{"id":8837,"date":"2026-08-07T19:37:52","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T19:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=8837"},"modified":"2026-08-07T19:37:52","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T19:37:52","slug":"watchdogs-press-house-panel-over-decades-of-missing-spending-investigations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=8837","title":{"rendered":"Watchdogs press House panel over decades of missing spending investigations"},"content":{"rendered":"

A coalition of groups is asking the Appropriations Committee to account for more than 80 years of work.<\/strong><\/p>

Read more Trump says he\u2019ll bring ballroom fight to Supreme Court after lower court halts work<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n
Virginia Tech professor Matthew Dull provided to The Washington Post this photo he said he took in 2024 at the Ford House Office Building. The display case, he said, held papers produced by a secretive U.S. House team that investigated federal spending over eight decades. A complete archive of the group\u2019s work is missing. (Courtesy of Matthew Dull)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

For 81 years, a secretive team inside the House Appropriations Committee investigated how federal agencies spent the public\u2019s money \u2014 military construction costs, Agriculture Department contracts, children\u2019s television funded by the Education Department.<\/p>\n

The team produced hundreds of reports detailing the ways the U.S. government funded American life across decades \u2014 a rich trove of information experts say could help study successful federal spending, as well as fraud and abuse, in the nation\u2019s key government programs, and military and infrastructure projects during the 20th century.<\/p>\n

The problem is, a complete archive of the team\u2019s findings is missing, and no one with the Appropriations Committee will say where it went.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese records, in particular, shed really important light into the operations of Congress and how the Appropriations Committee has changed the course of history,\u201d said Dan Schuman, executive director of the American Governance Institute (AGI). \u201cWe want this information to be available so that people can understand what appropriators have done and how it shaped some of most pivotal battles inside the legislative branch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Known as Surveys and Investigations, the team was created in 1943 and was staffed by a rotating cast of FBI investigators alongside federal agency experts and, at times, analysts from the Government Accountability Office. S&I, as it was known, was quietly disbanded in 2024. While House rules say most congressional records that old should be open to the public by now, experts say that the committee did not completely file the records with the National Archives, as mandated by House rules.<\/p>\n

On Friday, a group of 15 government watchdog groups and experts, led by Schuman and the AGI, sent a letter asking that Appropriations Committee leaders provide assurance that the records were properly preserved.<\/p>\n

Only bits and pieces of the S&I records have been made public, largely due to the work of Matthew Dull, a professor at Virginia Tech\u2019s Center for Public Administration and Policy. For years, Dull has worked with an archivist seeking out these reports, often finding them in public and private libraries, agencies, archives and reading rooms. The professor has identified about 2,000 study titles, but a complete archive of S&I\u2019s work is missing<\/a>, and the committee\u2019s leaders have not explained why.<\/p>\n

Dull, who signed Schuman\u2019s letter, said up to 60 percent of the studies he\u2019s been able to account for focus on military expenses, while the rest touch on issues as varied as Interior Department geological surveys, Department of Agriculture solid waste removal prices and Education Department school infrastructure costs.<\/p>\n

The professor maintains an online archive<\/a> of the S&I investigations he\u2019s found, but most reports have never been publicly accounted for.<\/p>

Read more Court deals setback to Trump\u2019s war on wind as Pentagon is ordered to review projects<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe rules of the House say that the committee turns over everything at the end of the Congress to the clerk,\u201d Dull said, but \u201cthey did not, in general, turn over copies of those reports to the clerk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dull provided The Washington Post with photographs he said he took of a room at the Ford House Office Building, one in 2024 and another in 2025. The first is of a display case that he said held some of the team\u2019s investigations and historical mementos of its work \u2014 showing that, at some point, at least some of the documents were being held in a Capitol office. He said the door to the other rooms in the office was locked, including that of a closet where he was told paper reports were housed. In the second photo, he said, the display case was gone and shelves in that closet were empty.<\/p>\n

Spokespeople for both the Republican and Democratic leaders of the panel did not respond to multiple inquiries from The Post on the documents\u2019 location and whether they were properly stored away after S&I stopped producing new reports in 2024.<\/p>\n

The House clerk, the House historian and the National Archives said they could not publicly comment on closed House records.<\/p>\n

The committee did not issue an official announcement marking the end of S&I <\/b>in 2024. But over the past decade, S&I was tasked with fewer and fewer investigations, according to a list of reports Dull provided to The Post. Dull said a former S&I staffer told him that the last members of the team were let go as they were finishing a report on general provisions in December 2024.<\/p>\n

S&I was started<\/a> in 1943 by then-appropriations chairman Clarence Cannon<\/a>, a powerful Democrat from Missouri who held the nation\u2019s purse strings tight. He received support<\/a> from then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who let bureau investigators take on S&I investigations, according to historical records.<\/p>\n

A former S&I staffer who was brought onto the team in the 2010s to conduct an investigation \u2014 and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they still work with the secretive sectors of the federal government \u2014 described the work as \u201cpretty unique.\u201d The former staffer said that specialists from across the federal government were brought in to investigate how agencies spent money. The former staffer also said they understood that the investigations were kept secret because the Appropriations Committee wanted to remove any sense of bias or partisanship from their reports. Still, the former staffer argued that the public \u2014 or at least academics \u2014 should now be allowed to see S&I\u2019s decades-old work.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe taxpayers paid to produce those documents,\u201d the former staffer said. \u201cYou paid 10 people for six months, that\u2019s a lot of money.\u201d<\/p>

Read more Tariffs on brass instruments come too late for unemployed Ohio factory workers<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A coalition of groups is asking the Appropriations Committee to account for more than 80 years of work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8835,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nWatchdogs press House panel over decades of missing spending investigations - Moving Insider USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=8837\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Watchdogs press House panel over decades of missing spending investigations - Moving Insider USA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A coalition of groups is asking the Appropriations Committee to account for more than 80 years of work.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=8837\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Moving Insider USA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-08-07T19:37:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/fb37d6b982c4ef49acee6ad7c62e14e5.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1206\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"904\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movinginsiderusa.com\\\/?p=8837#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movinginsiderusa.com\\\/?p=8837\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movinginsiderusa.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/22d40ab81790f6a361021763bb56ef03\"},\"headline\":\"Watchdogs press House panel over decades of missing spending investigations\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-07T19:37:52+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movinginsiderusa.com\\\/?p=8837\"},\"wordCount\":1053,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movinginsiderusa.com\\\/?p=8837#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movinginsiderusa.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/1192025868f271b3e584c2845cc600be.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Interesting\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/movinginsiderusa.com\\\/?p=8837#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movinginsiderusa.com\\\/?p=8837\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movinginsiderusa.com\\\/?p=8837\",\"name\":\"Watchdogs press House panel over decades of missing spending investigations - Moving Insider USA\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movinginsiderusa.com\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movinginsiderusa.com\\\/?p=8837#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movinginsiderusa.com\\\/?p=8837#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movinginsiderusa.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/1192025868f271b3e584c2845cc600be.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-07T19:37:52+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movinginsiderusa.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/22d40ab81790f6a361021763bb56ef03\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movinginsiderusa.com\\\/?p=8837#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/movinginsiderusa.com\\\/?p=8837\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movinginsiderusa.com\\\/?p=8837#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movinginsiderusa.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/1192025868f271b3e584c2845cc600be.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movinginsiderusa.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/1192025868f271b3e584c2845cc600be.jpg\",\"width\":1206,\"height\":904,\"caption\":\"WASHINGTON, DC - 2024: This photo obtained by The Washington Post shows a letter from FBI director Herbert Hoover and other documents in a room in the Ford House Office Building. 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