Bill would reveal the interest costs hidden in federal spending

A Texas congressman wants federal budget scorekeepers to show taxpayers the interest costs buried in every spending bill. He has proposed it in every Congress since 2019 without success. U.S. Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, has reintroduced the Cost Estimates Improvement Act. It would require the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation to include the cost of servicing the public debt in their official estimates of legislation. When Congress passes a bill that adds to the deficit, the government borrows to cover it and pays interest on that borrowing for years. Official cost estimates generally leave those interest payments out, so the price tag lawmakers see and cite understates what a bill actually costs taxpayers. The federal government ran a $2 trillion deficit in the first 11 months of fiscal year 2026, and net interest on the public debt topped $1 trillion over the same period, according to the CBO. Those interest payments alone work out to more than $6,400 for each of the roughly 162.8 million individual income tax returns the IRS processed in fiscal 2025. Cloud has introduced the measure in every Congress since 2019, six times in all, and it has never become law. His furthest advance came in May 2024, when the House Budget Committee voted 17-7 to send an earlier version to the floor, where it stalled. He filed the current language in February 2025, then reintroduced it nearly word-for-word this month. Cloud rolled out the original 2025 bill with a press release and media appearances. He reintroduced it this month without issuing a news release on his website. His office did not respond to questions about why he refiled the bill, whether he has commitments to move it, or whether he has raised it with House budget leaders or the CBO. The CBO has already priced the idea. When Cloud's 2024 version cleared the House Budget Committee, the office estimated it would cost essentially nothing, no effect on the deficit and only a negligible administrative expense. Adding debt-service costs to its reports, the CBO said, would take "few additional resources." That version applied only to certain bills approved by a committee, about 100 to 120 estimates a year. The existing bill drops that limit, covering any estimate CBO prepares under the relevant section of the budget law. Leaving interest out can sharply understate a bill's cost, said Jessica Riedl, a budget and tax fellow at the Brookings Institution. Depending on interest rates, she told The Center Square, debt-service costs can add 25% to the 10-year price of legislation. The 2025 tax-cut law alone, she estimated, will carry about $800 billion in added interest costs over a decade. Riedl said there is no strong case against the change, noting that CBO already relies on economic assumptions to score the rest of a bill. The harder question, she said, is political: whether Congress should then have to offset those interest costs the way it offsets other new spending. "Many lawmakers surely won't want that additional requirement," she said.