What a CBO cost estimate means
Who the Congressional Budget Office is, how it scores legislation, and why its number is the one to trust.
When a Pass or Trash post says "CBO: adds ~$1.2B to the deficit over 10 yrs," that figure comes from the Congressional Budget Office. Here's who they are and why their number carries weight.
Who the CBO is
The Congressional Budget Office is a federal agency created in 1974 to give Congress independent, non-partisan analysis of the budget and the economy. It works for Congress as a whole — not for either party, and not for the President. Its job is to produce objective numbers that both sides can argue over from the same starting point.
What a "cost estimate" (or "score") is
For most bills that clear a committee, the CBO publishes a cost estimate — often just called a "score." It projects how the bill would affect federal spending and revenue, and therefore the deficit, over the standard 10-year window. A "$1.2B" score doesn't mean the bill costs $1.2B today — it means that's the projected net effect on the deficit across a decade.
How a bill gets scored
- CBO analysts read the actual bill text.
- They model how agencies, businesses, and individuals would respond.
- They project spending and revenue year by year for ten years.
- They publish the estimate, usually with an explanation of the assumptions.
Because this takes real analysis, it isn't instant — which leads to the most common question we get.
Why some bills say "no CBO estimate yet"
The CBO generally scores a bill after it clears committee — often a couple of weeks later — not the moment it's introduced. Since thousands of bills are introduced and most never advance, scoring every one would be wasted effort. So a freshly introduced bill usually has no official number. Rather than guess or estimate ourselves, Pass or Trash says plainly: "No CBO estimate yet." Honesty about what isn't known is part of the point.
Why trust it?
The CBO's value is its independence. It uses transparent methods, serves both parties, and has a decades-long track record. It's not infallible — projecting a decade of the economy is genuinely hard, and estimates get revised — but it is the most neutral, consistent yardstick available. When we want one honest number for a bill's cost, the CBO's is it.
The CBO doesn't tell Congress what to do. It tells Congress what something would cost. Pass or Trash takes that same posture: here's the number, the vote is yours.
Next: see exactly what the deficit is, or how a bill reaches the point of being scored in how a bill becomes law.