# Baseline and Scoring How the budget decides what counts as a "cut" or a "cost" — and the most quietly consequential set of conventions in fiscal politics. A **baseline** is the projected path of spending and revenue under current law; **scoring** is the [[Congressional Budget Office]]'s estimate of how a proposed bill changes that path. ## Why the baseline choice is everything A "cut" is always measured **against a baseline**, not against last year's actual dollars. So the choice of baseline determines the headline: - **Current-law baseline** assumes laws expire as written (e.g. the [[Tax Cuts and Jobs Act]] provisions sunsetting). Extending them then "costs" trillions. - **Current-policy baseline** assumes expiring provisions get extended, so the same extension "costs" nothing. The 2025 reconciliation debate turned heavily on which baseline to use — a multi-trillion-dollar accounting choice with no change to actual policy. - A program can **grow in real dollars** and still be scored as a "cut" if it grows slower than the baseline projected. ## Static vs dynamic scoring - **Static scoring** holds the economy fixed. - **Dynamic scoring** assumes a policy (usually tax cuts) boosts growth enough to partly pay for itself. Supply-side advocates favor dynamic scoring of tax cuts; CBO uses it selectively. The reliability of those growth assumptions is perennially contested. ## The RWKB angle Baseline and scoring is where ideology hides inside arithmetic. The same bill can be "the largest cut in history" or "a spending increase" depending on the baseline; a tax cut can "pay for itself" or "blow a $4T hole" depending on whether you accept dynamic scoring. Watching which baseline and which scoring convention an advocate invokes — and whether they switch between them — is one of the highest-signal tells in budget politics. The [[Office of Management and Budget]]'s numbers and CBO's frequently diverge for exactly this reason. ## Related - [[Congressional Budget Office]] · [[Office of Management and Budget]] · [[PAYGO]] - [[Tax Cuts and Jobs Act]] · [[Big Beautiful Bill]] · [[Outlays vs Budget Authority]] · [[Budget Hub]]