The Congressional Budget Office was created in 1974 “to provide objective, nonpartisan information to support the Congressional budget process and to help Congress make effective budget and economic policy.” Yet, a survey of major legislation over the years has shown bias favoring Democrat-led tax-and-spend policies. Although its routine forecasting has been reasonably accurate, its self-reported error rate has grown in recent years and when it comes to major benchmark legislation, the CBO’s scores have been dramatically off the mark.
The agency costs taxpayers close to $100 million a year, while shielding its staffers from transparency laws.
In a new oversight report, Open the Books highlights several case studies that demonstrate huge gaps between CBO’s scores and the reality of policy outcomes. Our auditors further reveal subtle cheerleading for policy prescriptions, like green energy spending. Democrat-favored initiatives.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL REPORT
Some examples include:
Despite extensively working with legislators on the Affordable Care Act, the CBO scored the ACA’s cost at $788 billion net cost of coverage provisions between 2010 and 2019 for Obamacare. By 2012, the new estimate for the period of 2012-2022 was $1.76 trillion.
Within the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, the CBO predicted the highly expanded Child Tax Credit would decrease revenues by $21 billion and increase outlays by $88 billion, at a cost of about $109 billion. However, when calculating the possibility of extending the credit, its new cost, according to CBO, suddenly spiked to $185 billion over the budget window — a 70% increase.
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 was, despite its name, packed with green energy investments worth over $400 billion that seemingly had little to do with inflation. CBO calculated the whole bill would create savings and revenue worth $738 billion, and reduce the deficit by $238 billion over 10 years. In 2024 those predictions were revised to instead increase the deficit by $300 billion.
CBO’s influence over green energy handouts in the IRA could be traced back to CBO climate policy reports produced in the years immediately before and after the bill was passed, outlining the fiscal case for climate change spending.
The CBO has had over 50 years to make its case as a reliable, neutral source of legislative analyses. After these multi-billion to trillion-dollar blunders, it’s clear taxpayers deserve an alternative way to understand the potential future impacts of federal legislation. Legislative scoring and economic forecasting should be openly transparent, easy to understand, and outside the ideological fray.
Your support makes our work at Open the Books possible! Please consider a donation of any amount to help us keep investigating government waste, fraud and abuse.
Sunset all government agencies, zero funding until they show staffing and what they contribute on cost to results. In writing for review by a citizen board .
With AI, all the dollars should be able to be tracked easily and fraud found and prosecuted, and the money returned to pay down the deficit. Enough already -- especially "government" workers with lifelong pensions. Ridiculous. I think government workers really do think money grows on trees. Thieves.