Grassley: Biden-Harris Stonewalling Prevents CBO from Conducting Complete Analysis of President’s 2025 Budget

WASHINGTON – Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) today issued the following statement on the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)’s report, “An Analysis of the President’s 2025 Budget.”

“Biden-Harris pie-in-the-sky policy proposals are so unrealistic CBO can’t even calculate their budget impact. This administration's unprecedented lack of transparency and fiscal discipline is insulting to Congress and the taxpayer,” Grassley said. “President Biden and Vice President Harris shouldn’t count on Congress to go along with their plan to stick Americans with the bill for a bunch of unclear initiatives – especially today, when households are facing 20 percent higher prices than they were four years ago.”  

The nonpartisan CBO has analyzed presidents’ budget proposals since the 1970s. Due to limited detail in many Biden-Harris policies, CBO hasn’t been able to estimate their budgetary effects as promptly or precisely as past administrations. 

Grassley in March asked White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Shalanda Young if she would give CBO all the information it needs for this year’s report to Congress. In response, Director Young committed, “We will provide CBO what they need to do this independent assessment.” Despite this promise, CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) did not have enough information from OMB to produce independent estimates for more than 60 Biden-Harris budget proposals. Notably: 

• CBO could not determine the total spending, revenues, deficits and debt under the Biden-Harris budget.
• For the tax and mandatory spending policies CBO and JCT could assess, they found the administration overstated expected savings by over $1 trillion. 
• CBO projects Biden-Harris’ base nondefense funding request exceeded the spending cap enacted in the Fiscal Responsibility Act. 

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