Fiscal Year 2005 Budget Request: U.S. General Accounting Office Page: 2 of 27
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Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:
I am pleased to appear before the subcommittee today, having recently
completed my fifth year as the Comptroller General of the United States
and head of the U.S. General Accounting Office. GAO exists to support the
Congress in meeting its constitutional responsibilities and to help improve
the performance and ensure the accountability of the federal government
for the benefit of the American people. In the years ahead, our support to
the Congress will likely prove even more critical because of the pressures
created by our nation's large and growing long-term fiscal imbalance,
which is driven primarily by known demographic and rising health care
trends. These pressures will require the Congress to make tough choices
regarding what the government does, how it does business, and who will
do the government's business in the future. GAO's work covers virtually
every area in which the federal government is or may become involved,
anywhere in the world. Perhaps just as importantly, our work sometimes
leads us to sound the alarm over problems looming just beyond the
horizon-such as our nation's enormous long-term fiscal challenges-and
help policymakers address these challenges in a timely and informed
manner.
My testimony today will focus on GAO's progress during my first five years
as Comptroller General. I will highlight our (1) fiscal year 2003
performance and results; (2) efforts to maximize our effectiveness,
responsiveness, and value; and (3) budget request for fiscal year 2005 to
support the Congress and serve the American people. Following is a
summary:
The funding we received in fiscal year 2003 allowed us to conduct work
that addressed many of the difficult issues confronting the nation,
including diverse and diffuse security threats, selected government
transformation challenges, and the nation's long-term fiscal imbalance.
Perhaps the foremost challenge facing government decision makers
this year was ensuring the security of the American people. By
providing professional, objective, and nonpartisan information and
analyses, we helped inform the Congress and the executive branch
agencies on key security issues, such as the nature and scope of threats
confronting the nation's nuclear weapons facilities, its information
systems, and all areas of its transportation infrastructure, as well as the
challenges involved in creating the Department of Homeland Security.
Our work was also driven by changing demographic trends, which led
us to focus on such areas as the quality of care in the nation's nursing
homes and the risks to the government's single-employer pensionGAO-04-474T
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United States. General Accounting Office. Fiscal Year 2005 Budget Request: U.S. General Accounting Office, text, March 4, 2004; Washington D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc294446/m1/2/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.