Bobby Kogan
Senior Director of Federal Budget Policy, Center for American Progress
Washington, DC
Experience
- Office of Management and Budget
- Biden-Harris transition team
- U.S. Senate
Expertise
- Federal budget
- Debt ceiling
- Reconciliation process
Education
- College of William & Mary, B.S.
Recent Coverage
Mar 27, 2024
The Hill | Budget watchdog warns US could suffer market shock over national debt
Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, pointed to improved deficit projections in recent years, as well as forecasts from the CBO he said “don’t project anything that looks like a panic.”
“If someone were thinking about, ‘Should I panic or should I not panic?’ I would just say, ‘hey, the underlying situation has gotten better, right?’” Kogan said, adding “there’s been lower, long-term projected deficits in the Biden administration.”
Jan 2, 2024
Washington Post | U.S. debt eclipses $34 trillion for first time
The increase in the federal debt could shape upcoming debates over the 2017 GOP tax cut, because many provisions from that legislation are set to expire in 2025. Bobby Kogan, an analyst at the Center for American Progress, a center-left think tank, has found that the tax cuts under Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump and their subsequent bipartisan extensions have added $10 trillion to the national debt so far.
NOV 14, 2023
The Washington Post: The right is already rebelling against Mike Johnson’s spending plan
Bobby Kogan, a budget analyst at the Center for American Progress, a center-left think tank, said on X that the plan will “dramatically increase” the odds of a shutdown, because Congress will face less pressure to act on the less politically salient programs.
OCT 27, 2023
MSNBC: America has a revenue problem. Blame George W. Bush and Donald Trump. (Opinion)
After news that the federal deficit grew despite a strong economy, amid rising interest rates, there are renewed fears about the nation’s fiscal outlook. With these fears typically come calls to reduce spending. But the U.S. doesn’t have a spending problem; it has a revenue problem caused by tax cuts.
NOV 1, 2023
POLITICO: Why a Fed rate pause won’t give Biden a break
Not everyone’s alarmed. Bobby Kogan, a former staffer at Biden’s Office of Management and Budget, sees no reason to panic about the debt. He said the data suggests it’s easier now to get the debt under control than it was under former President George W. Bush, citing the shrinking of the so-called fiscal gap. “If I were freaking out about debt, I would’ve been freaking out much earlier than six months ago,” said Kogan, now senior director of Federal Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress.
OCT 24, 2023
Washington Post: Republicans can’t open the House, which could shut down the government
“If it sounds like a mess,” said Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, “that’s just because it is a mess.”
OCT 20, 2023
New York Times: The Federal Deficit Is Growing. This Is Why.
“We know for sure that our deficits now are bigger than they would have been without the Trump tax cuts,” said Bobby Kogan, a former Biden budget adviser who is now senior director of federal budget policy at the liberal group American Progress in Washington.
SEP 26, 2023
Washington Post | Kevin McCarthy embraces stark cuts to safety net to win hard right
Despite protests from the White House, Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee advanced bills in July that would cut spending by roughly 9.5 percent on average, according to Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, a center-left think tank. Many programs would have seen much more dramatic cuts. The proposals would bring spending on these domestic programs to their lowest point as a share of the economy in at least 60 years, Kogan said.
SEP 26, 2023
USA Today | What does a federal government shutdown mean? How you and your community could be affected
As in past shutdowns, that would force some preschool and school readiness centers to close, according to the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank. Bobby Kogan, a senior director of federal budget policy at the center, wrote in a column last week that a shutdown “would have devastating impacts on essential programs that millions rely on for their health and safety.” The longer it lasts, he wrote, the worse off those programs would be.
MAY 8, 2023
New York Times | What Would the G.O.P. Plan Actually Do to the Budget?
“It’s easy to write budget caps,” said Bobby Kogan, the senior director of federal budget policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress and a former Senate and White House budget staffer, who analyzed the bill and provided data for some of our charts. “It’s hard to actually legislate what to cut to live within those budget caps.”
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About Bobby
Bobby Kogan is the senior director of Federal Budget Policy at American Progress, working to ensure the federal budget prioritizes policies that help the most vulnerable people. He is an expert in federal budget issues, including aggregate spending, revenues, interest, deficits, and debt. He is also an expert in the congressional budget reconciliation process, as well as in budget concepts and budget scorekeeping.
Prior to joining American Progress, Kogan served in the Biden-Harris White House as an adviser to the director of the Office of Management and Budget, where he assisted with the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act, as well as the president’s budget requests, budget concepts, and budget scorekeeping. Before the administration, Kogan joined the Biden-Harris transition team in August 2020 as a policy adviser and budget coordinator. Prior to that, he served on the Democratic staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Budget, under Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), as the chief mathematician and the head of budget analysis, budget concepts, and budget scorekeeping.
His work has been cited in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other publications, as well as on NPR and various television outlets.
