Lawmakers are investigating allegations that a White House budget official tried to intimidate the Office of Personnel Management inspector general's office against complaining about budget cuts.

OPM IG Patrick McFarland on Jan. 11 said the Office of Management and Budget has threatened to "make life miserable for us" if his office tells lawmakers that budget cuts would handicap him. OMB did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

IGs are allowed by law to include objections to proposed funding cuts in the federal budget OMB sends to Congress. McFarland said the OMB program examiner was trying to find out if the IG's office was planning to formally object to its budget. McFarland said the "not-so-veiled threat" was made by the OMB official Jan. 4.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., and Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., chairman of the subcommittee on the federal workforce, Postal Service and District of Columbia, sent letters Tuesday to OMB Director Peter Orszag and Phyllis Fong, chairwoman of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, asking them to submit reports on the allegations by Jan. 22.

Towns and Lynch pressed Orszag to investigate whether the allegations are true and, if so, whether the incident was isolated or part of a larger pattern of behavior among OMB officials. They told Fong to ask other IGs if they received similar threats.

"If such statements were made, they were entirely improper and pose a direct threat to the independence and integrity of inspectors general, and an affront to clear congressional intent as expressed in statute," Towns and Lynch said in a statement released Tuesday.