Congress demands CBO track the hidden cost of executive orders
H.R. 6569 — Executive Action Cost Transparency Act · Filed by Ron Estes (R-KS) · Introduced Dec 10, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill requires the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to include the estimated costs and savings of executive actions (rules, orders, memoranda) and judicial decisions in its official budget baseline calculations and reports. It also requires federal agencies to submit documentation of how they implement executive actions to the CBO within 10 days, and mandates that the CBO publish a separate table showing any executive or judicial action estimated to cost or save at least $50 billion over a 10-year period.
Why we flagged it
The bill's core function is procedural and transparency-focused: it expands the scope of what the CBO must measure and report on, and requires agencies to document executive actions. It does not create new spending, cut spending, or favor any private party—it simply makes existing executive action costs visible in budget calculations.
What the text implies
- Agencies will face a 10-day documentation deadline that may strain capacity, particularly for large or complex rules; compliance costs are not quantified.
- The $50 billion threshold for separate-table inclusion may exclude significant executive actions with smaller individual price tags but large aggregate impact.
- CBO scorekeeping guidelines (referenced but not defined in this bill) will determine what counts as a 'budgetary effect'—disputes over methodology could become a point of contention between the executive and legislative branches.
- Proposed (not-yet-final) executive actions are to be 'assumed final' for threshold purposes, potentially inflating the table with speculative costs before rules are finalized.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Citizens and their elected representatives gain transparency into the true fiscal cost of executive actions and judicial decisions that affect the budget. This enables Congress to make informed appropriations and oversight decisions and allows the public to understand the real budgetary footprint of executive branch policy.
Named in the bill
Congressional Budget Office (CBO), House Committee on the Budget, Senate Committee on the Budget, Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Federal agencies and regulatory commissions, Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, Congressional Budget Act of 1974
Where it stands
- Dec 10, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- Dec 10, 2025 — Referred to House Committee on the Budget · Congress.gov: “Referred to the House Committee on the Budget”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
1 lobbying clients named this bill on 2 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $34,046 in lobbying spend. A filing names 13 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 0% of bills with at least one filing.
Ron Estes, the sponsor, reported $1,180,334 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- Americans for the Arts — $34,046 on 2 filings
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (2,917 characters) on May 21, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
“Congress demands CBO track the hidden cost of executive orders” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/hr6569 Report an error
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