I know a lot of people are wondering why it’s taking so long to get the federal budget off the ground. On this Talk it out Tuesday, let’s pull back the curtain and look at one of the biggest culprits behind the gridlock: the Congressional Budget Office. That’s right—the CBO. While most Americans go about their day assuming elected officials are leading the charge on fiscal matters, the truth is, an unelected team of bureaucrats with outdated economic models is quietly calling the shots. It’s time we start asking the tough questions about why Congress continues to outsource its authority to an agency that’s more often wrong than right.
Why Does the GOP Let the CBO Run the Show?
Since its creation in 1974, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has used “static scoring” to evaluate legislation—an accounting method that assumes taxes, regulations, or spending policies have no real effect on behavior. In simpler terms, it means if Congress cuts taxes, the model assumes no one works more, invests more, or hires more as a result or if taxes are raised also no change in behavior. It’s a system built for bureaucrats, not entrepreneurs. In this outdated framework, businesses don’t hire, investors don’t adapt, and consumers apparently make decisions in a vacuum. For nearly half a century, this rigid model has shaped how Congress thinks about the economy—smothering innovation, ignoring market responses, and discouraging bold reforms in favor of budgetary bookkeeping.
But here’s the real kicker: over time, the CBO and its unelected staff have slowly but surely taken control of the entire budgetary process—wresting authority away from the very people Americans elect to make these decisions. Instead of empowering lawmakers to debate and decide based on principles, priorities, and public input, Congress now tiptoes around the projections of a federally funded fiefdom of economists. It’s a quiet bureaucratic coup, and both parties—especially Republicans—have been complicit in letting it happen. Remember the 2003 Bush tax cut proposal? The CBO’s static scoring predicted a bleak fiscal outlook and helped fuel opposition within Congress, discouraging more aggressive reforms that could have delivered long-term growth. Lawmakers today don’t lead with vision—they wait for a spreadsheet to tell them what’s “possible.” This is the antithesis of the MAGA movement, which is about restoring power to the people, unleashing American potential, and rejecting the defeatism of bureaucratic groupthink.
Let’s get one thing straight: the CBO is not the Constitution. Its forecasts are not commandments etched into stone tablets. They are, at best, educated guesses—at worst, bureaucratic roadblocks dressed up in academic jargon. And yet, Republicans continue to treat them like a higher authority. This isn’t fiscal responsibility—it’s intellectual surrender. It’s a self-imposed straightjacket that keeps bold, pro-growth policies locked in the closet while America’s economy begs for leadership.
Need proof? Just look at Obamacare. The CBO promised the Affordable Care Act would cover 32 million more Americans by 2019 for just $940 billion. Reality check: it delivered only 14 million enrollees—a 56% shortfall—at a final cost of $1.7 trillion, nearly double the original price tag. That wasn’t a harmless rounding error. That was a catastrophic failure with real-world consequences. Patients suffered, providers buckled, and taxpayers got fleeced—all because Congress outsourced its judgment to an outfit that couldn’t hit water if it fell out of a boat. And what did Republicans do in the face of this glaring miss? They grumbled, held hearings, and issued press releases—but ultimately allowed the CBO to keep its grip on the legislative scorecard, reinforcing the very system that burned them.
And if this kind of blunder happened in the private sector? At a Fortune 500 company, any analyst who missed projections that badly would be marched out the front door with their belongings in a box. No CEO worth their salt would tolerate that level of incompetence—because billion-dollar mistakes in business mean lost jobs, tanked stock prices, and wiped-out shareholders. But in Washington? The CBO keeps chugging along, immune to consequences, while Republicans use its flawed forecasts as an excuse to do nothing.
Ronald Reagan didn’t ask for permission from the scorekeepers to cut taxes and unleash American dynamism. He trusted in the ingenuity of the American people—not in the spreadsheets of Washington technocrats. It’s time for today’s GOP to take a page from that book. Stop genuflecting before the CBO’s flawed models. Stop hiding behind “neutral scores” that are anything but. Stop pretending that the future of American prosperity is a math problem only a government agency can solve.
This country didn’t become great because of cautious forecasts—it became great because of visionary risk-takers who challenged the status quo and dared to believe in growth. If Republicans want to lead again, they need to start acting like it. Find your backbone. Reclaim your economic imagination. And for once, tell the CBO to take a seat in the gallery—where observers belong—not at the head of the policymaking table.
The future of America doesn’t belong to the bean counters. It belongs to the builders. So let’s start building again—by pushing for dynamic scoring that reflects how people and businesses actually respond to policy changes, and by opening the door to alternative scorekeepers who value growth over guesswork. The path forward isn’t just about rejecting bad numbers—it’s about reclaiming the power to shape America’s future without bureaucratic permission slips. We will never begin to close the deficit created by bureaucrats by leaving it up to them. As President Trump put it best, “We will no longer surrender this country, or its people, to the false song of globalism.” That includes surrendering our economic destiny to bureaucrats with bad models and worse instincts. It’s time to take back the pen and write our own future—with growth, confidence, and American grit.
