National Review by Dominic Pino August 5, 2021
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released its cost estimate of the bipartisan infrastructure deal. The CBO, like the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget two days ago, found that only about half of the $550 billion in new spending is paid for by the legislation.
Because of the CBO’s methodology, it’s possible it is still underestimating the ultimate impact on the deficit. It gives credit for $51 billion in savings for delaying the implementation of a Medicare prescription drug rule that has never been in effect to begin with. The reasoning goes like this: If the rule were implemented, it would cost $51 billion, so not implementing it saves $51 billion. Only in Washington is such logic acceptable. It would be like your deciding to go out to dinner and then changing your mind and not going. You didn’t save any money, and neither does delaying the implementation of this rule.
The CBO also only scores the legislation it is given, not the future legislation that passing this current legislation could create. For example, the infrastructure legislation effectively creates a new welfare program to pay people’s Internet bills, but it doesn’t appropriate any money for it. So the budget impact from that program in this piece of legislation is $0, even though it will require funding in the future. The program currently has $3.2 billion in funding and is expected to last a little over a year. Even a lowball estimate of the program costing $2 billion per year would mean an additional $20 billion in debt tacked onto the CBO’s estimate over the ten-year budget window.
More:
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-cbo-score-should-end-republican-support-for-the-infrastructure-deal/?utm_source=blog-landing&utm_medium=desktop&utm_campaign=continue-reading
