How CBO Supports the Congress

Posted by on

January 16, 2025

I would like to take a moment to introduce, or reintroduce, the Congressional Budget Office to Members of the 119th Congress and their staffs.

CBO is committed to supporting the federal budget process. The agency strives to provide timely, objective information in service of that mission, and responsiveness remains one of our top priorities. In the busy weeks and months ahead, please reach out to us. My colleagues and I would be delighted to explain what we do, and we're eager to be helpful.

Primary Responsibilities

CBO was created by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 to strengthen the Congress's role in budget matters and to help lawmakers craft effective budget and economic policy. As a strictly nonpartisan agency, CBO provides impartial analyses that offer an alternative to information from the Office of Management and Budget and other executive branch agencies.

The Congress sets CBO's priorities. Under the Budget Act, CBO works for all Congressional committees, and its chief responsibility is to help the Budget Committees with the matters under their jurisdiction. Priority under the act is also given to assisting the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, the House Ways and Means Committee, and the Senate Finance Committee. The agency works closely with the leadership of both chambers.

CBO produces many analytical products every year, deploying a system of checks and balances to vet its work. The agency's annual output includes dozens of reports on a variety of topics, most notably The Budget and Economic Outlook. That statutory report presents what is often referred to as the baseline-projections of what the federal budget and the economy would look like in the current year and over the next decade if laws governing taxes and spending generally remained unchanged. Importantly, CBO does not make policy recommendations.

The agency's economists and budget analysts fulfill thousands of requests annually for technical assistance as committees are crafting legislation, as amendments to bills are being debated, and at other stages in the legislative process. And each year, agency staff produce as many as a thousand cost estimates for proposed legislation.

Once an authorizing committee orders a bill to be reported for consideration by the full House or Senate, CBO is required to prepare a cost estimate, which assesses how the bill would affect major components of the federal budget and includes statements concerning intergovernmental and private-sector mandates that would be imposed by the bill.

Cost estimates can be accessed through CBO's Cost Estimates page, which features reports that explain the budget process and other aspects of our work, including CBO's Cost Estimates Explained and CBO Describes Its Cost-Estimating Process.

For legislation involving the Internal Revenue Code, CBO's cost estimates incorporate estimates made by the staff of the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, as is required by the Budget Act.

Other Ways CBO Helps Member Offices

The agency provides information to Members' offices when time permits, recognizing that many Members who are not Chairs or Ranking Members of committees want additional analysis from CBO.

For example, members of CBO's staff often meet with Members of Congress to provide information on bills, answer questions, and talk about aspects of the budget or economy. CBO experts also review thousands of proposed amendments to legislation (as it did with the National Defense Authorization Act) for hundreds of Members. In addition, agency experts offer analysis-in phone calls, emails, and meetings-to Members and their staffs as they consider and draft bills or simply seek to better understand a complicated estimate or report.

Members seeking a review of legislation may submit a request (with the bill number or draft language attached) to [email protected].

Transparency in Our Activities

CBO aims to ensure that our analytic activities are transparent and promote a better understanding of how the agency conducts its work. To meet that goal, we provide information about the basis of our findings, including the evidence that our staff draw upon in their analyses. We also explain how our estimates would change if the policies or other conditions that our projections reflect differed. To learn more about the agency's recent transparency efforts-which include publishing interactive tools and documenting some of the mathematical models behind our major analyses-see CBO's Transparency page.

The agency is also committed to providing information to the public and the media whenever feasible. CBO's work is available to the Congress and the public on the agency's website. You can also sign up to receive email notifications about CBO publications using the "Stay Connected" link found in the bottom left-hand corner of every page on the agency's website.

CBO has about 275 staff members and hires employees without regard to political affiliation. The agency's staff includes many experts on health policy, energy and climate issues, labor issues, macroeconomics, microeconomics, national security, and taxes. Maintaining a breadth of expertise enables CBO to quickly respond to policymakers' needs.

To learn more about CBO, see An Introduction to the Congressional Budget Office and 10 Things to Know About CBO.

Forthcoming and Recent Work

CBO's Recent Publications and Work in Progress as of December 31, 2024, the latest in a quarterly series, highlights the cost estimates, reports, and other analyses provided to the Congress in the last quarter and year and the analytic products slated for completion in coming months. In addition, the agency's Press Center page notes upcoming publications and release timeframes for selected major reports.

Among those major reports is The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2025 to 2035, to be published on January 17. That baseline report, abbreviated to accommodate an earlier-than-customary release date, will present the agency's broad economic forecast and projections of spending and revenues under current law over the next decade. CBO will provide additional information on its economic forecast later in January.

On January 10, the agency published an analysis of the accuracy of CBO's budget projections for fiscal year 2024, as well as the latest edition of its Monthly Budget Review, which analyzes federal spending and revenues in the previous month (in this case, December 2024) and the fiscal year to date.

On January 13, CBO released The Demographic Outlook: 2025 to 2055, detailing the population projections underlying the agency's baseline budget projections and economic forecast.

And on January 15, the agency published Expired and Expiring Authorizations of Appropriations: 2025 Preliminary Report. The report lists federal programs and activities whose authorizations of appropriations have expired or are scheduled to expire. Later this year, CBO will report to the Congress on programs funded for the current fiscal year whose authorizations of appropriations have expired.

Other recent releases include the following reports:

• Options for Reducing the Deficit: 2025 to 2034, the latest volume in a series of policy options periodically released by CBO to help lawmakers as they consider responses to budgetary challenges. The agency's Budget Options search tool is updated to include these options.
• CBO's Current View of the Economy From 2025 to 2027, detailing CBO's latest projections of the economy through 2027.
• An Analysis of the Navy's 2025 Shipbuilding Plan, which finds that total shipbuilding costs would average about $40 billion per year (in 2024 dollars) through 2054.
• The Risks of Climate Change to the United States in the 21st Century, assessing how climate change will pose risks to the United States through its effects on economic activity, real estate and financial markets, human health, biodiversity, immigration, and national security.
• How Increased Use of Gene Therapy Treatment for Sickle Cell Disease Could Affect the Federal Budget, in which CBO discusses how it would estimate the budgetary effects of policies that seek to increase the use of gene therapy treatment for sickle cell disease.
• Artificial Intelligence and Its Potential Effects on the Economy and the Federal Budget, which provides an overview of the ways that AI could affect the U.S. economy and the federal budget.

We look forward to working with the 119th Congress.

Phillip Swagel is serving his second four-year term as CBO's director.