16,245 complaints went in. 15 investigations came out. None finished on time.

The finding, in one paragraph: the federal government's 73 inspectors general employ more than 14,000 people, spend $3.9 billion a year, and report returning about $18 for every dollar they cost.▸ The only body authorized to investigate misconduct by the inspectors general themselves — the Integrity Committee of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency — runs on three full-time staff and $1.3 million, and when the Government Accountability Office pulled its files, it found the accountability machine fails nearly every standard it enforces on others: deadlines in statute, blown in every sampled case; reports to Congress required by law, silently skipped; complaint screening that its own written standards say takes two sets of eyes, done by one.

Six documents, all read directly.▸ The audit is GAO's Inspectors General Integrity Committee: Strengthened Oversight and Policy Needed to Ensure Consistent Investigations (GAO-26-107922, issued May 14, publicly released June 15, 2026) — requested by House Oversight in September 2024. The response is the July 1, 2026 letter from Chairman James Comer, Subcommittee Chairmen Pete Sessions and Clay Higgins, and Rep. Andy Biggs to CIGIE Chair Cheryl Mason, demanding a remediation plan by July 15. The cross-examination documents are CIGIE's own: its FY2024 Annual Report to the President and Congress — which covers the Integrity Committee's year in roughly 300 words — and the Integrity Committee's published membership and process, read against the Inspector General Act's 150-day clock as quoted in both the audit and the letter.

The Integrity Committee is not a line item Congress votes on.▸ CIGIE's operating budget is assembled from contributions by the very OIGs the committee polices, and the committee's slice pays three staff and reimburses whichever inspector general's office is borrowed to run each investigation:

GAO's money finding is about the reimbursements: assisting OIGs bill the committee for investigations without documented labor rates, hours, or cost review — three of the eight recommendations exist because, in GAO's words, undocumented cost approval "can enable unnecessary or unallowable spending."▸ The committee that exists to audit auditors does not, per the audit, document the audit of its own invoices.

A steep funnel is not itself the scandal — most of the 16,245 complaints name people outside the committee's jurisdiction, or repeat earlier submissions, and the committee's remit is only senior OIG officials.▸ The scandal is who narrows it and how. At the mouth of the funnel sits one program manager who, since January 2021, has been deciding alone which complaints are "frivolous" — GAO found they "remain in the PM's email box in a 'Frivolous' subfolder." The committee's own standards require its legal counsel to concur in every such determination. The counsel performed no such reviews; the delegation was made orally by a former chair and never documented; the standards were never amended. GAO's conclusion is written in the flat register of an auditor describing a disabled control: "actions taken by a single individual determine whether to pursue the complaint, even if the determination is not accurate."

The Inspector General Act gives the committee 150 days to complete an investigation, and orders it to notify Congress and brief the committees of jurisdiction every 30 days once an investigation runs past that. Read the statute against the ledger:

Every one of the five investigations completed between October 2020 and March 2025 exceeded the 150-day statutory period — the fastest took 427 days; the longest 1,246.▸ Ten of 73 required congressional updates were never sent; GAO records the legal counsel's explanation as "inadvertent," and for one investigation, no explanation at all. Now set that against how the committee describes itself to Congress. Its entire section in CIGIE's FY2024 annual report lists, under outreach: "Congressional Briefings. Among other engagements, the IC staff briefed Congressional staff on the IC's findings and recommendations on particular investigations." The same year's report counts exactly one completed investigation — of an official whose allegations were "not substantiated" — out of 3,471 incoming communications. Two official documents, one question: the annual report says the committee briefs Congress; the audit Congress commissioned says the briefings required by law didn't reliably happen. CIGIE, for its part, did not dispute a number — it agreed with all eight recommendations.

The July 1 letter sets a July 15, 2026 deadline for CIGIE to produce its remediation plan, its internal communications about congressional requests, and — notably — "ideas for actions that Congress can take."▸ The stated stake is structural: the members write that the failures "force the Committee to consider all options at its disposal, including removing or modifying the duty to investigate wrongdoing within offices of inspectors general from CIGIE." The committee holding that threat has legislative jurisdiction over the Inspector General Act. GAO's eight recommendations are all open, all addressed to the CIGIE chair, and the timeline that got here is five years long: a 2021 letter, a 2023 letter, a 2024 hearing, a September 2024 audit request, a May 2026 report, a July 2026 ultimatum.

All figures are from the documents cited in-line, each read directly. The funnel's steepness reflects jurisdiction as well as screening; the report does not state how many of the 16,245 complaints named covered persons.