White House Questions CBO Ability Ahead of Imminent Critical Score of Joe Biden Budget

The White House on Tuesday questioned the accuracy of the Congressional Budget Office ahead of a looming ruling on the House version of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill.

White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates pointed to “wide agreement” within the Democrat party, “that CBO doesn’t have experience analyzing revenue amounts gained from cracking down on wealthy tax cheats who are taking advantage of every honest taxpayer.”

Bates spoke about the upcoming ruling with reporters during President Biden’s trip to New Hampshire to promote his bipartisan infrastructure bill.

He argued that stronger tax enforcement, enhanced by $44 billion in funding for the Internal Revenue Service, would allow the agency to squeeze more revenue out of taxpayers who were not paying enough in taxes.

The Biden administration predicts that spending more on the IRS could raise as much as $400 billion in extra taxes.

The imminent scoring report by the CBO threatens to derail support for the bill, as many moderates have raised concerns about the bill adding to the deficit, rather than costing “zero dollars” as the Biden Administration repeatedly states.

Bates said the additional enforcement mechanisms would reduce the deficit by going after “rich tax cheats” and that a wide majority of Democrats were “not worried at all” about the bill adding to the deficit.

“This is something that has been known for months and everybody is on the same page,” he said.