H.R. 724 — CBO Show Your Work Act

This section amends Section 402 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 (2 U.S.C. 653) to designate the existing requirements for Congressional Budget Office (CBO) cost estimates on reported bills as subsection (a) and to establish new subsection (b) requiring the CBO Director to make available to Members of Congress and publicly post on the CBO website (1) each fiscal model, policy model, and data preparation routine used in estimating legislative costs and other fiscal, social, or economic effects; (2) any updates to such models or routines; (3) subject to paragraph (4), for each such estimate, the data, programs, models, assumptions, and computational details sufficient for replication by non-CBO personnel; and (4) for any non-disclosable data, a list of all variables, descriptive statistics (e.g., averages, standard deviations, observations, correlations) to the extent permitted, the prohibiting statute, and contact information for data holders. The amendments apply 6 months after enactment. (Thus, the changes enhance public transparency into CBO scoring methodologies previously available only internally.)