Fiscal Forecasts as Political Resource: Economic Knowledge, Party Competition, and the Congressional Budget Office

• In Event: 41063 - Rethinking Economic Sociology

Abstract

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO)—established in 1974—has been a central protaganoist in the process of “institutionalizing economic reasoning” in governance in the United States (Berman 2022). Tasked with estimating the cost of proposed legislation and the long-term budget outlook, the CBO is rare among government agencies for enjoying a reputation of “neutral competency” (Shapiro 2023b). Its reputation for expertise and neutrality, and its singular position in the Congressional policy-making process, have led some scholars to characterise the CBO as wielding undue, and undemocratic, influence on policy outcomes, a “virtually sovereign branch of the U.S. federal government” (Skocpol 1996).
This paper suggests an alternative interpretation of the CBO’s place in US politics over the last 50 years. Far from the victory of economic expertise over politics, the CBO’s story is one of increasing instrumentalization of economic knowledge in partisan conflict. While the CBO has successfully protected its formal autonomy and reputation for neutral competency, its outputs—fiscal estimates and forcasts—are re-politicized in legislative debates and wider electoral politics.
I illustrate how CBO numbers are de-politicized and re-politicized through an account of three episodes in which CBO estimates proved especially salient in debates over major legislation. Each case reveals how CBO numbers, albeit ‘neutral’ in the making, become loaded with political meaning the moment they enter Congressional debate. Policy entrepreneurs in (and sometimes outside) Congress mobilize CBO numbers as part of strategies to achieve fiscal retrenchment, assemble legislative coalitions, or expand the scope of legislative conflict. This account extends but nuances recent interventions by Berman (2022) and Clift (2023) that highlight the power of an ‘economic style of reasoning’ and ‘technocratic governance’ over policy-making. Rather than independently shaping policy outcomes, CBO forecasts, like all economic forecasts, represent an important resourse in the persuasive repertoires that political actors use to construct their preferred vision of the future and affect present decisions (Beckert 2016).

Author

• Ned Crowley, Cambridge University