Members of Congress are desperate for backup in their battle with the Trump administration over control of federal cash. The oversight agency that would lean into that fight is sitting on its hands.

The independent Government Accountability Office concluded earlier this week that the White House illegally withheld more than $1 billion for education and health care research programs — the latest in more than a half-dozen such findings GAO has published since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term.

But the agency has yet to use its unique power to take the president to court to challenge those “impoundments,” and lawmakers who are tired of the administration running roughshod over their funding prerogatives want GAO to act.

There’s one problem: GAO is currently run by an interim director, acting Comptroller General Orice Williams Brown, because the Senate has yet to confirm a long-term replacement following her predecessor’s retirement last year. And lawmakers fear she’s reluctant to exercise her temporary authority to take such dramatic legal action.

“They are empowered to sue,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters last week. “I think the biggest problem is that we have an acting director of the GAO, who understandably is wary of suing the administration without direct congressional approval.”

The recent rulings came on the heels of Trump’s unilateral cancellation of $810 million in other congressionally approved spending the previous week — which GAO quickly deemed illegal — as well as his decision to allow hundreds of millions more to expire as the fiscal year ended Sept. 30.

The search for a permanent GAO leader, meanwhile, appears to be at a standstill. A designated group of 10 senior lawmakers is supposed to be searching for replacement candidates to recommend for Trump’s nomination, but the members have yet to meet — nine months since former Comptroller General Gene Dodaro departed at the end of his 15-year term.

“We would like a GAO director who’s a man or a woman of integrity and going to do the job that needs to be done. That’s our focus,” said Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, who is part of the selection group as the top Democrat on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

He said it was accurate that the group has made no progress toward recommending nominees.

The Washington Sun reported Thursday that the administration has floated the idea of Trump nominating Eric Ueland, a top official at the White House budget office and former longtime Senate aide, to head GAO. POLITICO has not independently confirmed the potential nomination.

If Ueland is nominated, however, there is no guarantee he would have the votes for confirmation in a narrowly divided Senate, given the perception of his loyalty to the president and doubt he would challenge Trump’s funding moves.

In the meantime, lawmakers in both parties are urging the acting director to sue, while a GAO spokesperson maintains that the agency “has not made a decision to file any lawsuits at this time” and that the acting comptroller general “legally exercises all the functions and duties” of the role.

The fact that GAO is operating without a Senate-confirmed leader “is definitely stifling their ability to hold the administration accountable,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said in an interview, adding that he believed Dodaro was “clearly building toward making a case” prior to his retirement.

Dodaro said in an interview during his final days at GAO that he considered a lawsuit against the Trump administration “a last resort.” He explained that “in every case we’ve identified so far, people were already suing” and that “Congress has the ability to correct these things and to deal with the distribution of funds.”

What the former inspector general did not expect, however, is the Supreme Court’s suggestion last fall that GAO is the only entity with standing to sue the Trump administration for violating the decades-old Impoundment Control Act, which was designed to ensure presidents spend all the money Congress approves.

Dodaro said he was “surprised” by that suggestion, given his belief that “the law is very clear that GAO’s ability to sue doesn’t preclude anybody else from suing.”

A year later, the president has continued to flout Congress’ authority to dictate how federal dollars get spent. Top administration officials and some Republicans in Congress have publicly belittled GAO as a partisan and noncredible oversight agency since Trump’s return to office.

And after the federal watchdog concluded last week that Trump’s recent funding cancellation is unconstitutional, White House budget director Russ Vought claimed on social media that GAO makes its “legal assessments based on whether Democrats are in the White House.”

Potentially bolstering GAO’s arguments in a lawsuit, lawmakers added provisions to the government funding bills Trump signed into law this year designed to protect their own power of the purse, though Republicans bucked Democratic demands to enact the most aggressive constraints — including to block Trump’s ability to cancel federal dollars at the end of the fiscal year.

Some Republicans are now embracing more stringent methods to stifle Trump’s funding moves, however, after he slashed hundreds of millions dollars through the “pocket rescissions” tactic last month.

“I’m very disappointed in their action here, and it will have to be rectified,” Sen. Mike Rounds, a South Dakota Republican, said about Trump’s latest funding cancellation in an interview.

But he also said he doesn’t know if GAO or another entity should sue: “I’m not sure who should do it. All I know is I want a different result than what we have right now.”

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