The chair of the House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee says the approach Senate leadership espouses for scoring the upcoming tax package is “intellectually a fraud.”

Senate Finance Committee Republicans have urged lawmakers to score the tax package using a current-policy baseline rather than a current-law baseline, arguing that the latter would unfairly score the bill as being potentially prohibitively expensive. The Congressional Budget Office last scored a full extension of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2023 as costing $4.6 trillion.

A current-policy baseline assumes that since the 2017 tax cuts are currently in effect, extending the status quo should be scored as costing nothing. The CBO bases its estimate on current law, assuming that tax bracket rates will return to their higher levels in 2026, the standard deduction will be halved, and other tax breaks will end, resulting in a large boon to the U.S. treasury from higher tax collections.

Current policy isn’t the right way to score a tax bill, says Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., who chairs the subcommittee overseeing the IRS and makes frequent after-votes speeches on the House floor about what he and others — including the CBO — consider to be the nation’s unsustainable fiscal path.

“It’s intellectually a fraud,” Schweikert said of the current-policy approach. “It is an intellectual fraud to say, ‘Let’s ignore the actual law and let’s just keep doing what we’re doing because it’s convenient,’” he told reporters February 4.

Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, has been publicly espousing since last summer that the CBO should base its score of the tax bill on a current-policy approach. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., who also sits on the Finance Committee, has repeatedly agreed with Crapo’s approach. The approach has adherents in the House as well, although others, including Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, have criticized it.

“It’s disingenuous because every projection of U.S. debt is based on the law. It is not based on our feelings that we like what we’re getting today,” Schweikert said. “If you’re going to play honest economics, then try actually doing honest math.”

Schweikert also has a problem with Republicans bashing the scorekeeper, whether it’s the CBO or the Joint Committee on Taxation, which scores tax provisions for both its own reports and the CBO’s. Republicans have criticized the CBO for the gulf between its April 2018 projection of federal revenues in its first score after the TCJA passed and what transpired. Revenues came in $1.5 trillion higher than the CBO estimate, though the agency has pointed out that $900 billion of the variance can be attributed to inflation and much of the rest to unexpectedly high tariff revenues.

“CBO, Joint Tax, you’re never going to get it perfect,” Schweikert told Tax Notes. “But if you ever look at their variance report: Not that far off with the data they have.”

Schweikert suggested those interested should look at the latest report on the accuracy of CBO scores that the agency releases and compare it with partisan and academic scores.

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Posted on Feb. 5, 2025 By Doug Sword