Economists across the political spectrum spent the weekend sounding alarm bells about what President Trump’s recent firing of the Labor Department’s top statistician means for the country.
“President Trump is undermining the integrity of the information that policymakers, businesses, households, and investors use to make important decisions that affect the welfare of the nation,” Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, wrote in a commentary.
He said it was “imperative” that people understand that U.S. economic stats are unbiased.
“By casting doubt on that, the President is damaging the United States,” he added after Trump fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) commissioner.
Trump said on Friday that the latest employment report, which showed a modest 73,000 jobs added in July and revised numbers down for May and June by a whopping 258,000 jobs, was “manipulated for political purposes.”
Trump offered no evidence to back up his conclusion, and a number of observers said it would be difficult for someone to manipulate the data given the number of people who provide information for the reports.
Employment data from the BLS is bedrock-level data for businesses and economists. It’s put together from surveys of firms around the country and is used in myriad different models and forecasts, both public and private.
Because it’s so fundamental, economists say that political attacks on it are a lot more serious than those Trump has aimed at other agencies – even the Federal Reserve.
“This is much more dangerous than the pressure on the Fed,” Cato Institute research fellow Jai Kedia told The Hill on Monday. “The labor and inflation statistics are the bedrock of every other federal institution that’s trying to work on the economy.”
The State Department is launching a pilot program that would require migrants from some countries to post a bond as high as $15,000 to secure a visa for business or personal travel, the latest move by the Trump administration to crack down on countries with high visa overstay rates.
‘Big, beautiful bill’ could add $5 trillion to deficit if temporary tax cuts extended: CBO
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) informed Senate Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) in a letter Monday that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, President Trump’s signature domestic policy accomplishment, would add $5 trillion to the deficit over the next decade if its temporary tax relief provisions are extended for a full 10 years.
The budget office projects that if temporary tax relief provisions, such as the tax exemption on tipped wages up to $25,000 and the $6,000 senior deduction, are made permanent, it would add another $789 billion to the debt over the next 10 years.
That and $718 billion in debt-servicing costs bring the total price tag for Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” to nearly $5 trillion over a decade.
The CBO estimates that as a result, the total amount of federal debt held by the public would increase by 11.5 percentage points by the end of 2034.
“Each and every analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office continues to show the same result regardless of how you look at it: this bill explodes the debt by trillions of dollars to fund tax breaks for billionaires,” Merkley said in a statement.
“It is the height of hypocrisy coming from the party that claims to be fiscally responsible,” he said.
CBO produced its estimate in response to Merkley’s request asking for the budgetary impact of making permanent 10 provisions in Trump’s domestic policy law that are otherwise due to sunset in the next few years.
