Sponsors (36)
The bill promotes greater transparency and external validation of CBO analyses, but legal confidentiality limits and added costs for preparing publishable materials may restrict how much useful replication and oversight actually occurs.
Taxpayers and Members of Congress gain greater transparency because the CBO will publish models, data, and related materials used for cost estimates, enabling public and congressional review of assumptions and methods.
Independent researchers, academics, and universities can attempt to replicate and validate CBO analyses, improving external scrutiny and the methodological quality of budget estimates.
Publishing model updates and change logs helps Congress and oversight bodies track evolving assumptions and hold the CBO accountable for timely and accurate cost estimates.
Full-disclosure requirements may conflict with legal nondisclosure and confidentiality obligations (e.g., privacy, classified sources), limiting what can be released and creating compliance burdens for CBO staff.
Preparing, redacting, and publishing models and replication packages will increase CBO workload and costs, potentially diverting analyst time from other work and raising expenses borne by taxpayers.
Even with descriptive statistics and redactions, withholding underlying sensitive data may prevent full replication, reducing the practical effectiveness of transparency for outside reviewers.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires CBO to publish models, data-prep routines, and replication materials for its estimates, and to provide metadata for legally protected data.
Official title: To require the Congressional Budget Office to make publicly available the fiscal and mathematical models, data, and other details of computations used in cost analysis and scoring.
Introduced January 24, 2025 by Warren Davidson · Last progress January 24, 2025
Requires the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to publish on its website the fiscal and policy models, data-preparation routines, and related materials used for its cost estimates, and to make available to Members of Congress the underlying data, programs, assumptions, and computation details needed to reproduce CBO estimates, subject to legal nondisclosure limits. For data CBO cannot disclose, the bill requires CBO to publish variable lists, descriptive statistics (where allowed), the statutory citation that bars disclosure, and contact information for the party that has unrestricted access. The changes amend existing CBO statutory authority and take effect six months after enactment; the bill also formally establishes a short title.