What Happened?

A federal budget law passed in 2010 was supposed to stop Congress from adding to the national debt without paying for it. According to a report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the nonpartisan agency that provides research to Congress, that law has never once done its job.

The Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act requires the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the White House office that oversees the federal budget, to keep running tallies of how much new laws add to the deficit. If those tallies show a net increase at the end of a congressional session, the president must order automatic spending cuts within 14 days. That trigger has never been pulled.

Why Does it Matter to Me?

The federal deficit adds to the national debt, which every American taxpayer is on the hook for over time.

Between 2010 and 2025, Congress excluded $396.5 billion from the five-year scorecard and $355.2 billion from the 10-year scorecard. To put that in perspective, $396.5 billion is roughly what the federal government spends on all veterans' benefits and services over about four years. Those exclusions covered things like Medicare doctor payments, estate tax policies, and middle-class tax cuts.

On top of that, five separate laws wiped the scorecard balances clean entirely. The most recent, a 2026 spending extension act, zeroed out all balances on the 2025 scorecards.

Both Sides, Now

Supporters of the exemptions have argued that certain spending categories are too politically or economically sensitive to cut automatically. Medicare doctor payments and middle-class tax relief were among the items shielded from the scorecard's reach.

Critics, including the analysis reflected in the CRS report, say the pattern of exemptions and wipeouts has left the law without teeth. The report finds that Congress has consistently acted to prevent the automatic cuts from ever taking effect, across multiple administrations and under both parties. The CRS report raises the direct question of whether the law, as structured, is an effective deficit-control tool at all.

What Happens Next?

The CRS report does not propose specific legislation, but it frames the core question for Congress: reform the law or accept that it is symbolic. Any meaningful change would require Congress to pass new legislation tightening the rules around exemptions or eliminating the ability to zero out scorecard balances.

There is no vote scheduled and no reform bill currently moving through Congress. Without action, the pattern the CRS report describes is likely to continue the next time a deficit-increasing law threatens to trigger the automatic cuts.

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