Officials at the Congressional Budget Office confirmed the office was hacked by a suspected foreign agent. According to The Washington Post, the hack potentially exposed key financial data lawmakers use to craft legislation.
The office said members discovered the hack in the last few days and are now worried communications between lawmakers’ offices and nonpartisan researchers were compromised by an unknown foreign agent. Officials told lawmakers that they caught the hacker early.
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Unnamed sources told WaPo that some congressional offices have stopped emailing the CBO, fearing it could pose a cybersecurity risk.
“The Congressional Budget Office has identified the security incident, has taken immediate action to contain it, and has implemented additional monitoring and new security controls to further protect the agency’s systems going forward,” the CBO said in a statement. “The incident is being investigated and work for the Congress continues.”
What does the CBO do?
The CBO was established in 1974 and creates economic projections for lawmakers. Every bill that is taken up in either congressional chamber receives a CBO “score” of how much it would add to or subtract from the national debt.
The office acts as a foil to the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers and the Office of Management and Budget, providing Congress with its own analysts.
Republicans criticized the office over the summer after it released cost estimates for President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which determined it would add trillions to the national debt. In response, Senate Republicans rewrote some rules on how the CBO’s scores would be applied.
