What GAO Found
Matters for congressional consideration are recommendations that GAO makes to Congress to address findings from GAO’s work. Since 2000, GAO has recommended that Congress consider more than 1,100 matters, and nearly 80 percent of them have closed. As of March 2025, 272 matters remained open.
Action to address certain open matters can produce tens of billions of dollars in future financial savings. Actions on other matters can improve the effectiveness of federal agencies and programs and help position the nation to address future challenges.
GAO identified 54 open matters that could result in financial benefits. Thirteen of these each have the potential to provide at least $1 billion of financial benefits (see table).
The remaining open matters have the potential to provide numerous other important benefits, such as improving government effectiveness and efficiency. For example, one January 2025 matter relates to the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) oversight of the safety of certain foods (GAO-25-107571). Implementing this matter could improve FDA’s ability to carry-out required inspections of foreign food facilities, improving the effectiveness of FDA’s food safety oversight.
Many of these matters could be addressed by legislation Congress is considering. As of February 2025, bills introduced in the 118th and 119th Congresses would have fully or partially addressed 89 (about 33 percent) of the 272 open matters. Of these, GAO identified legislation related to 11 matters that, if enacted, could result in financial benefits to the government.
To assist Congress, GAO cataloged the open matters, which span a wide range of topics and involve many parts of the federal government. Topic areas include defense, economic development, energy, federal financial management, health, IT, and others.
One hundred and thirteen (42 percent) of the 272 matters have been open for less than 4 years. The oldest open matter is more than 20 years old and remains highly relevant to addressing one of the issues on GAO’s High-Risk List—Improving Federal Oversight of Food Safety.
Why GAO Did This Study
GAO issued this report in response to a provision in the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act of 2023. In producing this report, GAO used information from its internal system for tracking recommendations and matters for congressional consideration.
