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“Budget Lab staffers and board members, meanwhile, have donated more than $100,000 to Democrats—and effectively zero to Republicans. Federal campaign finance records show that the staffers and board members made 337 donations to liberal candidates or causes totaling $102,675. Their remaining two donations, which totaled $500, went to an anti-Trump PAC led by former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney.
“The findings undercut the lab’s nonpartisan presentation and come as congressional Democrats increasingly cite its research to promote their policy proposals and attack Republican alternatives.” — Zach Kessel, The Washington Free Beacon
By Michael Cobbs
The Washington Free Beacon
June 8, 2026
The Budget Lab at Yale University, a new research center that analyzes economic policy, presents itself as nonpartisan, as does media coverage of its work. Its founders worked in the Biden administration, and its staff and board members have donated almost exclusively to Democratic candidates and causes, a Washington Free Beacon review found.
The Budget Lab’s website describes the organization as “a non-partisan policy research center that provides in-depth analysis of federal policy proposals for the American economy,” while Yale Law School calls the lab a “nonpartisan policy research center” created “to provide in-depth analysis for federal policy proposals.” Mainstream media outlets have said the same: Last month, in a story about the Budget Lab’s analysis of carried interest taxation, Axios described the institution as “a nonpartisan policy research center.” In August 2025, the Hill referred to the Budget Lab as a “nonpartisan think tank” when discussing a report from the lab criticizing President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Left-wing fact-checking website Politifact also cited “Yale University’s nonpartisan Budget Lab” in an article about tariff costs.
But all three of the Budget Lab’s founders worked in the Biden administration, as cofounder Natasha Sarin noted in an April 2024 Washington Post op-ed that coincided with the lab’s launch. Sarin, the lab’s president, served as deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department and as a counselor to former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Danny Yagan, another cofounder and chief economist at the Budget Lab, was chief economist in the Biden White House’s Office of Management and Budget. The third cofounder, executive director Martha Gimbel, was a senior adviser at the White House Council of Economic Advisers for the first two years of Biden’s time in office.
Budget Lab staffers and board members, meanwhile, have donated more than $100,000 to Democrats—and effectively zero to Republicans. Federal campaign finance records show that the staffers and board members made 337 donations to liberal candidates or causes totaling $102,675. Their remaining two donations, which totaled $500, went to an anti-Trump PAC led by former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney.
The findings undercut the lab’s nonpartisan presentation and come as congressional Democrats increasingly cite its research to promote their policy proposals and attack Republican alternatives.
In April 2025, for example, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) used research from the Budget Lab in a press release opposing Trump’s tariffs. He and eight other Senate Democrats signed a letter to the director of the National Economic Council in February that also used the Budget Lab’s work to attack the tariffs.
In March of this year, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) commissioned research from the Budget Lab on the effects of increasing IRS funding. When Sens. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) and Angus King (I., Maine) introduced a bill to do just that one month later, they cited the Budget Lab to state that the bill would raise nearly $1 trillion over ten years. Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) introduced a bill in March that would have eliminated federal income taxes on the first $75,000 for married couples filing jointly and the first $37,000 for individual filers, raising taxes on incomes above about $256,000 to cover the cost. The Budget Lab issued a largely favorable analysis of the bill one day after Booker released the bill’s text.
The Budget Lab did not respond to a request for comment.
Political donations from the lab’s staffers and board members went to a wide range of Democratic officials—from the self-described “moderate” former Ohio congressman Tim Ryan to left-wing “Squad” member Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.
Nonresident senior fellow Ernie Tedeschi’s only federal donation was to former vice president Kamala Harris’s joint fundraising committee in 2024. Harris Eppsteiner, the Budget Lab’s associate director of economic analysis, made two contributions to It Starts Today PAC, which solicits donations for Democratic congressional candidates. Associate director of economic analysis John Iselin has made many federal donations, 94 percent of which went to Democratic candidates or groups. The non-Democrat donation was to Alan Gross, who ran for Senate in Alaska as an independent in 2020 but said he’d caucus with Democrats and received backing from the Democratic Party.
The Budget Lab’s research director, Ryan Nunn, has made four donations—two to Biden, one to the former Ohio congressman Ryan’s Senate campaign, and another to failed Wisconsin Senate candidate Mandela Barnes. John Ricco, associate director of analysis, gave to Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D., Mass.) failed 2020 presidential bid. Assistant director of operations Sylva Kroeber has given to many Democratic campaigns, including Warren’s and former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential bids.
All but two members of the Budget Lab’s advisory board have made federal political donations as well. Alan Auerbach, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, donated to Buttigieg’s political action committee in 2019 and to then-Sen. John Kerry’s (D., Mass.) 2004 presidential campaign. Jason Furman, professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and chair of former president Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, has given more than $20,000 to Democratic candidates going as far back as 1999. Hilary Hoynes, another Berkeley professor, donated to Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, as did Harvard economist N. Gregory Mankiw.
Also on the advisory board is University of Chicago professor Bruce Meyer, who has made large contributions to Democratic candidates and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee going back to Obama’s 2008 campaign. Another Berkeley professor, Jesse Rothstein, has made more than 150 donations to Democratic candidates and progressive groups. Board member Cecilia Rouse, the president of the left-leaning Brookings Institution, has given to a long list of Democratic campaigns dating back to Obama’s 2012 presidential bid.
Heidi Shierholz, president of the left-wing Economic Policy Institute and Budget Lab board member, has made several contributions to Democratic campaigns, including Obama’s 2008 presidential run, “Squad” member Pressley’s 2020 congressional bid, and Harris’s 2024 campaign.
The contributions put the Budget Lab on par with Yale’s other, more overtly partisan academics. The Yale Daily News reported earlier this year that, of the 1,099 federal political donations professors at the university made in 2025, 97.6 percent of those contributions went to Democrats. The remaining 2.4 percent went to independent candidates or groups.
That story came after a December report from the Buckley Institute nonprofit group that showed that 82.3 percent of 1,666 faculty members are either registered Democrats or support Democratic candidates. Just 2.3 percent were Republicans, while 15.4 percent were not affiliated with either party.
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