OBAMA POLITICAL APPOINTEES AT HUD MUST RETURN THEIR SALARIES AFTER OBSTRUCTING CONGRESS: Luke Rosiak of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group is probably not the most popular reporter covering the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He keeps turning up stories like today’s on the two Obama political appointees who GAO says must pay the penalty for obstructing Congress, literally.

The dynamic duo “refused to let an employee speak with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform about a major scandal. The congressional watchdog agency cited a federal law barring the use of taxpayer dollars to pay executive branch officials to obstruct Congress,” Rosiak reports. The scandal involved a fraud in HUD that cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. The two barred a career subordinate from telling Congress about the fraud.

“The GAO said that unless HUD’s associate general counsel and a deputy assistant secretary personally return their salaries, the department would be knowingly retaining ‘improper payments’ on its books in violation of the law,” Rosiak said. The two political appointees make six-figure salaries and GAO estimates their obstruction lasted six months, so this is going to hurt. Unless HUD’s corrupt leadership contrives to save them, that is.

Rosiak reports that “a HUD spokesman told The Daily Caller News Foundation that officials there have no plans to require the salary repayments despite the GAO opinion.” Stay tuned because GAO has just handed Congress an open invitation to regrow a couple of big brass ones and enforce its power of the purse over the executive branch, as the founders intended.