack thereof??
“Gene L. Dodaro became the eighth Comptroller General of the United States and head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) on December 22, 2010, when he was confirmed by the United States Senate. He was nominated by President Obama in September of 2010 from a list of candidates selected by a bipartisan, bicameral congressional commission. He had been serving as Acting Comptroller General since March of 2008.” GAOgov.
sounds like the GAO is in dire need of a permanent 100% RIF.
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