The year-end tax fight could be shaped by a 'nonpartisan' Yale lab founded by ex-Biden officials

When Senate Democrats rolled out a bill in April to pour about $83 billion more into IRS enforcement, their estimates for how much the bill would raise came from a Yale research shop founded by three former Biden administration economists presenting itself as nonpartisan.

The Budget Lab (TBL) at Yale claimed the Stop CHEATERS Act would raise about $998 billion over 10 years, a figure that came from a private request for analysis by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on March 24, 2026, just three weeks before the bill was introduced on April 15. 

Two days after the bill was introduced, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog that endorsed the bill, estimated that it would raise $100 billion to $200 billion. The CRFB said the Budget Lab’s figure “appears far above consensus.”

Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, previously called the TBL “just another Democrat think tank full of economists that consistently get it wrong.”

TBL describes itself as “a non-partisan policy research center dedicated to providing in-depth analysis of federal policy proposals for the American economy,” but its analyses, staff and funding largely skew to the political left.

Democratic lawmakers repeatedly cited TBL, even though its scores run well above the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) past research when it comes to IRS enforcement. 

The lab’s own research acknowledges this, but the lab will likely continue to be cited when Congress returns after the midterms and is facing a Dec. 11 funding deadline with a possible year-end tax package.

TBL’s response to Warren’s requested analysis for her bill also found the estimated $998 billion in net revenue was roughly 13 times the upfront investment of $83 billion in IRS enforcement. The TBL also claimed the bill would deliver $127 billion and $11 billion in net revenue in its second and third decades, respectively.

The gap between the TBL’s estimates and the CBO and CRFB’s estimates can be attributed to the TBL’s inclusion of a “deterrence” multiplier that is not included in CBO’s conventional scoring. 

The multiplier purports to account for the way taxpayers would change their behavior to comply with tax laws due to increased IRS enforcement activity. Democrats took the higher estimates from the TBL and presented them as a certainty, without mentioning lower estimates from more traditional sources.

TBL was launched in April 2024 at Yale Law School by former Biden administration economists Natasha Sarin, who served as counselor to then-Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen; Danny Yagan, formerly the chief economist at the White House Office of Management and Budget; and Martha Gimbel, a former senior adviser for the White House Council of Economic Advisers. In June, the Washington Free Beacon reported that TBL staff and board members donated $102,675 to liberal candidates or causes and none to Republicans or conservative causes.

The Budget Lab did not respond to a Just the News inquiry prior to press time.

The TBL is funded in part by the Ford Foundation, a major left-wing nonprofit, among other left-leaning organizations. 

Yagan’s brother, Sam, is one of the trustees for his family’s foundation, which has also given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the TBL, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The TBL’s website also lists the Smith Richardson Foundation as a donor, which is generally considered a conservative-leaning nonprofit. Arnold Ventures and the Peter G. Peterson Foundation are also listed as donors, and are both organizations concerned with the deficit.

And while the TBL is mainly used by Democrats, it did provide analysis for Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, on the Family Security Act.

When Congress returns after the Nov. 3 midterms, it is expected to pick up a continuing resolution that expires on Dec. 11 and a possible year-end tax package, among other unfinished votes. The TBL could be used to bolster Democratic priorities, especially if they win the House or Senate or both.