Sponsors (2)
The bill lets committee chairs rely on private accounting firms for quicker, technical budget estimates—potentially speeding scoring and easing CBO workload—but risks weakening nonpartisan, consistent budget oversight, creating conflicts of interest, and adding procurement costs.
Committee chairs and congressional staff can obtain faster, alternative budget cost estimates from large private accounting firms and tap their technical expertise, which can speed legislative scoring and may reduce duplicate workload for the Congressional Budget Office.
Taxpayers and state and local governments may face reduced nonpartisan public oversight and more politicized or fragmented budget scoring if private estimates replace or supplant CBO scoring, producing inconsistent baselines across committees and measures.
Taxpayers, nonprofits, and the public could face conflicts of interest when private accounting firms that serve corporate clients produce budget estimates used for enforcement and decisionmaking.
Congressional committees or taxpayers could incur higher administrative and procurement costs to obtain private estimates, shifting expenses onto committees or the public.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Allows committee chairs to use budget estimates from one of the ten largest PCAOB-registered accounting firms instead of CBO estimates for budget enforcement and congressional rules.
Official title: To amend the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 to provide that Congress may request estimates of legislation from reputable accounting firms for purposes of budget enforcement, and for other purposes.
Introduced March 31, 2025 by Claudia Tenney · Last progress March 31, 2025
Allows House or Senate committee chairs (other than Appropriations) to obtain budget cost estimates for reported public bills or resolutions from one of the ten largest PCAOB-registered accounting firms instead of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Those private-firm estimates would replace CBO estimates for purposes of budget enforcement, pay-as-you-go, reconciliation, concurrent budget resolutions, and relevant House and Senate rules, and the CBO would not be required to prepare a separate estimate when a private estimate is obtained. Defines the eligible private firms as the ten accounting firms with the largest net revenue in the prior year that are registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, and makes conforming changes so either budget committee may use such private estimates for related enforcement provisions.