Past Experience

Before her job at the Brookings Institute, Rivlin spent eight years as the first director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a nonpartisan office that provides Congress with budget information and analysis.

"When Alice was at the Congressional Budget Office, she did the best work anyone in the country was doing in analyzing the budget," says Paul Jargowsky, an administrator in the Center for Health and Human Resources Policy.

"She built an institute from scratch and built it into a crucial part of the politicizing process in Washington," says Verdier, who was the head of tax analysis at the CBO under Rivlin.

Rivlin, however, was occasionally under fire from lawmakers in Washington who claimed she acquired too much influence in the budget-making process.

"We analyzed proposals and policies on the requests of [congressional] committees, but there were always people who didn't like the answer," Rivlin says. "If we were getting flack from both ends of the spectrum we were doing what we were supposed to be doing."

Opinions on the Budget

Rivlin, who teaches a K-School course this semester on the congressional budget, claims that the current budget deficit is a "major fiscal policy mistake." She says that deficits must be reduced by sometime in the 1990s, cautioning that reducing the deficit too fast could cause a recession.

But Rivlin is against a constitutional balanced budget amendment, an idea that has gained acceptance by many politicians. "You don't want to put government in a straightjacket," Rivlin says. "If you set a specific target, it's likely to be the wrong one."

"It's not true it's never good to have a deficit. Spending tends to go up when the economy goes down. If the Constitution required you to balance the budget, raising taxes or cutting spending would make matters worse," she says.

"The budget brings together major issues in American life," she says. "It reflects the priorities of a majority." For example, she says, the 1980s has seen a shift of emphasis towards a higher priority for defense.

Rivlin's K-School course analyzes defense budgeting and taxation, as well as the process of creating the budget.

Rivlin says that when she returns to the Brookings Institute, she will begin a new book about the budget process, which will include a discussion of tax and spending issues, as well as fiscal and public policies.