Sponsors (2)
This bill gives committees faster access to private cost estimates and professional accounting firms to inform spending decisions, but does so at the cost of weakening CBO's central nonpartisan role and increasing risks of partisan bias, conflicts of interest, and inconsistent budget enforcement.
Committee chairs (other than Appropriations) and their staff can obtain private cost estimates or outside expertise more quickly, potentially speeding legislative consideration and giving lawmakers additional information when reporting bills.
Appropriations Committees may use private cost estimates under section 312(a), giving appropriators an additional source of information to inform spending decisions.
Requiring or encouraging the use of large, PCAOB-registered accounting firms can provide consistent, professional accounting methodologies for some cost estimates, which may improve technical quality for certain analyses.
Taxpayers and the public could lose access to impartial, nonpartisan analysis if CBO is barred from estimating measures where private firms are hired, and CBO's institutional capacity and staff role could be undermined over time.
Budget enforcement and fiscal decisionmaking may become inconsistent across Congress if private estimates use different methodologies or assumptions than CBO, complicating enforcement and comparisons of cost estimates.
Committee chairs could select private firms whose work aligns with partisan goals, creating a risk of biased or strategically framed estimates that affect budget enforcement and legislative choices.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Introduced March 31, 2025 by Claudia Tenney · Last progress March 31, 2025
Allows a House or Senate committee chair (except the Appropriations Committees) to hire one of the ten largest public accounting firms to prepare a cost or budget estimate for a reported bill or joint resolution and to use that private estimate in place of a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate for budget enforcement and related rules. If a private estimate is obtained, CBO is prohibited from preparing its official estimate for that measure; the bill also permits either Appropriations Committee to rely on those private estimates for certain internal enforcement duties.