CBO: Senate’s Permitting-and-Energy Substitute for H.R. 2347 Would Add Less Than $1 Billion to Deficit

The Congressional Budget Office and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation said Friday that the Senate’s broad bipartisan permitting-and-energy substitute for H.R. 2347 would increase federal deficits by less than $1 billion over the 2027-2036 period, giving lawmakers the first official estimate of the package’s budget impact.

The preliminary score came in a Nov. 13 letter from CBO to Sen. Ron Johnson, the Wisconsin Republican who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, and Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the panel’s top Democrat. Signed by CBO Director Phillip L. Swagel, the letter matters because CBO and JCT are Congress’ official nonpartisan scorekeepers, making their estimate the benchmark for judging the bill’s fiscal effect. “On a preliminary basis, CBO and JCT estimate that enacting the legislation would increase the deficit by less than $1 billion over the 2027-2036 period,” the letter said.

CBO said it based the estimate on the assumption that the legislation becomes law by the end of 2026. “For this letter, CBO assumes that the legislation will be enacted by the end of calendar year 2026,” it said.

In broad terms, the score reflects a small net increase in direct spending and lower revenues. CBO said the bill’s permitting changes would speed up some federally funded infrastructure projects, causing some spending to occur sooner and move into the 2027-2036 budget window from years after 2036, or from projects that otherwise would not be completed at all during that period.

Those costs are partly offset by money the federal government would collect from energy and mineral development authorized under the bill. CBO said it expects added offsetting receipts, including bonus bids, rents and royalties, which budget rules record as reductions in direct spending. Under the conventional estimate, however, the spending increase still slightly outweighs those receipts.

JCT separately estimated that Division C of the measure, the survivor-related tax provision carried over from the original House bill, would reduce revenues by $84 million over 2027-2036.

The legislation now before the Senate is much broader than the House-passed bill whose number it carries. H.R. 2347 began as the Survivor Justice Tax Prevention Act, a narrower tax measure, but the Senate is using it as the vehicle for the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026, a substitute focused at a high level on permitting, energy, transmission and environmental review, while retaining the survivor tax provision in Division C.

The Senate has already cleared two procedural hurdles. Senators voted 73-25 on Nov. 9 to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 2347 and 62-21 on Nov. 10 to proceed to the bill.

CBO also said the legislation includes intergovernmental and private-sector mandates under the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, the law requiring review of costs imposed on governments and businesses, but that it could not determine whether the total costs would exceed the law’s thresholds.

Separately, CBO included a preliminary dynamic assessment, saying the bill would likely increase private investment, economic growth and job creation by bringing forward private infrastructure investment. Those feedback effects on the federal budget are not part of the main conventional deficit score, and CBO said it could provide a fuller dynamic estimate if lawmakers request one.