Even for an office accustomed to criticism, this summer’s debate over the “big beautiful” bill was a harsh one for the Congressional Budget Office.

“Notorious for getting it wrong,” was the judgment of Speaker Mike Johnson. “Making the same mistakes,” was the refrain from House Majority Leader Steve Scalise. And President Donald Trump dismissed their work as “very hostile.”

For Phillip Swagel, the “incoming fire,” as he calls it, is simply part of the job.

“We’re just trying to get it right and inform the Congress and the country,” he said. “There’s no agenda here.”

Tasked with producing non-partisan analysis for Congress, it’s up to Swagel and expert staff at the CBO to assess the impact of legislation on economic growth and the nation’s finances – producing “scores,” in the parlance of Washington, that often reverberate across the dominant political debates of the day. Both parties often dispute the agency’s findings, particularly when their top priorities are at stake.

“Sometimes it’s noise, sometimes it’s not, but we just tune it out. Here we do our work,” Swagel said. “The thing that I do care about a lot is to make sure our work is accurate.”

It’s a low-key approach Swagel has maintained at CBO since 2019, when congressional leaders appointed him the director after stints in both Republican and Democratic administrations. An economist by trade, Swagel brings an inquisitive and genial approach to the job, his knowledge of government forged by work at the Council of Economic Advisers in the White House, the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund.

“The challenge of doing analysis now” Swagel said, “is the changes we’re seeing in our economy are really large.” From the Trump administration’s mass deportation plans, to the unprecedented implementation of sweeping tariffs on countries around the world, to massive tax and spending cuts passed into law this summer, assessing the trajectory of the U.S. economy has grown more difficult.

Swagel recently sat down with The Associated Press to talk at length about recent analysis from his agency, the future of the nation’s entitlement programs, as well as the pressure to remain unbiased at a time when data itself is at risk of being politicized.

President Trump's sweeping tariffs plan has posed challenges to the CBO's standard models for assessing trade.

The baseline tariffs on all countries and higher rates on Trump's “worst offenders” list are “just different than we’ve seen in more than 100 years,” Swagel said. It's a dramatic shift away from the low-tariff era that has existed since World War II. "We’re going to be looking carefully to see if those models still apply, or if tariffs that are this large, do those have effects that we just haven’t counted on?”

So far, the CBO estimates that the tariffs could reduce the national deficit by $4 trillion over the next decade, helping to offset the deficit increases CBO projects will result from the Republicans’ tax-cut and spending bill passed this year. “It’s a huge impact,” Swagel said.

CBO also anticipates that Trump's tariffs will cause roughly two years of elevated inflation, Swagel said, causing price increases for businesses and customers. But he says those effects will be temporary.

“As the the tariffs go up and the prices go up with the tariffs, inflation will be higher, but then prices will get to a higher level and be stable. And then the inflationary impact will subside."

The CBO has faced more aggressive attacks on its analysis during Trump's second term, often amplified by Republicans on Congress. Earlier this year Trump called CBO a “very hostile” organization.

Swagel downplayed the tension, saying that “our working relationship with the executive branch is smooth and routine, that when we evaluate legislation, every piece of legislation results in a phone call to some executive branch agency.”

“There is this incoming fire on the CBO,” which Swagel says is part of the political process. "We just tune it out here. We do our work. The thing that I do care about a lot is to make sure our work is accurate."

Unlike many other roles in government, the CBO director cannot be fired by the president — the person can only be removed by Congress.