Congressional Budget Office

The Congressional Budget Office provides the Congress with economic analyses of alternative fiscal, budgetary, and programmatic policy issues, and with information and estimates required for the congressional budget process. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was established by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 (2 U. S. C. 601), which also created a procedure by which the United States Congress considers and acts upon the annual Federal budget. This process enables the Congress to have an overview of the Federal budget and to make overall decisions regarding spending and taxing levels and the deficit or surplus these levels incur.