Congress’s budget watchdog is producing more estimates, but its queue of pending legislation continues to grow. Some bills have appeared on the agency’s unfinished-work lists for at least six months.
The Congressional Budget Office has a growing pile of unfinished business.
As of September 30, 2026, the nonpartisan agency responsible for estimating the budgetary consequences of congressional legislation had 395 bills awaiting cost estimates, according to its latest quarterly work-in-progress report.
That figure represents a 40.1% increase over the 282 pending estimates reported at the end of March, even as CBO increased the number of estimates it completed during the intervening months.
The numbers raise a straightforward question about the legislative process: Is Congress generating requests for fiscal analysis faster than its budget watchdog can complete them?
The available evidence suggests a growing imbalance between incoming work and completed estimates. What it does not establish is whether that imbalance results from an increase in legislative activity, the complexity of proposed laws, resource constraints, or some combination of those factors.
And that distinction matters.
A Backlog Growing Faster Than It Shrinks
CBO’s quarterly reports provide a revealing picture of its workload.
At the end of March, the agency reported 282 bills awaiting cost estimates. By June 30, that figure had risen to 353. Three months later, the pending inventory reached 395.
Over six months, the queue expanded by 113 pending estimates.
The increase occurred despite a substantial improvement in CBO’s quarterly production.
The agency completed 248 cost estimates during the April-through-June quarter, followed by 314 during July through September. That represents a 26.6% increase in completed estimates between the two quarters.
In other words, CBO was producing more work, but the amount of work awaiting completion continued to grow.
This does not necessarily indicate declining performance. Indeed, the increased output suggests the agency was processing a substantial volume of legislation.
The problem is that CBO’s quarterly reports provide only part of the equation.
They identify how many estimates were completed and how many remained pending at specific reporting dates. They do not provide a comprehensive accounting of incoming requests, withdrawn requests, changes in legislative status, or the complexity of the work entering the queue.
Without those figures, it is impossible to determine precisely why the backlog increased.
Nevertheless, the growth itself is documented.
Some Legislation Has Remained in the Queue for Months
The quarterly inventories also reveal that certain legislative proposals appeared repeatedly among the bills awaiting cost estimates.
Among them were the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, the New Source Review Permitting Improvement Act, and the Geothermal Energy Opportunity Act.
Other recurring entries included the Geothermal Cost-Recovery Authority Act and the Small Business Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act.
Each appeared in the March, June, and September quarterly inventories examined for this report.
Their repeated appearance establishes that the measures were listed as awaiting estimates at three reporting dates spanning six months.
It does not necessarily establish that CBO spent the entire period working continuously on a single estimate. Legislative proposals can undergo additional committee actions, revisions, or requests for analysis.
Still, the recurring entries raise questions about the age of the pending workload and whether particular types of legislation require substantially longer analysis.
CBO’s quarterly inventory does not disclose the date each estimate entered its queue or the anticipated completion date.
That omission makes it difficult for the public to distinguish a recently submitted estimate from one that has remained unfinished for months.
Not Every Estimate Takes Months
Individual cost estimates also demonstrate that turnaround times can vary considerably.
Consider the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Stone Slab Products Act.
The legislation appeared in CBO’s September 30 pending inventory. The agency subsequently published a cost estimate on October 6, identifying June 3 as the date the responsible committee ordered the measure reported.
That places approximately four months between the documented committee action and publication of the estimate.
By contrast, the SECURE Grid Act received a CBO estimate on October 13 following committee action on September 30, an interval of just 13 calendar days.
These examples do not establish a typical processing time, nor do they demonstrate that either estimate was completed unusually quickly or slowly.
They do illustrate why the aggregate backlog deserves closer examination.
Without knowing the age and complexity of the pending estimates, the public has little basis for assessing whether the agency’s queue represents routine legislative workload or a more persistent capacity problem.
Congress Depends on the Numbers
CBO plays an important role in the federal legislative process.
Its estimates help lawmakers understand how proposed legislation could affect federal spending and revenues, including the potential consequences for deficits and debt.
The agency is generally required to prepare cost estimates for legislation approved by congressional committees, subject to statutory provisions and exceptions. It also prepares estimates at other stages when requested by congressional leadership or relevant committees.
But a bill’s appearance in CBO’s pending inventory does not automatically mean Congress has improperly advanced legislation without knowing its cost.
Committee approval is not equivalent to final passage, and the timing of an estimate can depend on the legislative process.
Nor does the growing queue establish that CBO has violated a statutory deadline.
The issue is more fundamental: A legislative process that depends on independent fiscal analysis also depends on the availability of that analysis when lawmakers need it.
If the number of pending estimates continues to rise, understanding the reasons becomes increasingly important.
The Questions CBO’s Report Does Not Answer
CBO’s latest quarterly report identifies 395 bills in its cost-estimate queue and another 17 analytical products under development.
What it does not provide is an aging report for those pending estimates.
Such a report would reveal how many had been awaiting completion for fewer than 30 days, between 30 and 90 days, or longer than three or six months.
It would also help establish whether the increase in pending estimates reflects a temporary surge in congressional activity or a more sustained workload imbalance.
Several questions remain unanswered:
- How many new cost-estimate requests entered CBO’s queue during each quarter of 2026?
- What was the median time between a committee ordering legislation reported and CBO publishing its estimate?
- How many estimates had been pending for more than 90 or 180 days as of September 30?
- Have staffing levels, funding, or increasingly complex legislative proposals affected completion times?
- How many bills advanced to floor consideration or passage while their estimates remained pending?
These are not merely questions about administrative efficiency. They concern the availability of financial information within the legislative process itself.
CBO’s published inventories offer a starting point, but they do not resolve those questions.
A Growing Queue, an Unfinished Accounting
The Congressional Budget Office completed hundreds of cost estimates during the third quarter of 2026, increasing its output substantially over the previous quarter.
Yet its pending inventory still reached 395 bills by September 30, up more than 40% from the end of March.
That is the central finding of the agency’s latest workload reports.
Whether the increase represents an ordinary fluctuation in congressional demand or a more consequential strain on the government’s legislative budgeting process remains to be determined.
For now, Congress’s budget watchdog has documented a growing inventory of unfinished fiscal analyses.
What remains missing is a public accounting of how long those analyses have been waiting, and why.
Sources: CBO’s Recent Publications and Work in Progress as of September 30, 2026; CBO quarterly work-in-progress publication series; Congress.gov legislative records.
