New Bill Allows Congress to Ditch CBO Estimates for Private Accounting Scores

The “REPEAL CBO Requirements Act” (officially the Replacing Exploitative Partisan Estimates with Alternatives by Liquidating Congressional Budget Office Requirements Act—yes, that’s the real title) is looking to fundamentally change how Congress figures out the cost of new legislation. Currently, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is the official scorekeeper, providing the cost estimates used for all budget enforcement rules. This bill, however, allows a committee chair to bypass the CBO entirely and use a score generated by a private accounting firm instead. If they choose this private estimate, that score must be used for all budget enforcement purposes, like the PAYGO rules, and the CBO is no longer required to produce its own analysis for that bill (SEC. 2).

Who Gets to Do the Math?

This isn't a free-for-all for any accounting firm looking for government work. The bill strictly defines who qualifies as a “private reputable accounting firm”: it must be one of the top ten public accounting firms registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) that had the highest net revenue in the previous year. Think of the biggest names in the accounting world—the ones that handle massive corporate audits. These firms, which specialize in private sector finance and tax, would now be tasked with scoring federal legislation, a process that relies on unique government data and forecasting models.

The Score That Counts

Here’s where the rubber meets the road: If a committee chair chooses to use a private firm’s estimate, that score immediately becomes the official, binding score for the bill. It overrides the CBO’s role as the neutral arbiter. For the average person, this matters because the CBO is supposed to be the referee, ensuring that Congress is using standardized, non-partisan numbers when discussing the fiscal impact of a bill—whether it’s a new infrastructure plan or a tax cut. When a bill is scored, that score determines if it needs offsets or if it violates budget caps. Giving the power to select the official score to a committee chair introduces a huge element of discretion.

The Real-World Impact: Picking Your Own Score

Imagine you’re running a small business and need to get a valuation for a loan. You go to a neutral, certified appraiser. Now imagine you could just hire the appraiser who promises to give you the highest valuation, and the bank must accept that number. That’s essentially what this bill introduces into the legislative process. Committee chairs who want to pass a costly bill could simply shop around among the top ten firms until they find one that scores the bill favorably—perhaps by being overly optimistic about future revenues or underestimating long-term costs. Since the private score must be used for enforcement, there is no check on this process.

For policymakers and the public, this is a big deal. The CBO’s historical data and consistent methodology are crucial for comparing the costs of different proposals over time. If every major bill starts coming with a score calculated by a different private firm using potentially different assumptions, the public loses its ability to compare apples to apples. It diminishes the role of the CBO as the trusted, non-partisan source of truth, replacing it with a system where the official cost estimate is chosen by the same people who want to pass the bill.