The topic of this episode is, “What does the U.S. Government Accountability Office do?”To answer that question we have Gene Dodaro. He is the eighth Comptroller General of the United States—that means he is the head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). He has held that position since December 2010. Prior to becoming the top dog at this government watchdog agency, Gene held other executive positions at GAO, including Chief Operating Officer. Remarkably, Gene has spent a half of a century at the agency. So, with all that experience I can think of nobody better to ask the question, “What does the Government Accountability Office do?”Kevin Kosar:Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution and few Americans think well of it, but Congress is essential to our republic. It's a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be, and that is why we are here to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I'm your host, Kevin Kosar, and I'm a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington DC.Gene, welcome to the program.Gene Dodaro:It's a pleasure to be with you, Kevin.Kevin Kosar:Let's start at the very beginning. GAO was created a century ago. WhyGene Dodaro:GAO was created in 1921—right after World War I. The government had created a large debt during that time in order to promulgate the war, and there was concern about having a better, more disciplined way to handle the federal government's budget process. In the same legislation in which we were created, the Bureau of the Budget—which is now known as the Office of Management Budget (OMB) in the executive office of the President—was also created, and the very first requirement was put in place for the President to submit a budget annually to the Congress. Then GAO was placed in the legislative branch in order to provide a check and balance on the receipts and expenditures of federal funds and the proper application of those funds to meet the intent of the appropriation legislation for the Congress. So it was an arrangement put in place to provide more fiscal discipline to the federal government's budget process and execution.Kevin Kosar:At that time, GAO had a different name, which to some degree reflected its more limited mission at the time. What was it called back then?Gene Dodaro:It was the General Accounting Office. That's what it was when I first joined GAO in 1973. But at that time even, we were doing more than accounting, but that was our original name—the General Accounting Office.Kevin Kosar:It seems that...