内容摘要：Erica Groshen, a former commissioner of BLS, said that the agency has lost about 15% of its personnel since the beginning of the year, a sharp decline that likely reflects falling morale stemming from the attacks on government workers by Elon Musk’s DOGE.

Erica Groshen, a former commissioner of BLS, said that the agency has lost about 15% of its personnel since the beginning of the year, a sharp decline that likely reflects falling morale stemming from the attacks on government workers by Elon Musk’s DOGE.

Markuss Saule, a freshman at Brigham Young University-Idaho, took a recent trip home to Latvia and spent the entire flight back to the U.S. in a state of panic.For hours, he scrubbed his phone, uninstalling all social media, deleting anything that touched on politics or could be construed as anti-Trump.

“That whole 10-hour flight, where I was debating, ‘Will they let me in?’ — it definitely killed me a little bit,” said Saule, a business analytics major. “It was terrifying.”Saule is the type of international student the U.S. has coveted. As a high schooler in Latvia, he qualified for a competitive, merit-based exchange program funded by the U.S. State Department. He spent a year of high school in Minnesota, falling in love with America and a classmate who is now his fiancee. He just ended his freshman year in college with a 4.0 GPA.But the alarm he felt on that flight crushed what was left of his American dream.

“If you had asked me at the end of 2024 what my plans were, it was to get married, find a great job here in the U.S. and start a family,” said Saule, who hopes to work as a business data analyst. “Those plans are not applicable anymore. Ask me now, and the plan to leave this place as soon as possible.”Saule and his fiancee plan to marry this summer, graduate a year early and move to Europe.

This spring the Trump administration abruptly

for thousands of international students before reversing itself. A federal judge has blocked further status terminations, but for many, the damage is done. Saule has a constant fear he could be next.White House Budget Director Russ Vought said when you adjust for “current policy,” which means not counting some $4.5 trillion in existing tax breaks that are simply being extended for the next decade, the overall package actually doesn’t pile onto the deficit. He argued that the spending cuts alone, in fact, help reduce deficits by $1.4 trillion over the decade.

But Democrats and even some Republicans call that “current policy” accounting move a gimmick. Still, it’s the approach Senate Republicans intend to use during their consideration of the package to try to show it does not add to the nation’s deficits. Vought argued that the CBO is the one using a “gimmick” by tallying the costs of continuing those tax breaks that would otherwise expire.“Russ is right,” Johnson, the House speaker, posted on social media. “Our One Big Beautiful Bill will REDUCE the deficit WHILE delivering on the mandate given to us by the American people.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has also suggested that the CBO’s employees are biased, even though certain budget office workers face strict ethical rules — including restrictions on campaign donations and political activity — to ensure objectivity and impartiality.The individual income tax breaks that had been approved during Trump’s first term in the White House will expire in December if Congress fails to act, in what Republicans warn would be a massive tax hike on many American households.