Bobby Kogan
@bbkogan
Senior Director of Federal Budget Policy for the Center for American Progress doing budget, tax, and econ. Formerly: Biden OMB, Biden Transition Team, Senate Budget Committee (Murray and Sanders). CBO and OMB’s biggest fan! Personal account.
if my (illegal) actions were directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of people dying, i’d probably have a tough time emotionally coming to terms with it too :/
dems winning on handling government spending better, brings a tear to your eyes 🥹
The House veterans debacle today made me curious, so I just graphed veterans spending from 1940-2026. It wouldn't have been my gut instinct, but turns out veterans spending is the highest since 1952.
This is funny because the White House says, in order to get the reconciliation bill done, Congress must pass the "budget resolution—without modification—immediately." But this budget resolution *must be* modified before it can be used for reconciliation. Amateur hour from the White House.
I know that I am the only person on the planet excited for this set, but truly how could I not be
There are incredible new cancer drugs every year that are showing promise at defeating cancers that were previously guaranteed death sentences — and the Trump administration is doing everything it can to illegally kill the grants that fund the research. MAHA indeed!
I don't think people have really internalized it, but the last few years have devastated our long-term investments.
Finally turning to my next piece. Probably won't get it out till mid-August cause of all the other stuff I have going on simultaneously. I don't think people have really internalized how much non-defense discretionary has fallen in recent years. This has most of our long-term investment funding.
The Social Security Administration sent out an email saying Donald Trump protected Social Security with the Big Beautiful Bill. But according to SSA’s own numbers, the Big Beautiful Bill worsened Social Security’s long-term insolvency.
Congress was gonna ban individual stock trading for members of Congress, but they also wanted the ban to apply to Trump, Vance, and cabinet members. But Trump said he’d veto any bill that banned his ability to trade stocks while in office, so Republicans got scared and the bill died. Behold:
Archetypical “merely incidental” Byrd rule violation (meaning it can’t happen in reconciliation)
As we say in the piece, "Being responsible means not hurting vulnerable Americans by cutting the services upon which they rely."
Take the internet for example. It significantly boosted productivity growth for about a decade. But then productivity growth went back down.
Table 1 then shows four scenarios that show how higher debt amplifies the impact of g and r, and it allows you to input your own scenarios.
Why should we care about debt? The paper has a very long section on it, where I did my best to be both nuanced and fair.
2.6% is not easy. It means $10.5 trillion in cuts over the decade. To put that figure in perspective, the sum total of all tax increase House Democrats agreed to in Build Back Better was just $2 trillion. 2.6% of GDP is a lot.
New paper from me and @jaredb-econ.bsky.social on the debt and our fiscal outlook! Before we dig into the paper, I think we should be frank about how we got here. At the beginning of the century, debt was on track to be stable indefinitely. Then Congress enacted enormous tax cuts. Now it's not.
Was making small improvements last night in between rounds at the pre-release. A handful of tiny little tweaks that will make the numbers very slightly more accurate. Bit more to go, then have to write up my methodology, but we are getting really close!
A few days ago, after reconciliation 2.0 failed to provide money for the ballroom, the White House illegally booked $352 million from reconciliation 1.0 for the ballroom. Notice the money is 2025/2029. Dead giveaway it's from OBBBA.
A LOT of new apportioned $$$ yesterday for "White House Repair and Restoration," (ballroom) some of which sure looks like it's from the Big Beautiful Bill & sort of looks like it's anticipating using money from the Secret Service. If this is what it looks like this is open and shut plainly illegal.
Digging into the apportionment data seems to corroborate that Trump is indeed using taxpayer dollars — from the "Big Beautiful Bill" — to at least partially pay for the ballroom. Four days ago, $352 million of the OBBBA Secret Service money moved from unallocated to "White House Security Measures."
Rave reviews for the new production of Budget Basics with Bobby (sort of like BBB) — book your local Bobby today!
I am, as far as I can tell, the only human being on the planet excited for the Star Trek set in November. Plenty of people like Star Trek, and plenty of people play Magic! Doesn’t really seem like any overlap except for me. But how could you not be stoked for this?