Philip Bump: When it comes to budget math, ‘D.C.-style’ actually means ‘honest’

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent found himself in an unexpected position Friday morning, facing a challenging question from – of all people – a Fox News anchor.

The budget bill passed by the House this week “adds trillions to our debt,” Fox’s Bill Hemmer noted. “How is that acceptable to this administration?”

“Well,” Bessent replied, “you’re referring to the CBO scoring, I believe, which is 10-year scoring and it’s D.C.-style scoring. So we think that we can both grow the economy and control the debt.” He assured the channel’s viewers, “We can grow our way out of this.”

Bessent’s “D.C.-style” phrasing was clearly not accidentally chosen. He understands that Fox News viewers, a group that overlaps heavily with President Donald Trump’s base of support, view “D.C.” as a pejorative. It’s the swamp! The Deep State! It can’t be trusted, while Trump can.

In this case, though, Bessent’s disparagement was aimed at the Congressional Budget Office, an independent organization that assesses the effects of proposed legislation and regularly provides estimates on the trajectory of the national deficit (annual federal budget shortfalls) and debt (accrued shortfalls). And, unlike the Trump administration, it has a reputation for fairness and self-correction.

The CBO does in fact project that Trump’s bill will add $3.8 trillion to the federal debt over the next decade. (It also estimates that the bill’s resulting “increase in the resources” provided to U.S. households will “not be evenly distributed”: Resources “would decrease for households in the lowest decile (10th) of the income distribution, whereas resources would increase for households in the highest decile.”)

So how reliable are the CBO’s estimates? Well, the CBO itself conducts regular audits of its projections. In its most recent self-evaluation, released in December, the CBO found that “debt projections have been centered for the budget year and sixth year but have tended to be overestimates for the 11th year.” In other words, fairly accurate over the short term but less so over the long term, in part because other policies are instituted that change the direction of annual deficits – and then compound into greater long-term errors.

The CBO’s past projections are publicly available. Its regular forecasts of the total debt have actually landed lower than the mark in recent years.

If we look at the projections as a function of the actual debt, you can see that, particularly more recently, the projections underestimated the actual annual debt.

The point isn’t that the CBO’s estimate of a $3.8 trillion increase is necessarily accurate. It’s that the CBO has an observable track record. It also has a commitment to evaluating how those projections held up, with the aim of refining its methodologies to ensure better projections in the future.

Of course, Trump administration officials also have a record of projections we can look at. In 2017, for example, Gary Cohn, head of the National Economic Council at the start of Trump’s first term in office, made familiar assurances, telling reporters that Trump’s proposed tax cuts (which would be extended by the bill passed this week) would offset projected deficits thanks to economic growth that (as other officials regularly claimed) increased tax revenue. Even before the 2017 bill passed, experts rejected that idea, and, in fact, analysis published last year found that the bill “clearly raised federal debt and increased after-tax incomes, disproportionately increasing incomes for the most affluent.”

The CBO’s analysis of the 2017 bill estimated that it would add $1.9 trillion to the deficit between 2018 and 2028. Since 2017 – thanks in part to the coronavirus pandemic – the federal debt held by the public has more than doubled.

So, Americans can take their pick: trust the independent CBO or again trust a Trump administration official? In fairness, it’s not much of a choice.