Budget Director Claps Back At GOP Critics Of Tax Cut Cost Estimates: ‘I Am A Republican!'
WASHINGTON – The director of the Congressional Budget Office pushed back against Republican criticism in a rare interview on Monday.
Republicans have claimed the CBO gets things wrong and that its cost estimates of GOP tax and spending cuts are biased in favor of Democrats because the budget office is run by Democrats. It's not.
'I am a Republican,' CBO Director Phillip Swagel said on CNBC. 'This is a nonpartisan organization, and we work for the entire Congress.'
It's unusual for a CBO director to come out and defend his agency against critics, but the budget office has been the subject of an unusual amount of bad-faith criticism over its analysis of Republicans' so-called Big Beautiful Bill.
Just doing its job, the CBO has pointed out that the tax cuts in the bill are way bigger than the spending cuts, meaning the legislation would enlarge federal budget deficits and add to the national debt.
That's embarrassing for Republicans, since they style themselves as champions of fiscal responsibility and haters of debt, so they've been relentlessly attacking the messenger.
'They are historically totally unreliable,' House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said earlier this month. 'It's run by Democrats. Eighty-four percent of the number crunchers over there are donors to big Democrats. They don't have our best interests in mind, and they've always been off.'
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also claimed this month that the CBO's staffers are Democratic donors, while President Donald Trump has said the office is controlled by Democrats.
It's not clear where Johnson came up with his 84% figure. A Washington Post analysis of federal campaign spending data showed that only 16 people who'd worked for the CBO have made political donations since 2015, all to Democrats. The agency has more than 270 employees, however, and Swagel, who was appointed to his position on a bipartisan basis, once donated $1,000 to a Republican candidate for governor.
Republicans' main arguments against the CBO's credibility have been that it fails to account for how economic growth resulting from tax cuts will increase tax receipts, offsetting revenue loss from the cuts, and that the CBO underestimated revenue following Republican tax cuts in 2017.
Swagel pointed out Monday that its revenue forecast was correct for 2018 and 2019, and that the 2020 coronavirus pandemic sparked higher government spending and inflation.
'There's very high inflation starting in March of 2021, and that inflated revenues as well,' Swagel said. He also pointed to higher immigration and capital gains revenue resulting from the Federal Reserve's efforts to boost asset prices.
He suggested it was weird to fault CBO for not foreseeing cataclysmic global events as part of its cost estimate for a tax bill. 'There are things that the CBO certainly did not predict,' he said.
As for the economic feedback on the tax cuts, Swagel said this week the CBO will put out a so-called dynamic score, a cost estimate that accounts for how the bill's macroeconomic effects could juice revenue, though it will likely still disappoint Republicans. Even the conservative Tax Foundation has found that a dynamic score doesn't erase the giant gap between spending and revenue envisioned by Republicans' bill.
The CBO has found that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which uses $1 trillion in Medicaid and food aid cuts to partially finance nearly $4 trillion in tax cuts,would add $2.4 trillion to the deficit over a decade and that the tax and spending cuts would favor households with higher incomes.
Swagel first defended himself from the barrage of Republican criticism earlier this month in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. 'The attacks are coming from so many directions and the kind of misleading talking points have been picked up so widely,' he said.
A handful of Republicans, including former White House adviser Elon Musk, have faulted their colleagues for supporting legislation that would worsen the government's fiscal situation.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who voted against the House version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last month, told HuffPost he challenged his colleagues to remove Swagel from his position if they thought he was so bad.
'We can go up there today and pass a resolution and remove him from his post,' Massie said. 'If you all are upset and think he's made that big of a math error, he's obviously in the wrong job, let's take him out.'
There's been no effort by Republicans to remove Swagel.
In February, before the GOP legislation had taken shape, Johnson had trumpeted the CBO's long-term analysis of the country's fiscal situation, in which the office reported annual deficits would reach $2.6 trillion if Congress didn't take action.
'At a time of soaring deficits, high inflation, and sky-rocketing national debt, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office's new economic projections confirm the hard truths about the looming fiscal challenges facing our nation,' Johnson said at the time.
Trump's Big Bill Will Cut Taxes By $3.7T And Add $2.4T To Deficit, Budget Office Says
Senate GOP Strips Contempt Provision From Tax Bill — But Still Lets Trump Be King
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