One word you're going to hear a lot in coverage of budget negotiations is "baseline." It sounds simple enough — but in fact, it's a slippery and contentious concept.

Why it matters: This wonkish terminological tussle is, at its heart, a debate over what counts as zero for the purposes of budgetary impact.

• Depending on where the debate ends up, it could raise America's debt-to-GDP ratio by 47 percentage points, per a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis.

How it works: Congress controls the U.S. fiscal trajectory. The big debate is over what the baseline for that trajectory is — or, to put it another way, what kind of legislation would have zero budgetary impact.

Zoom out: The whole concept of "budgetary impact," while relatively clear in terms of CBO scoring, is much gnarlier on a philosophical level.

• The insight was first formulated by Nelson Goodman, in his 1954 book "Fact, Fiction, and Forecast."
• Goodman shows that simply changing terms — in his case, from "green" to "grue," or in this case, from "law" to "policy" — can have an enormous effect on what we expect the future to look like.

Where it stands: The CBO uses "current law" as its baseline — which is to say, it assumes that everything will continue according to the laws the Congress has already passed, unless they're changed.

• Current law, however, is discontinuous. Most of the tax cuts from President Trump's first term in office expire at the end of this year, and if Congress doesn't change that, the result will feel like a tax hike to most taxpayers.
• As a result, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and most Republicans, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, prefer the "current policy" baseline — where the tax code remains in its present form, without any mandated expirations.
• Were that current policy baseline in place, the Chamber writes, "merely avoiding a scheduled tax increase" would no longer "be considered to have a budgetary impact."

Yes, but: The current policy baseline increases deficits by about $4 trillion per year, per the CBO, while also resulting in lower GDP overall.

• The whole reason the tax cuts are scheduled to expire is that making them permanent would have been too expensive. (When the cuts were passed in 2017, Republicans also didn't expect that Trump would be president in 2025.)

Zoom in: Even a budget that the CBO would score as having $0 of impact would create trillions of dollars in deficits and an inexorably rising debt-to-GDP ratio that hits 156% in 2055, per projections released yesterday.

• That's because the CBO uses "current law" as its baseline, and current law — even after the Trump tax cuts expire — spends much more than the IRS collects in tax revenue.

The bottom line: Congress has already chosen, for better or for worse, which baseline it wants to use — and that's current law.

• "If you're going to have a standard, the standard should be consistent," Kent Smetters, who runs the Penn Wharton Budget Model, tells Axios.

"The impact of the tariffs on the economy — it reduces the efficiency of the economy. It boosts the price level. We don't think it leads to sustained inflation, but there's a period of inflation that has a negative effect on families and on businesses and business investment. Maybe it leads to higher interest rates through inflation, but maybe it leads to lower interest rates trough activity. We're tracking that."

— CBO director Phillip Swagel, in a CNBC interview

The return of the Big Boss Era has brought with it tough talk, as corporate leaders take a more candid tone internally.

Why it matters: How CEOs are communicating with employees has evolved from "bring your best self to work" to "step it up."

The big picture: The slowing labor market and economic uncertainty have given management an upper hand it didn't have during the COVID era.

What they're saying: "There seems to be this shift among employees, with some understanding that most CEOs are in tough positions and they don't want their company to become a target for this administration," says Shallot Communications co-founder Teal Pennebaker.

• "They want their company to succeed, and they sort of understand what their CEO is up against. But these leaders have to explain why the change is happening and tie it back to the broader business strategy or mission."

Yes, but: While employees might not be outwardly dissenting, they are leaking potentially unflattering audio from internal meetings.

• In recent weeks, there's been leaked audio of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon's curse-laden town hall, Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol's rallying cry for employees to step it up and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy's critique of managers with "fiefdoms" who are slowing down the company.

Zoom in: Return to office appears to be one of the biggest sticking points within corporate America, even as Trump leads the RTO push.

• Nearly 40% of the 457 business leaders Axios HQ surveyed said they plan to increase their in-office requirements this year, with most citing collaboration and competitive pressures as the reasons.
• Meanwhile, 31% of remote or hybrid employees said they'd accept termination or look for a new job if in-office days increased. However, roughly half said an increase in benefits would help soften the RTO blow.

What to watch: Some executives might have overcorrected during the COVID era by being too touchy-feely or insincere in their employee communications.

• This overcorrection will inevitably happen again, with some CEOs — like Meta's Mark Zuckerberg — going too hard or venturing too deep into the "manosphere."