Organization and Staffing

Director

Phillip L. Swagel became the 10th Director of the Congressional Budget Office on June 3, 2019, and on July 27, 2023, he was appointed to a second term in office. Previously, he was a professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the Milken Institute. He has also taught at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, and Georgetown University. His research has involved financial market reform, international trade policy, and China’s role in the global economy.

From 2006 to 2009, Dr. Swagel was Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the Treasury Department, where he was responsible for analysis of a wide range of economic issues, including policies relating to the financial crisis and the Troubled Asset Relief Program. He has also served as chief of staff and senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers in the White House and as an economist at the Federal Reserve Board and the International Monetary Fund. He earned his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and his A.B. in economics from Princeton University.

Chief Economist

Mark Doms joined CBO as Chief Economist in 2020. He has examined a wide variety of topics throughout his career, including macroeconomics, financial markets, labor, productivity, and economic measurement. He has been a senior fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation, a senior economist at Nomura Securities, Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs at the Department of Commerce, Chief Economist in that department, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, an economist at the Federal Reserve Board, and an economist at the Census Bureau. His research has been published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, and elsewhere. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a B.A. from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel

Mark Hadley served as CBO’s Deputy Director from 2016 through 2019. Before then, he was CBO’s general counsel for nearly eight years. In that capacity, he oversaw the agency’s legal work, ethics program, and acquisitions. He had advanced from the post of deputy general counsel. Before that, he was a transactional lawyer with Jones Day, a large international law firm, where he specialized in structured finance and derivatives. Prior to his legal career, he was an associate analyst at CBO for five years—during which time his areas of responsibility were aviation, deposit insurance, and commerce—and a financial specialist with the Small Business Administration. He has a master’s degree in public affairs from the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin and a J.D. (with high honors) from the George Washington University Law School. He also serves as the chair of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Working Party of Parliamentary Budget Officials and Independent Fiscal Institutions.

Research Director

Jeffrey Kling is an economist who served as Associate Director for Economic Analysis at CBO from 2009 through 2019. Previously, he was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a faculty member at Princeton University. His research has been published in the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and elsewhere. He earned his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his A.B. from Harvard University.

Director of Legislative and Public Affairs

Leigh Angres is CBO’s Director of Legislative and Public Affairs, overseeing the agency’s Congressional relations and media strategy and initiatives. Before taking on that role in 2024, she was the Director of Legislative Affairs for nine years and Special Assistant to the Director for five. Prior to joining the Director’s office in 2009, she was an analyst in the Budget Analysis Division, preparing cost estimates for legislation involving deposit insurance, the U.S. court system, and Department of Justice programs. In earlier government service, she worked as a budget analyst in the Department of Justice’s Civil Division, preparing the agency’s appropriation requests. She earned her M.P.P. from the University of California at Berkeley and her A.B. from Duke University.

Director of Budget Analysis

Chad Chirico is the Director of Budget Analysis at CBO. He guides and contributes to analyses that are critical to the legislative processes of the Congress—including projections of federal spending for the current year and the next 10 years under current laws and policies for about 1,000 budget accounts covering all federal activities, tallies of federal spending throughout the year, about 600 to 800 cost estimates (most of which include estimates of the cost of federal mandates on state, local, and tribal governments) each year for legislation approved by committees, and thousands of requests for technical assistance for legislation under consideration.

He came to CBO in 2001 to join what was then the Human Resources Cost Estimates Unit. As an analyst, he was responsible for cost estimates and baseline projections for federal housing programs and worked on a wide range of federal credit policies. In 2014, he became the head of the Low-Income Health Programs and Prescription Drugs Cost Estimates Unit. In that capacity, he oversaw the division’s analysis related to Medicaid, employment-based health insurance, the health insurance marketplaces, the Food and Drug Administration, and public health programs. In 2023, he was promoted to be one of two deputies in the Budget Analysis Division; in that position, he helped manage the division’s work on various topics, including health, defense, international affairs, and veterans’ issues.

Before coming to CBO, he was a consultant for Ernst and Young and Quadel Consulting, working principally on housing and real estate finance issues and on budget preparation. He graduated from Dickinson College with a bachelor’s degree in political science and received a master’s degree in public administration, with a focus on public finance, from George Washington University.

Deputy Director of Budget Analysis

Christina Hawley Anthony is one of two deputies in the Budget Analysis Division, where she works with the division’s Director to manage a wide array of topics. She began her career at CBO in 1995 as the unemployment compensation and labor analyst in the division’s Income Security Unit. In 2004, she began splitting her time between that unit and the Projections Unit, as she took on the responsibility of writing major portions of CBO’s Budget and Economic Outlook and Analysis of the President’s Budget. From 2017 to 2023, she was the Chief of the Projections Unit. In that capacity, she managed the development, dissemination, and communication of CBO’s baseline projections. While in that role, she oversaw the creation of a number of interactive tools and infographics to aid in the analysis and communication of budget topics. Before coming to CBO, she served in the State of Maryland’s Federal Relations Office and as a Maryland Governor’s Policy Fellow. She holds a Master of Public Affairs degree from the University of Texas at Austin and a Bachelor of Arts degree in foreign service from Baylor University, in Waco, Texas.

Deputy Director of Budget Analysis

Sam Papenfuss is one of two deputies in the Budget Analysis Division. In that capacity, he works with the Director of Budget Analysis to manage the division’s work on a wide array of topics, including Social Security, income security, education, immigration, and natural and physical resources. Mr. Papenfuss joined CBO in 1999 as an analyst of military and veterans’ health care. He was responsible principally for the cost estimates and baseline projections for Tricare for Life (the health care program for military retirees who are eligible for Medicare), but also for work involving bioterrorism and international affairs. In 2007, he became the head of the Income Security and Education Cost Estimates Unit. In that post, he oversaw cost estimates and baseline projections for Social Security and for programs providing unemployment insurance, nutrition assistance, and student loans. He also was the primary coordinator for all of the division’s work related to immigration. Mr. Papenfuss graduated from Brigham Young University with a bachelor’s degree in economics and pursued doctoral studies in economics at George Mason University, where he completed all of the requirements for his degree except his dissertation.

Director of Financial Analysis

Sebastien Gay became CBO’s Director of Financial Analysis in May 2017. He came to the agency in 2016 as an analyst and performed research on federal housing programs and fair-market value analysis. Before joining CBO, he was a Director at Berkeley Research Group, a consulting firm, where he provided independent analysis, expert testimony, and dispute consulting for firms in the financial, health care, and insurance industries, as well as for government. He was also on the faculty at the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. His research focused on corporate governance, financial risks and disclosures, real estate, health care, and experimental economics. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago, a master’s degree in finance from the Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l’Administration Economique (ENSAE) ParisTech, and an M.Phil. in law and political science from Sciences Po in Paris.

Director of Health Analysis

Chapin White is a health economist who joined CBO in 2004 and then worked at the Rand Corporation and the Center for Studying Health System Change before rejoining CBO in 2020. His areas of expertise include price transparency, health insurance coverage, provider payment policy, surprise billing, and microsimulation modeling. He holds an A.B. from Harvard College, an M.P.P. from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a Ph.D. in health policy from Harvard University.

Deputy Director of Health Analysis

Tamara Hayford became the Deputy Director of Health Analysis in June 2023. She was previously the Chief of the Health Policy Studies Unit. In that role, she oversaw reports and policy analysis on topics such as prescription drugs, the opioid crisis, mental health, and other public health issues. In addition, she guided a team of researchers analyzing the impacts that proposed legislation and regulatory changes affecting prescription drug pricing could have on the federal budget and the long-term pipeline for pharmaceutical innovation. She joined CBO in 2009 as an analyst and worked on various health care topics, including prescription drugs, spending patterns and access to care for people who are dually enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid, providers’ responses to changes in payment rates and demand for services, Medicare Advantage and risk adjustment, hospitals’ profitability, and quality measurement initiatives in the Medicare program. Dr. Hayford received her doctorate in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park. She received her bachelor’s degree in international relations and physics from the College of William and Mary, in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Director of Labor, Income Security, and Long-Term Analysis

Julie Topoleski became CBO’s Director of Labor, Income Security, and Long-Term Analysis in January 2021. She previously served as a Deputy Director for Health, Retirement, and Long-Term Analysis. Before that, she was the chief of the Long-Term Analysis Unit, which is responsible for long-term projections of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the federal budget, as well as for long-term analysis of policy changes in those areas. As unit chief, she directed the annual publication of The Long-Term Budget Outlook and managed CBOLT, which is CBO’s long-term microsimulation model. She joined CBO in 2003 as an analyst, working on CBOLT, playing an integral role in long-run analyses of proposed changes to Social Security and Medicare, and helping write The Long-Term Budget Outlook. Dr. Topoleski received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland and a B.A. in economics from Mary Washington College.

Director of Macroeconomic Analysis

Devrim Demirel came to CBO in 2013 from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he taught macroeconomics and conducted research in the fields of macroeconomic theory, international finance, and applied time series econometrics. In 2017, he became the chief of the Fiscal Policy Studies Unit. In that role, he led a team of economists analyzing the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy changes and how those effects alter budgetary outcomes. In 2024, he was promoted to be the director of the division. He received a doctorate and a master’s degree in economics from the University of Virginia, and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Bilkent University, in Ankara, Türkiye.

Chief Administrative Officer and Director of Management, Business, and Information Services

Mark Smith became CBO’s Chief Administrative Officer in January 2022, having advanced from his position as the agency’s Chief Financial Officer, which he had held since 2013. During his time as Chief Financial Officer, he handled all aspects of planning and implementing CBO’s budgetary and financial activities. Before he came to CBO, he served as a senior financial adviser for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in its Office of the Chief Financial Officer, where he directed and controlled the daily management, reporting, and analysis of the agency’s personnel dollars. In a previous role in DIA, he served as a senior financial resource manager; in that capacity, he participated in all aspects of the formulation, execution, and fiscal oversight of a budget covering almost all of DIA’s appropriated funding. He holds a B.S. in finance from George Mason University.

Director of Microeconomic Analysis

Joseph Kile came to CBO in 2005, following 16 years in various positions at the Government Accountability Office (GAO). While at that agency, he led the Center for Economics, within the Applied Research and Methods Team—overseeing a group of economists that provided analyses and reviews of a broad range of issues. Before that, he was a senior economist and an assistant director within GAO’s Office of the Chief Economist. His analyses focused, in particular, on the issues of transportation (especially aviation financing, airline competition, and air service to small communities), energy, natural resources and the environment, and the pharmaceutical industry. Joseph Kile received a master’s degree and a doctorate in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His bachelor’s degree in economics and mathematics is from St. Olaf College, in Northfield, Minnesota.

Director of National Security Analysis

David Mosher returned to CBO in June 2010, resuming with the agency after having been a principal analyst at CBO from 1990 to 2000 in the division that he now leads. In the decade in between his time at CBO, he was a senior policy analyst at RAND. During his time at RAND, David Mosher was also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and served as the director of the American Physical Society’s Study Group on Boost-Phase Intercept Systems for National Missile Defense. His research focused on environmental issues for the Army in contingency operations; ballistic missile defense; military use of space; nuclear proliferation; nuclear weapons; the role of the military and the National Guard in homeland security; special forces aviation; Army strategy; and terrorists’ acquisition and use of nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological weapons. David Mosher holds an M.P.A. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, and a B.A. in physics from Grinnell College, in Grinnell, Iowa.

Deputy Director of National Security Analysis

Edward G. Keating joined CBO in January 2017 as the Deputy Director of the National Security Division. Before coming to CBO, he worked for 24 years as an economist at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California. His research at RAND focused on helping government agencies, especially the Department of Defense, make cost-effective decisions; specific areas of research included the effects of aging on aircraft, when and whether to repair or replace military hardware, how the Department of Defense should structure its internal transfer pricing, military and civilian compensation policies, how the Forest Service should structure its aerial firefighting fleet, and the effects of government spending on economic development. He has published widely in RAND publications and in professional and trade journals. He earned a Ph.D. in economic analysis and policy from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a B.A. in mathematical methods in the social sciences and economics from Northwestern University.

Director of Tax Analysis

John McClelland came to CBO in August 2016 following 18 years at the Department of the Treasury. At that agency, he most recently was Special Assistant to the Director of the Office of Tax Analysis (OTA). Before that, at OTA, he was the Director of Revenue Estimating; in that role, he was responsible for the Administration’s estimates of the revenue consequences of all tax proposals. Over the course of his tenure at OTA, he worked on a variety of topics in taxation, with a particular focus on business taxes and the consequences of potential reforms. Earlier in his time at the Treasury Department, he was the analyst responsible for the forecasts of revenues from the corporate income tax and a variety of excise taxes. John McClelland received his doctorate in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park. He received his bachelor’s degree in economics, mathematics, and environmental studies from Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, Maine.