Date Query Month and Year or only Year

I am a bit stuck with setting up this date query. I want to use a dropdown select box to allow the user to choose which date archive they want to view. It works for the months, but when I select the year option it will only show 1 month from that year. I am also allowing the category to be queried, but I don’t think that is affecting the date query.

I know that I’m going wrong somewhere, but I can’t pinpoint the problem exactly.

<?php $cat_query = array(array('relation' => 'AND'));

	if( isset( $_GET['category'] ) && $_GET['category'] ){

		$cat_area_query = array( 'taxonomy' => 'category', 'field' => 'slug', 'terms' => $_GET['category'],'operator' => 'IN', );
		$cat_query[] = $cat_area_query;
	}

	if( $cat_query && $cat_query ){
		$cat_query['relation'] = 'AND'
		;
	}
	$m = get_the_time('m');
	$y = get_the_time('Y');

	$args = array(
		'post_type'   	 => array('post'),
		'post_status'    => 'publish',
		'tax_query'		 => $cat_query,
		'orderby'		 => 'date',
		'order' 		 	 => 'desc',
		  'date_query' => array(
		   'relation' => 'OR',
		array(
			'year'	=> $y,
			'month' => $m,
			'compare'   => '=',
		),
	  ),
	);
       $posts_query = new WP_Query( $args);?>