Bill Would Allow Legislators to More Effectively Address Racial and Economic Inequality
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senators Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), alongside U.S. Representatives Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), reintroduced the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Fiscal Analysis by Income and Race (FAIR) Scoring Act. This legislation seeks to provide policymakers with standardized data about the effects of their policies across race and income groups.
“Our country suffers from enormous income and wealth inequality, and too often legislation fails to account for how policy changes affect all Americans. Our FAIR Scoring Act will ensure there is objective, non-partisan information on how the effects of legislation will be distributed by income and race to better inform lawmakers and the American people,” said Bennet.
“We must do more to close the wealth gap in America that continues to widen across race and income,” said Warren. “This bill is a first step towards that end by providing lawmakers with the data they need to make informed decisions to advance racial and economic justice in future legislation.”
“As wealth inequality becomes one of the greatest challenges facing the US today, I am proud to partner with Sen. Warren (D-MA) on the FAIR Scoring Act. Our bill standardizes the legislative scoring system and ensures that legislators consider a bill’s impact on various socioeconomic groups. It is an important step to promoting strong, equitable, growth in the 21st century economy,” said Khanna.
“When legislation is proposed, it is critical that we know all of the impacts of it, including on people who have been disadvantaged as a result of years of damaging policies,” said Jayapal. “While the CBO currently scores the financial impacts, that leaves major question marks around what communities are affected. I’m proud to co-lead this legislation that will help to ensure racial, gender, and economic justice is considered in introduced bills before they become law.”
The CBO is required by law to produce a formal cost estimate for nearly every bill that is approved by a full committee in the House or Senate describing how the legislation would affect major components of the federal budget over a 10-year window. While these cost estimates provide insight into the fiscal impact of proposed legislation, policymakers have limited information about the distributional effects of bills across racial and income groups.
The CBO FAIR Scoring Act would:
- Require the CBO to estimate the distributional impacts by race and income for bills that have a gross budgetary effect of at least 0.1% of GDP in any fiscal year within the 10-year budget window;
- Require the CBO to provide such scores to relevant congressional committees before the bills are reported to the floor, to the extent possible;
- Require the CBO to prepare a report describing possible methods for conducting distributional analyses by gender to strengthen CBO’s capacity to conduct analyses of the interaction between race and gender.
Bennet, Warren, and Khanna previously introduced the CBO FAIR Scoring Act in 2021.
This legislation is endorsed by: The Washington Center for Equitable Growth, Our Revolution, Indivisible, and Coalition on Human Needs.
The text of the bill is available HERE.