If GOP officials are looking for good news in the Congressional Budget Office’s new report on the party’s reconciliation package, they won’t find any.
Common sense might suggest that congressional Republicans would want to know basic details about their giant reconciliation package, such as how much it would cost and the practical implications of its provisions. GOP lawmakers are, after all, federal policymakers. It stands to reason that they’d care enough about governing to want to legislate with open eyes.
But that’s not the case. Just as Republicans scrambled in 2017 to pass massive tax breaks without waiting for a score from the Congressional Budget Office, GOP lawmakers decided to do the same thing in 2025, deliberately choosing willful ignorance about their own legislation.
That did not, however, stop congressional Democrats from asking the CBO to scrutinize the House Republicans’ proposal, and as The Associated Press reported, the nonpartisan budget office’s findings were quite brutal.
