Part 2 was during the last Trump administration. Some things never change.
From Richard Rubin in today’s WSJ:
Swagel, a mild-mannered academic economist, runs the Congressional Budget Office, the fiscal scorekeeping agency getting blasted by Republicans as they try to push their tax-and-spending megabill through Congress by July 4. They say CBO is too pessimistic on economic growth and tilts against Republicans, unfairly fueling charges that the measure is fiscally irresponsible.
This week alone, President Trump called CBO a “very hostile” organization run by Democrats after it said the bill would increase deficits by $2.4 trillion through 2034. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R., La.) described CBO as “a referee that tries to sack our quarterback.” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) said CBO has “a long history of just being flat wrong,” including economic growth projections after the 2017 tax cuts.
…
What CBO is doing is what it is supposed to do, said Swagel, in his first direct response to GOP criticisms. The agency measures proposals using methods required by Congress. It isn’t advocating for or against any policy. It is leaving most tax analysis to the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’s lesser-known scorekeeper. CBO’s post-2017 forecasts were correct, Swagel says. And, by the way, he’s a Republican.
Swagel worked in the Treasury Department under President George W. Bush and says his history in Republican circles helps him understand CBO’s critics.
“My politics have always been, you know, an inch to the right of center,” he said. “And I don’t think I’ve moved half an inch in either direction.”
I can say without reservation that Dr. Swagel is doing his best (as did previous directors) ensure that CBO provides the projections and estimates that represent the mainstream economic thinking and accounting. In terms of counting up the estimated deficit impact, is CBO way out of line? Fortunately, J. Capretta at AEI has compiled a recent (June 4) comparison:
Source: Capretta/AEI, June 4, 2025.
Notes: CBO/JCT is Congressional Budget Office/Joint Committee on Taxation, PWBM is Penn Wharton Budget Model, TBL is the Yale Budget Lab, TF is the Tax Foundation.
If you can a drastically different tabulation from CBO/JCT vs. the others, tell me. By the way, I notice the critics these days are jumping on CBO, and less so on JCT (which is appointed by … Congress).
I always find it instructive to see who attacks the beancounters. As noted in Part 2, Gingrich in the past, Mulvaney more recently. Stephen Moore (MA economics, GMU) jumped in recently. In the WSJ article the critics include:
- Steve Scalise (BS, computer science, political science, LSU)
- Jodey Arrington (BA, political Science Texas Tech; M.PubAdmin, Texas Tech).
Full disclosure: I worked with Dr. Swagel at CEA, when we were both senior economists under Clinton, GW Bush. I was a visiting fellow at CBO in 2005, prior to Swagel’s appointment to CBO.
