In the News Archive

In the News »
  • Special Report: The Ties that Bind at the Federal Reserve
    September 30, 2010
    Reuters (also cited on Portfolio.com), by Kristina Cooke, Pedro da Costa, and Emily Flitter
    "It's certainly not what Fed officials should be doing," said Alice Rivlin, a former Fed governor and now a fellow at the Brookings Institute think tank. "The rules when I was there were you don't talk to anybody about anything that could be used for commercial purposes."
  • UW Campuses Hold National Debt Events
    September 29, 2010
    Superior Telegram, by Glen Moberg
    They listened to a bipartisan panel of experts, who described the debt as a crisis with no easy solutions. Paul Bixby of the bipartisan Concord Coalition, Alice Rivlin, a Democrat on President Obama's Debt Commission, and Brian Riedl of the conservative Heritage Foundation found some common ground despite their political differences. All three agreed that the debt is a moral issue that will affect future generations, that there are no easy fixes like cutting waste or growing the economy, and that a rapidly-aging population has put Social Security and Medicare on an unsustainable path.
  • FACTBOX - U.S. Deficit-Cut Panel Eyes Wide Range of Options
    September 29, 2010
    Reuters
    Some on the panel, such as former Fed Vice Chairman Alice Rivlin may be advocating "voting on entitlements at five-year intervals," one analyst said. Such a change would take regular increases in spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid off "auto-pilot" and force Congress to regularly review the programs and whether their budgets are realistic.
  • Amid Doubts, Deficit Panel Eyes Retirement, Tax
    September 28, 2010
    Reuters, by Kevin Drawbaugh
    "The commission is not likely to be able to agree on very much," said Brookings Institution fellow Isabel Sawhill. "We need everything to be on the table and Republicans are not likely to agree to any new revenues, leading to a stalemate both on the commission and in Congress," Sawhill said.
  • FACTBOX-US Commission Studies Deficit Reduction
    September 28, 2010
    Reuters (also appeared on XE.com)
    Alice Rivlin is a former Federal Reserve vice chair who also was White House budget director under Clinton. She was the founding director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office from 1975 to 1983. She says cutting the deficit will require both spending cuts and revenue increases.
  • Parasites, Politics, and the Press: Social Security Attackers' Covert Ops
    September 24, 2010
    Huffington Post, by Richard Eskew
    That leaves the anti-Social Security crowd in stealth mode, attempting to camouflage their intentions with confusing or indirect language. Alice Rivlin, an economist known for her longstanding advocacy of Social Security cuts, suggested this week that this a "convenient time" to push benefit reductions and along with some (presumably symbolic) revenue increases. "The only better time to fix Social Security than this year," said Rivlin, "is last year or the year before." She added: "The stars are aligned." That may be the most inaccurate astrological reading since Jeanne Dixon predicted the Beatles would die in a plane crash in 1964. "Fix" Social Security? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It sounds reasonable enough -- until you realize that Rivlin has a history of using that phrase as a euphemism for cutting it.
  • Alice Rivlin: 'Stars Aligned' on Social Security
    September 22, 2010
    The Fiscal Times, by Edmund L. Andrews
    A key Democrat on President Obama's deficit commission predicted on Wednesday that the bipartisan panel would come up with recommendations to shore up Social Security. "The stars are aligned,'' said Alice Rivlin, a former budget director under President Clinton and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "I do expect that some long-run changes in Social Security, both on the benefit side and on the revenue side, are likely to be part of a package," she continued, speaking at a forum hosted by AARP, the lobbying group for senior citizens. "This is a convenient moment to do this. The only better time to fix Social Security than this year is last year or the year before." Though Rivlin cautioned that nobody would reach any agreements before the elections, her prediction was more optimistic than the conventional wisdom in Washington, which holds that Republicans and Democrats on the commission will deadlock and fail to agree on anything before their Dec. 1 deadline. Rivlin is an important bridge-building figure on the deficit commission…
  • Exodus Could Shift White House Tone
    September 21, 2010
    Reuters (also appeared in Economic Times), by Alister Bull
    This opposition could deepen if they win control of the US House of Representatives from Democrats in November. "If the conventional wisdom is right and Republicans do very well, then the president will not offer up more stimulus because he knows they will oppose it," said Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
  • Brookings Scholar Says Americans Want Deficit Cut
    September 16, 2010
    UNLV's Rebel Yell, by Haley Etchison
    Ron Haskins, deputy director for economic studies at the Brookings Institution, said he does not see the economic crisis letting up any time soon and took aim at policymakers. At a lecture titled "Deficits and Disaster," given at Greenspun Hall on Tuesday, Haskins discussed the components of the big picture, polls and public dialogue, why the deficit matters and how to take action. Haskins said he believes that policymakers have ignored the problem of the unstable deficit and both Democrats and Republicans are equally to blame. During the segment entitled "The Big Picture," Haskins challenged statistics put out by the Congressional Budget Office. According to the CBO, by 2020 the national deficit will be at half a trillion dollars, but Haskins' figures show that the national deficit will reach $1 trillion by that time…
  • U.S. Debt Surges, Leaving Nation with Difficult Choices Ahead
    September 14, 2010
    Gannett News Service, by Maureen Groppe
    Groups Working on this Issue - Bipartisan Policy Center's Debt Reduction Task Force. Headed by former GOP Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico and budget expert Alice Rivlin, the group is to release its recommendations this fall.
  • In the Tea Party Free Zone: A Serious Debate on the Budget Deficit
    September 14, 2010
    TPC - Tax Vox Blog, by Howard Gleckman
    Fortunately, in recent days, I've come across two valuable discussions of both the deficit and ways to address it. Both, interestingly, come in the form of debates. In one, the Tax Policy Center's Gene Steuerle and Brookings Institution's Henry Aaron face off here. The other pits Brookings scholar Belle Sawhill against Century Foundation vice president Greg Anrig here. The debaters come from quite different perspectives. Henry, Gene, and Belle all agree that addressing the long-term deficit is critical to the nation's future. Greg is less convinced. Belle and Gene favor broad changes in Social Security and Medicare. Greg would leave benefits in these social programs untouched. Henry comes in somewhere in the middle. He supports some changes in these programs, but far more modest ones than Belle and Gene…
  • Deficit Panelist Rivlin Aays Fixing Deficit "Not that Hard"
    September 14, 2010
    Reuters, by Ann Saphir
    The growing U.S. budget deficit is a huge problem, but can be solved with a mix of gradual spending cuts and a tax system overhaul, a member of President Barack Obama's deficit panel said on Tuesday. "Can we fix the budget deficit? I think we can, I think we must, I don't even think it's all that hard," Alice Rivlin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office who sits on the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform told a group of business leaders in Chicago. … "We can't fix it on the spending side alone," Rivlin said. "We can't fix it all on the revenue side either." To reduce spending, the government should raise the retirement age at which workers are eligible for full social security benefits from the current 66 to an eventual 68, and tweak other aspects of the system to reduce payouts, she said. The government should also trim long-term growth in medical spending, in part by making the consumer marketplace for insurance more competitive…
  • Commentary-Mid-Term Elections
    September 13, 2010
    PBS - Nightly Business Report
    "Unrealistic expectations caused this deep recession. People who should have known better believed housing prices would never go down, bad loans packaged in fancy securities would become sound investments and borrowed money never had to be repaid. But when fantasies evaporated and the economy crashed, common sense did not return. Voters transferred their unrealistic expectations to the government. New political leadership would fix the recession fast, create new jobs for all, restore house values, wipe away credit card debts and send us back to the malls for another spending spree. It didn't happen. The economy is growing again, but not fast enough. New jobs have been created, but not enough of them. Housing prices have stabilized, but are not roaring again. Now angry voters are looking for new faces to embody their unrealistic expectations. But, anger is not a strategy. When this orgy of blaming that passes for political campaigning is mercifully over, we will still need to rebuild the economy, stabilize the debt and upgrade skills and infrastructure. We need leaders and followers with patience and common sense to put aside ideology in favor of getting things done. Can we forget the unrealistic expectations and work together or will our fantasies sink us again? I'm Alice Rivlin."
  • Historically Low Taxes Conflict with Rising Debt
    September 12, 2010
    The Coloradoan, by Maureen Groppe
    Almost half of taxpayers owed no 2009 federal income taxes when they filed their returns this year, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center. … Even President Barack Obama's plan to allow the cuts benefiting only those making more than $250,000 a year to expire would shave only 18 percent off the cost, according to the Tax Policy Center. … "I think, aside from all the gloom and doom, that this crisis should be seen as a big opportunity," said Alice Rivlin, who headed the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration and is on the national fiscal commission. "We know that we have a tax system which is inefficient and doesn't raise as much revenue as it could from a fairer, simpler tax system that would be better for the economy.
  • Reconciliation
    September 10, 2010
    Washington Post - Ezra Klein
    Alice Rivlin explains why free-market conservatives should care a lot about the exchanges.
  • Give in to GOP's Demands in Deal for Payroll Tax Cut
    September 9, 2010
    DelawareOnline.com
    Mr. Obama has been trying to come up with a plan that would get Republican votes in Congress, so as Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution notes, the administration is pitching business-oriented plans. So why not go along with a two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 and combine it with a temporary payroll tax cut for the rest of us? Some economists claim a quick payroll tax cut would get people spending their money, which in turn would get our economy rolling.
  • Cutting Defense: Is Bob Gates Behind the Curve?
    September 7, 2010
    Capital Gains & Games Blog, by Gordon Adams
    Republicans and Democrats on the President's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (Simpson/Bowles) have made it clear that everything, including defense is on the table. The Bipartisan Policy Center's Debt Reduction Task Force, co-chaired by Alice Rivlin and former Sen. Pete Domenici, is doing the same.
  • Labor Day Irony: The People Who Want to Cut Social Security All Have Great Retirement Plans
    September 3, 2010
    Campaign for America's Future (also appeared on Huffington Post) by Richard Eskow
    Consider Commissioner Alice Rivlin. Rivlin co-authored a paper that called for raising the retirement age and other benefit cuts, and recently released a specious paper about "Saving Social Security." As a former HEW Undersecretary, CBO Director, White House Budget Director, and Federal Reserve Vice Chair, she will presumably enjoy a comfortable retirement supported by multiple public pensions. Says Rivlin: ""We can't get out of this problem without doing both spending cuts, especially slowing the growth of entitlement, and tax increases."
  • National Debt: Cuts, Tax Increases Must be Considered, Domenici Says
    September 2, 2010
    New Mexico Independent, by Matthew Reichbach
    Domenici is a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center and co-chairs the group's Debt Reduction Task Force along with Dr. Alice Rivlin, former Office of Management and Budget Director and the founding Director of the Congressional Budget Office.
  • Deficit Commission: If You Won't Fire Simpson, Hands Off Social Security
    September 1, 2010
    Huffington Post, by Roger Hickey
    At least Gibbs had the smarts to distance President Obama from the substance of Simpson's remarks. But the silence from commission co-chair Erskine Bowles and commission members like economist Alice Rivlin, Democratic Senator Kent Conrad and Republican Paul Ryan has been deafening. They should be a little worried about his obnoxious style, but the truth is Simpson speaks for a large number of deficit commissioners who want to cut Social Security.
  • Looking for a Way to Reduce the Deficit? Crack Down on Tax Loopholes.
    August 31, 2010
    The Houston Chronicle - Texas on the Potomac Blog, by Richard Dunham
    "They are a form of backdoor spending," said Isabel Sawhill, a budget expert at the center-left Brookings Institution. "Every time you provide special tax subsidies for housing or child care or the oil industry or whatever, you are essentially raising rates for everyone else."
  • Meet The 18 People Who Could Determine The Fate Of Social Security
    August 30, 2010
    TPM (also appeared on Business Insider), by Brian Beutler
    Alice Rivlin is an economist with a long history in government and a propensity to call herself a budget hawk. She was the first director of the Congressional Budget Office, served as President Clinton's budget director, and later as a governor of the Fed. She has publicly argued that Social Security benefits should be cut and means tested.
  • Stimulating the Slowing Economic Recovery
    August 30, 2010
    NPR / WAMU – The Diane Rehm Show
    Efforts to prevent a double dip recession. What options remain for the Federal Reserve to support the sagging economic recovery, spur businesses to hire more workers, and stabilize the housing market? Alice Rivlin appears on a panel with Michael Greenberger, Alan Blinder, & Douglas Holtz-Eakin.
  • Deficit Cost Drop Give Obama Stimulus Clinton Missed
    August 30, 2010
    Bloomberg / BusinessWeek (also appeared in San Francisco Chronicle), by Liz Capo McCormick and Susanne Walker
    While the dominant concern for the markets now is that the economy will fall back into recession, investors shouldn’t become complacent about the deficit, said former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alice Rivlin. She was named by Obama in February to serve on a commission on cutting the budget shortfall. “We need to take serious steps on the long-run deficit right now, but they don’t have to be steps that affect the economy in the near-term.,” Rivlin said in a Bloomberg Television interview Aug. 17. “We have a looming problem.”
  • Republicans for Tax Hikes
    August 26, 2010
    Daily Beast, by Benjamin Sarlin
    Among the former lawmakers, bipartisanship is a constant mantra, and a willingness to put “everything on the table” is considered a basic prerequisite to negotiations. Domenici told The Daily Beast that he only agreed to participate in the task force if co-chairwoman and former Clinton OMB Director Alice Rivlin joined as well.
  • Social Security Cuts Threaten to Hurt Low-Income Americans More
    August 26, 2010
    Washington Independent, by Martha C. White
    “Social Security is not in immediate trouble. There’s been a lot of exaggeration of that problem,” says Alice Rivlin, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a member of the deficit commission. “It is not on a solid basis for the long run, however. The sooner we act, the less we have to do.” … Other plans would have less impact on those least able to shoulder the burden. One idea would be to reduce benefits for wealthy retirees. The idea is that “Bill Gates doesn’t need social security,” says Brookings’ Rivlin. The problem is deciding where to set the bar: Too low, and you ensnare middle-class families, too high, and you only earn the ire of the superrich without contributing much to the bottom line. Some experts, including Rivlin, think the political cost probably wouldn’t be worth the impact on the bottom line. Polls show that even wealthy Americans want their Social Security, and are willing to pay for it. The government might net a little more money, but it would lose the public support and buy-in of wealthy (and thereby influential) citizens. “U.S. benefits relative to earnings are low by comparison with those in other wealthy nations,” says Henry Aaron, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “I don’t think there’s a strong case for cutting benefits on the merits of the idea. In my view, the bulk of the fix should come from the revenue side.”
  • What Did a Senior Administration Official Really Say About Social Security?
    August 20, 2010
    Huffington Post, by Richard Eskow
    Tim Fernholz does a lot of excellent work, and some of Allen's reporting on the briefing was off the mark. His biggest misstep was this all-caps header yesterday: "EXCLUSIVE - DEBT COMMISSION'S BIG RECOMMENDATION MAY COVER SOCIAL SECURITY." That's been their announced goal for many months, complete with "greedy geezers" comments from co-chair Alan Simpson and a defense of the Commission's focus on Social Security by Commission member Alice Rivlin.
  • The Fear Campaign and Social Security
    August 16, 2010
    Salon.com, by Glenn Greenwald
    Other Obama appointees include David Cote, CEO of the defense contractor giant Honeywell, and several typical corporatist Democrats with histories of explicitly advocating for cutting Social Security (watch this short video with one of them, Alice Rivlin, showing the level of transparency and responsiveness with which the Commission is working). Needless to say, all GOP appointees are also fully on board with Social Security cuts.
  • CBO Offers Mixed Take on Tax Cuts and Stimulus
    August 19, 2010
    CNNMoney, by Jeanne Sahadi
    While deficit hawks say Congress should deal with the long-term debt issue sooner rather than later, many also say that lawmakers can begin to take steps in that direction while simultaneously ensuring that the economic recovery doesn't sputter by pulling in the fiscal reins too soon. Among them is Alice Rivlin, the founding director of the CBO who served as White House budget director under President Bill Clinton. She now co-chairs a debt-reduction task force of the Bipartisan Policy Center and sits on the President Obama's fiscal reform commission. "The two things we really need to keep in our heads at once is we should not make the recession worse until we're sure we're on a recovery track by restricting the budget deficit too much," Rivlin said. "At the same time we need to be ... taking steps now to reduce future deficits and to stabilize the debt. That's not impossible." By that, she and others often refer to putting in place a debt-reduction plan now that would phase in various measures over time.
  • Long-Term Debt: The Real Problem
    August 20, 2010
    CNNMoney, by Laura Meckler
    "If we have not asked Americans to sacrifice, we have failed," said former Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., who co-chairs the debt reduction task force with Alice Rivlin, the former White House budget director under President Clinton. … Still, neither Domenici nor Rivlin believes the effort to deal with the country's long-term debt will be all spinach and no sugar. … Rivlin is more optimistic. "My hope is that after the [mid-term] election, both parties will see the advantage of working together to get part of this problem behind them," she said. "I believe people are sensible enough to come to grips with this problem long before we're facing a downgrade of U.S. debt."
  • Economics: Yes They Can
    August 19, 2010
    Richmond Times-Dispatch
    "You can't force people to take out a loan or spend money that they don't want to spend," says Alice Rivlin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office. Note to Rivlin: Don't tell that to Congress -- or the president.
    Rivlin was trying to explain why the best efforts of the Federal Reserve have failed to produce changes in economic behavior. The Fed has reduced interest rates to record lows and bought up government debt in the hope of encouraging consumers to borrow and spend. But it isn't working. Americans concerned about job security are hoarding their pennies like misers. Apparently, Rivlin has been snoozing in a cave for the past several months. With the passage of health care reform, Washington has imposed an unprecedented mandate on the American public: You must buy health insurance, or face stiff penalties.
  • Why Are Democrats Losing the Social Security Issue?
    August 18, 2010
    Huffington Post, by Richard Eskow
    President Obama's weekly address, on the 75th anniversary of Social Security's creation, was entitled "Honoring Social Security, Not Privatizing It." The address was directed at the issue that's not on the table right now -- privatization -- and offered no assurances for voters on the subject of benefit cuts. And observers won't be reassured by the president's comment that he was "encouraged by the reports of serious bipartisan work being done on this and other issues in the fiscal commission that I set up several months ago." The Democratic and Republican co-chairs of that commission both have a history of advocating benefit cuts, as does economist and commission member Alice Rivlin.
  • Happy Birthday, Social Security!
    August 17, 2010
    Salon.com, by Michael Lind
    If the predatory American medical industry is ultimately broken and tamed, then the so-called entitlement crisis played up by Democratic deficit hawks like Erskine Bowles and Alice Rivlin and right-wing Republicans like Pete Peterson and David Walker and Alan Simpson will shrink to manageable proportions. According to former Republican head of the Congressional Budget Office Douglas Holtz-Eakin, if medical prices grow no faster than the economy, then by the mid-21st century the aging of the population alone will require us to raise only an additional 2 percent of GDP for Social Security and another 2 percent or so for Medicare. Because the U.S. spends so much less on transfer payments than other industrial democracies, the U.S. can make these minor adjustments and still spend less on government than other successful capitalist nations.
  • Rivlin Says Bond Market `Panic' Would Defy Fed Actions: Video
    August 17, 2010
    Bloomberg TV – Inside Track
    Alice Rivlin, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, talks about the U.S. deficit and her concern that investors may "panic" and bid up bond yields. Rivlin speaks with Erik Schatzker on Bloomberg Television's "InsideTrack."
  • Debate Intensifies Over What to Do About Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
    August 16, 2010
    Daily Caller, by Amanda Carey
    Alice Rivlin, senior fellow for Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution told The Daily Caller that the American people should not expect a resolution to the problem in the near future. “It is absolutely right there is going to be a political battle, but it won’t be settled anytime soon,” said Rivlin. “Fannie and Freddie support a lot of housing mortgages.”
  • Social Security: 75 Years Old and Out?
    August 16, 2010
    NPR – KUOW (Pugent Sound), by Steve Scher
    President Obama's bipartisan deficit–reduction commission is examining the big–ticket items that will be costly in the years ahead. Some members think Social Security is a drain on the country, even though it's running with a $2.7 billion surplus now. Critics of the program say the retirement age must go up or benefits must be cut, maybe even both. Others call for raising the level of income that can be taxed for benefits. Is Social Security broken? If so, what would it take to fix it? What do the young people of today have to look forward to in their retirement? Alice Rivlin appears on a panel to discuss.
  • Social Security Solutions
    August 13, 2010
    CNBC – Street Signs – Tackling solutions for the next 75 years, with Alice Rivlin, Brookings Institution and Stuart Butler, Heritage Foundation.
  • In a Sluggish Economic Summer, no Easy Fix Ahead
    August 13, 2010
    Associated Press, by Jeannine Aversa
    "You can't force people to take out a loan or spend money that they don't want to spend," says Alice Rivlin, who served as the Fed's No. 2 official in the late 1990s.
  • GOP Leaders Lack Concrete Plans to Reduce Debt
    August 10, 2010
    San Francisco Chronicle, by Carolyn Lochhead
    "I've not heard anybody close to the situation express any great optimism," said Isabel Sawhill, a budget scholar at the center-left Brookings Institution. "Neither party has been very responsible in terms of coming up with a solution."
  • Federal or State, That is the Question for Obama's Education Plan
    August 10, 2010
    Xinhua Newswire, by Matthew Rusling
    "Schools are so bad in some places, especially inner city schools, that somebody had to do something," said Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former White House and congressional advisor.
  • “Historic” and “Bipartisan” Normally Means Its Bad
    August 9, 2010
    RedState.com, by Russ Vought
    Here is what we know. Sen. Judd Gregg has reportedly opined that the deficit commission could produce a bipartisan, “historic” package on par with Obamacare. Gregg and former Clinton OMB director, Alice Rivlin, are in charge of of the Social Security portion of the report. Remember that Gregg is also a top lieutenant of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
  • The Fed: What Else Can it Do?
    August 9, 2010
    NPR - Marketplace –
    … Alice Rivlin: “[The Fed] could buy more mortgages, they could buy more government bonds that would get more easy money out there into the economy. But the portfolio of the Fed has expanded enormously since the beginning of this crisis, and they wish they were thinking about how to sell some of these things off, rather than how to buy more. Ryssdal: What about inflation? I mean, that's the thing that all of the Fed's critics have been saying, "You know what, you plow all this money into the economy, it's only going to send inflation spiraling." And yet we're not seeing that. Is there a disconnect between reality and what people are thinking they're going to see? Rivlin: “Yes. People aren't thinking very clearly about that. They learned somewhere back in some economics course that inflation is caused by too much money chasing too few goods. But right now, we're not in that situation at all. We could have people spending a lot more before there was any upward pressure on the price level. So fear of inflation is just a silly thing to be afraid of right now.” …
  • The IRS As 'Sugar Daddy'
    August 7, 2010
    National Journal, by Peter Cohn
    Ron Haskins, co-director of the Brookings Institution's Center on Children and Families, oversaw the welfare debate of the 1990s as a top GOP aide at Ways and Means, later moving to the Bush administration. If Republicans were in control now, he said, they would likely block a similar child credit expansion because of their concern about the growth of the nonpayer population. "It drives Republicans nuts," he said. "Republicans have been very upset ... about the number of Americans that not only don't pay taxes, and not only get money back, but the amount that they get back completely covers" their Social Security and Medicare contributions. "I'm a Republican, but I'm also concerned about the poor. They need help, for sure. So I kind of have a foot in both camps here," Haskins said. "But in a broad way, it's kind of troubling when so many Americans don't pay taxes."
  • Come on Down -- It's Time to Play "Social Security Survivor"!
    August 3, 2010
    Huffington Post, by Richard Eskow
    And let's not exclude economists like Alice Rivlin, a member of the Simpson/Bowles Commission who wants to cut benefits for all the wrong reasons. Let's meet our newest contestant! Dr. Rivlin thinks it's "absurdly unlikely" that "widows living on the edge of subsistence" will have their benefits cut - but then, she doesn't tell us where she thinks that edge lies.
  • Investors and Experts Propose Extending The Tax Cut on Dividends
    August 3, 2010
    TaxLawUK.com
    Panelist Alice Rivlin, former vice chair of the Federal Reserve, said she was not surprised by the favorable response from polled investors who want the lower tax rate on dividends to continue. “We need to broaden the tax base so that all tax rates can be lower and ensure that return on capital is taxed only once and not at rates that discourage investment,” stated Ms. Rivlin.
  • Rep. Ryan Pushes Budget Reform, and His Party Winces
    August 2, 2010
    Capital Times, by Perry Bacon Jr.
    Alice M. Rivlin, an economic policy adviser in the Clinton administration, said to Ryan at the Brookings event, "I think absolutely you've done a huge service in getting [the plan] out there."
  • Commentary-Health Care Reform Repair
    August 2, 2010
    PBS - Nightly Business Report
    “Critics of the new health reform call it the road to socialism. But, wait a minute, isn't the central innovation a new marketplace, called an exchange, in which the uninsured can buy health insurance? Doesn't the exchange allow consumers without health coverage to choose among competing private sector health plans? The law charges states with setting up exchanges, although they can form regional exchanges if they like. Health plans meeting certain standards offer their wares. Consumers, armed with Federal subsidies for those with low incomes, make choices. Small businesses can also use exchanges to shop for the best deal in a larger pool. That doesn't sound like socialism to me. It sounds like a serious effort to make competition and choice work for people and businesses that have been left out of existing markets for a long time. But, designing functioning markets is tricky and consumers can't make intelligent choices without easy-to-understand information. So market enthusiasts had better work hard to set up efficient, customer-friendly exchanges. Health reform is an opportunity to move beyond the rhetoric of market solutions and demonstrate that consumer information, choice and competition can actually improve quality and restrain the rising costs of health care. Let's not mess it up! I'm Alice Rivlin.”
  • Raising Social Security Age Reduces Benefits While Increasing Risks
    July 29, 2010
    Huffington Post op-ed, Ashley B. Carson
    It takes colossal gall to propose, during a period of near-record unemployment, forcing older people to work longer by cutting their Social Security benefits and calling that "reform." Yet that is precisely what Alice Rivlin, one of President Obama's appointees to his Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and others propose. Their mantra is: we are all living longer and so should work longer.
  • Rated Hopes
    July 29, 2010
    The Telegraph op-ed (India)
    The job of a central bank, said Alice Rivlin, a former deputy chairman of the Federal Reserve Board under Alan Greenspan, is to worry, and the first-quarter review of monetary policy for 2010-11 or FY11 shows that the Reserve Bank of India is seriously worried about inflation.
  • Which Side Are You On? Alice Rivlin and the Wall Street Bailout King, or Social Security?
    July 28, 2010
    Huffington Post, by Richard Eskow
    There's a battle going on between those who are defending Social Security - that is to say, the "good guys" - and those like economist Alice Rivlin and Wall Street banker/giveaway king Neel Kashkari, who would cut it. … Alice Rivlin is one of those leading the apples-as-oranges charge, arguing against logic and evidence that Social Security should be on the operating table and that the Deficit Commission (of which she is a member) should hold the scalpel. Her recent memo on the subject sets its alarmist tone in the title: "The Right Reason for Saving Social Security." Social Security doesn't need to be "saved." Even the most alarmist forecasts (which she uses) show that it's sound for at least 27 more years and could pay 75% of its benefits beyond that with no changes at all…
  • Selling the Big Lie on Social Security
    July 27, 2010
    Reuters (Deep Pocket blog), by Mark Miller
    Peterson and others point out that the Social Security surplus isn’t sitting in a piggy bank — funds are invested in a special type of Treasury bond that the federal government must repay to the Trust Fund.So, Social Security’s surplus is the federal government’s giant obligation. But that obligation is no different than the debt we owe to bondholders in China or anywhere else in the world. Alice Rivlin, an Obama commission member and the first director of the Congressional Budget Office, notes that the bonds must — and will — be repaid.
  • Health Law Augurs Transfer of Funds From Old to Young
    July 25, 2010
    The Wall Street Journal, by Janet Adamy
    Prominent lawmakers in both parties have suggested restrictions on future Social Security benefits, such as a higher retirement age for younger workers and financial means testing to determine who gets benefits. "We badly need to, over time and very gradually, reallocate resources from the elderly to younger families and their children," said Isabel Sawhill, senior fellow at the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution.
  • The Gray And The Brown: The Generational Mismatch
    July 24, 2010
    The National Journal, by Ronald Brownstein
    Similar questions loom over the federal budget debates. Largely because of Medicare and Social Security, Washington now spends $7 per senior citizen for each $1 it spends per child, according to a 2009 report by Julia Isaacs, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Even including spending by state and local governments, which fund most education costs, government at all levels still spends more than twice as much per capita on seniors (about $22,000) than on children (about $9,000). To compound the inequity, she says, young people are not only slighted for investment now, they are also likely to face a "tax burden ... much higher than current tax rates" to fund the retirement benefits promised to seniors.
  • FDIC to Open Window on Rulemaking Process
    July 23, 2010
    American Banker, by Joe Adler
    "A significant share of the American public thinks the game is rigged in finance's favor," said Robert Litan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and research chief at the Kauffman Foundation. "Now, since everyone knows the bill is essentially just laying a road map for the regulators and all the real work is going to be done at the agencies, I think" FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair "is being very smart. I think you'll see other agencies do what she does."
  • History Does Not Show That Higher Taxes Hurt the Economy
    July 22, 2010
    The Atlantic, by Derek Thompson
    In many circles, like Club for Growth or the the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal or the Republican Party, this dual axiom isn't merely a working theory awaiting the introduction of further findings. It's a religious certainty that, like any religious certainty, is utterly impervious to evidence of the contrary. As Bill Gale of the Brookings Institute pointed out at conference this morning, a central pillar of this faith is the Reagan tax cut and the ensuing boom. Supply siders use the production growth from the nadir of the recession to the peak of the mid-80s boom to demonstrate remarkable post-tax cut growth. But the better measure is to compare the 1980s to the 1990s, which began with back-to-back marginal rate increases on the rich.
  • Brookings Proposes 10% Value-Added Tax
    July 22, 2010
    St. Louis Post-Dispatch, by David Nicklaus
    This should be red meat for the tea-party crowd: Two Brookings Institution economists are proposing that the U.S. adopt a value-added tax in order to balance the federal budget. William Gale and Benjamin Harris call the VAT "part of a constructive solution to the fiscal problem." A VAT would be something like a national sales tax, but it would be imposed at all stages of production. Every business would pay tax on the difference between their total sales and their purchases from other businesses. Gale and Harris suggest a tax rate of 10 percent on a very broad base, with no exemptions for specific goods and services. It could be made progressive -- or at least less regressive -- by giving households a rebate or credit for, say, the first $30,000 they spend…
  • Alice Rivlin: Reform Social Security to Save Social Security
    July 22, 2010 EconomistMom.com And speaking of that dirty word, “entitlements,” and the gross misconceptions about what deficit hawks really want to do about those programs by referring to them as “entitlements” and talking about reforming them…Here’s a very nice column by Alice Rivlin (senior fellow at the Brookings Institution), who happens to be a member of the President’s deficit reduction commission, on why the best reason for reforming Social Security is not to reduce the deficit, but to sustain the program itself.
  • Rep. Ryan Gets an Audience
    July 22, 2010
    Wall Street Journal, by Eliza Gray
    Parts of Ryan’s plan drew strong criticism from progressives. Brookings tax expert William Gale said it would essentially eliminate Medicare as we know it, and the tax changes would place too much of a burden on low- and middle-income people while giving the rich a bonus. … Ryan, Rogers, Gale and others at Brookings today weren’t the only ones kicking around ideas on how to narrow the budget gap. At a White House press briefing today, President Barack Obama spoke about the importance of getting spending under control as he touted White House budget office work on a blueprint that would freeze nondefense discretionary spending for three years.
  • Paul Ryan Pitches Conservative 'Road Map' to Liberal Audience
    July 22, 2010
    Politico, by Richard Cohen
    Rep. Paul Ryan, the top Republican on the House Budget Committee, today went into the lions' den with his controversial “road map” to slash the federal deficit. At the liberal Brookings Institution, he got a respectful hearing and reaction. But he didn’t appear to change any minds, and at least one Brookings official called one of his ideas “draconian.” … Brookings scholar Alice Rivlin, who serves with Ryan on President Barack Obama’s deficit commission, praised him for “a huge service in getting [his plan] out there.” But when she suggested that aspects of his health reform plan paralleled the approach of the huge plan enacted by Democrats in March, Ryan disagreed. “Some principles are similar. ... But it’s a different architecture,” he replied, citing the contrast between his “patient-centered” plan to the Democrats’ “government-centered” one. “Rep. Ryan gets great kudos for getting the debate going,” said William Gale, senior fellow and co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. But in a panel discussion after Ryan’s speech, Gale dismissed his goal to overhaul Medicare with a voucher program, which is a centerpiece of his plan. “He would end Medicare. The cuts are draconian.”
  • Deficit Debacle; Obama Debt Commission Struggling to Achieve Consensus
    July 22, 2010
    FOX News – White House Blog, by Kelly Chernenkoff
    Commission member and Democratic Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad of North Dakota is weary of tackling the debt in the current tenuous economic climate. "I would go to 2013, and maybe even 2014," he says. "But then we've got to pivot and put in place structural changes that will prevent the explosion of debt that really does present an enormous threat to the long-term economic security of the country." However, former CBO Director and commission member Alice Rivlin says the groundwork should be laid soon, with actual implementation some years out. "We don't need to wait until we see the economy actually recovering," she said in a recent interview. … But days before she was announced by Mr. Obama as a member of the his debt commission in late February, Alice Rivlin told US News and World Report she sees the need for broader strokes. "The spending freeze that the president announced is a small step in the right direction, but it applies to a very small part of the budget. That is not going to solve the big looming deficits that come largely from the entitlement programs growing faster than taxes in the future."
  • U.S. Debt: When is it Safe to Start Cutting?
    July 21, 2010
    CNN Money.com, by Jeanne Sahadi
    Some say the unemployment rate will be a key indicator for policymakers when assessing whether it's safe to pivot to earnest fiscal restraint. David Walker, former U.S. comptroller general and president of Peter G. Peterson Foundation, suggested 7%. William Gale, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said he'd choose 6%. Currently the unemployment rate is 9.5%. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the average annual rate will fall to 8% by 2012 and to 6.3% by 2013. … Former CBO Director Alice Rivlin, who sits on the president's fiscal commission and also co-chairs a bipartisan debt-reduction task force, draws the line down the middle. She recommends that a plan be put in place in the near-term before the economy recovers. But the trick is that the actual measures wouldn't be implemented anywhere from four to ten years from now. "You're making progress on reducing the future debt and you're not hurting the near-term recovery. In fact, it could help it," she said. "We don't need to wait until we see the economy actually recovering."
  • Fiscal Office: A Measure of Sanity Among the Madness
    July 19, 2010
    Philadelphia Daily News, by John Baer
    Alice Rivlin, the first CBO director back in '75, concurs. "The most important thing is to have a set of budget numbers everybody can agree on, and then set policy," says Rivlin, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. She adds that such an office also should "defend nonpartisanship aggressively" and make all data public.
  • Volcker Brings Economic Wisdom to Steamboat
    July 19, 2010
    Steamboat Pilot, by Blythe Terrell
    “I knew he was interested in fly fishing, so I used that as a hook, no pun intended, to get him out here, and we’re excited that he’s coming,” said Isabel Sawhill, a part-time Steam­boat resident and a senior fellow and economist at the Brookings Insti­tu­tion in Washington. … Sawhill said the seminar Thursday at Strings Music Pavilion would be a moderated discussion during which she’ll sit onstage with Volcker, 82, and ask him questions about the economy. “Basically, what we’re going to cover is the outlook for the economy, the assessment of the financial reform bill that just passed and also, I think, how our government is working to address these important economic questions,” Sawhill said…
  • Outside Washington, Feeling Hopeful on the Budget Crisis
    July 15, 2010
    Washington Post, by David Broder
    David Cote, the chairman of Honeywell International, has impressed Alice Rivlin, the brainy Democratic former director of the Office of Management and Budget, with his insistence on action.
  • Fiscal "Cancer" Warning

    July 15, 2010
    CNBC – Squak Box – Insight on cutting spending, with Alice Rivlin, Pres. Obama's Debt Commission Member.
  • Lew To Get Second Swipe As OMB Director
    July 14, 2010
    NPR – All Things Considered, by Brian Naylor
    Before beginning his first stint at OMB in the 1990s, Lew served as deputy director under Alice Rivlin. Rivlin says the next Obama budget will be extremely important. “The president has said he wants to focus not only on getting the economy moving, but on bringing down the long-run deficit. So here's the chance in this next budget to show that he can do two things at once and to convince the Congress that he has a sensible plan to bring the deficit down.” Rivlin serves on the president's deficit reduction commission which is looking into those long-term deficit issues. It's due to issue its report December 1st.
  • Jacob Lew Nominated To Head OMB
    July 13, 2010
    Fiscal Times (also appeared on Kaiser Health News), by Eric Pianin
    A Harvard graduate who holds a law degree from Georgetown University, Lew was the fourth budget director to serve in the Clinton administration, after Leon E. Panetta, Alice Rivlin and Franklin Raines.
  • Hard But Not Complex
    July 10, 2010
    GoUpstate.com
    Alice Rivlin, director of the Office of Management and Budget for former President Bill Clinton and a member of President Barack Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, watched the process in Philadelphia with one of the groups that took part in the exercise. “People do understand that part of the problem has got to be solved on the revenue side and part of it on the spending side,” Rivlin told participants via satellite. “I can assure you that my colleagues on the commission are listening very, very carefully to this discussion.”
  • Can Financial Overhaul Stop The Next Crisis?
    July 3, 2010
    National Journal, by John Maggs
    Martin Baily, an economist who co-chairs the Pew Task Force on Financial Reform, says that the pending legislation will clearly improve bank oversight and help reduce excessive risk-taking in the financial sector but that it can't prevent a recurrence of financial woes in the near term. "I don't think things are headed" toward another crisis, Baily says, but the challenges posed by housing, commercial real estate, and a slow recovery could tip some still-struggling banks into failure. Even if the government debt crisis in Europe triggered by Greece doesn't spread directly to the United States, similar political paralysis here in reducing government debt could eventually cause a meltdown from another direction, he said. … The term for this action is "deleveraging," Brookings Institution economist Isabel Sawhill says. "It is not a surprise that this is happening," she adds, because banks with bad loans are being forced to shore up their balance sheets by reducing their lending while finding new sources of capital.
  • Testimony to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform
    June 30, 2010
    Testimony of Robert Bixby, The Concord Coalition
    In that regard, you may be interested in the experience of The Fiscal Wake-Up Tour, a joint public awareness initiative by The Concord Coalition, the Budgeting for National Priorities Project at The Brookings Institution, The Heritage Foundation, and The Peter G. Peterson Foundation.For almost six years we have traveled the country explaining in plain terms why budget analysts of diverse perspectives are increasingly alarmed by the nation's long-term fiscal outlook.
  • Scott Brown’s Golden Touch
    July 1, 2010
    Boston Globe, by Yvonne Abraham
    For example, repeatedly voting against an extension of unemployment benefits for laid-off workers, and for extra money to preserve services for the mentally disabled, makes him a hero because he's holding down the deficit, saving the Average Guy taxes down the line. Nobody seems to care that lots of folks, including some respected deficit hawks, think that's a shortsighted, destructive stance in a recession. ``We need stimulus now and restraint later,'' says Isabel Sawhill, a budget expert at the Brookings Institution. ``On strictly economic grounds, it makes sense to extend the payments, otherwise these groups will be a tremendous drag on the economy.'' Talk to the truck, ma'am. Or take Brown's stance on the bill Treasury Secretary Geithner was calling about: A Wall Street reform package aimed at taming the Wild West that is our financial system.
  • CBO Draws Fire for Projections on Implementation of Health Care Law
    June 30, 2010
    CQ Today, by David Clarke
    Democrats and Republicans on the president's deficit commission disagree about whether health care spending -- and in particular, the new law -- should be part of their deliberations.Although Baucus disagreed with Elmendorf's decision to include an alternative budget scenario in Wednesday's report, other members of the deficit commission supported the move, including Alice Rivlin, a former CBO chief who also served as director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration.
  • Why the Fiscal Commission Does Not Serve the American People
    June 30, 2010
    Huffington Post, by James K. Galbraith
    Third, most members of the Commission are political leaders, not economists. With all respect for Alice Rivlin, with just one economist on board you are denied access to the professional arguments surrounding this highly controversial issue. In general, it is impossible to have a fair discussion of any important question when the professional participants in that discussion have been picked, in advance, to represent a single point of view.
  • Alice Rivlin: Bloomberg On the Economy
    June 23, 2010
    Bloomberg “On the Economy” podcast
    Alice Rivlin, senior fellow of economics at Brookings Institute, talks with Bloomberg's Tom Keene on On the Economy.”
  • Peter Orszag: Departure Illustrates US Fiscal Woes
    June 22, 2010
    Bloomberg TV – Street Smart, by Alissa Figueroa
    "It's a killer job," says Alice Rivlin, who served two years as President Clinton's budget director and is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "It's always been a killer job ... This administration in particular has had a lot of budgetary issues on its plate and Peter was on top of all of them." … During previous recessions, “we weren’t worrying about the long-term fiscal imbalance that we’re seeing right now,” says Roberton Williams, senior fellow at the Urban/Brookings Tax Policy Center. “The revenue shortfall and spending excess is much worse now than it was back then. Trying to figure out what to do with the budget is much more complex.”
  • Social Security: Will Obama Panel Cripple it With 'Minor' Tweaks?
    June 23, 2010
    Los Angeles Times, by Michael Hiltzik
    The president's commission isn't entirely reliant on such hackery. One member, Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institution, has advocated raising the cap on income subject to the Social Security tax (it's currently $106,800) and modestly raising the retirement age, but taking privatization off the table.
  • Sexy and Wonky: The Ugly Task Facing Peter Orszag's Successor: Make Deficit Reduction Hot
    June 22, 2010
    Slate.com, by Christopher Beam
    There are plenty of other ways to cut the deficit, but none of them is pretty. Most economists agree that Social Security will be insolvent by 2037. One way to boost revenue would be to raise the retirement age. Less drastic would be to simply slow the growth in benefits. That doesn't mean cutting benefits from where they are now, says Isabel Sawhill, a budget expert at the Brookings Institution. It just means reducing the amount that future retirees receive, which is linked to rising wages.
    Obama is already laying the groundwork for deficit reduction. But the political obstacles are formidable. The leaders of his much touted bipartisan deficit commission say that all options are on the table. But a testy exchange between co-chair Alan Simpson and a liberal activist last week showed how difficult it will be to find common ground. It doesn't help that the only long-term solutions—cutting entitlements and raising taxes—are considered political hara-kiri. "It's not like we don't know what to do," says Sawhill. "The problem is we're not willing to do it."
  • Editorial: Deficitbusters
    June 14, 2010
    Akron Beacon Journal
    Worth attention as the debate proceeds is a report put together earlier this year by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a collection of experienced budgeteers, Democrats and Republicans, including Paul Volcker, Alice Rivlin, Jim Nussle and Douglas Holtz-Eakin. The study offers the reminder that other countries have faced similar, and even greater, budget challenges, and found ways to put their financial houses in order.
  • Raise Social Security Retirement Age: Budget Expert
    June 10, 2010
    CNBC, by Brooke Sopelsa
    Americans are living and working longer, and Alice Rivlin, a member of President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, told CNBC it is time the Social Security retirement age reflects this fact of life. “(The) commitments to older people are driving federal spending up faster than the economy is growing and faster than taxes are growing,” said Rivlin, a former vice chair of the Federal Reserve Board (1996-1999) and director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (1994-1996). Rivlin said raising the Social Security retirement age and changing the way benefits are calculated would help put the agency on a sound footing. “I think it would send a message to our creditors around the world that we’re serious about making long-term change,” she said. Rivlin also recommended revamping income taxes, which she called “complicated” and “unfair.” “We could make the tax much simpler, get rid of a lot of exclusions and reductions that are special favors to people and keep rates where they are or lower them and raise more revenue,” she explained.
  • Licensed to Cut Spending
    June 10, 2010
    CNBC TV – Squawk Box
    Insight on putting America back on track, with Alice Rivlin, Commission on Fiscal Responsibility & Reform.
  • The U.S. Is Not Too Big To Fail
    June 9, 2010
    The New Republic / CBS News.com (Galston Op-Ed)
    To get a better handle on how far the U.S. can venture down the road of sustained fiscal stimulus, I turned next to an important survey, “Activist Fiscal Policy to Stabilize Economic Activity,” written by two macroeconomists, Berkeley’s Alan J. Auerbach and my Brookings colleague William Gale. In a key section of their paper, titled “Short-Term Stimulus with Long-Term Deficits,” they state that “there are many reasons to think fiscal policies would have different effects if they are adopted during a period of fiscal stress than they would otherwise. ... [F]iscal consolidations have less contractionary effects when adopted under fiscal stress, as measured by high debt and projected government spending relative to GDP.”
  • New Fees, Fines Lead to Control Board Speculation
    June 9, 2010
    Washington Informer, by James Wright
    Alice Rivlin, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute in Northwest, and the former chair of the control board, which was dissolved, Sept. 30, 2001, said that the District isn’t headed toward Round Two. "Despite the recession, D.C. finances are in quite good shape," Rivlin, 79, said. "The recession has not hit D.C. nearly as hard as most major cities. Government and government-related employment is a big part of our economy and [the District] has not been as devastated by the recession as manufacturing and financial services have been," she said. Rivlin said that the District has a "strong record of fiscal responsibility that spans more than a decade" with a balanced budget, built-up reserves and a strengthened credit rating. Nonetheless, she does acknowledge that the recession has taken its toll with rising unemployment and many construction projects placed on hold. "But the city is not in serious fiscal trouble, as it was in the 1990s," she said.
  • Social Security's Defenders Wary of Deficit Reduction Commission
    June 9, 2010
    Washington Post, by Lori Montgomery
    Over the past month, deficit commission members have begun meeting in small working groups, including one subpanel, chaired by former Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin and Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), dedicated to Social Security. Other panels are focusing on other entitlement programs, such as Medicare, an even bigger budget problem, as well as discretionary spending and the tax system. If 14 of the commission's 18 members reach agreement on a deficit-reduction plan, congressional leaders have pledged to put it to a vote after the fall elections.
  • Woes Across the Ocean Spur U.S. to Choose Sides on Debt
    June 7, 2010
    Wall Street Journal, by Deborah Solomon
    The deficit will grow by as much as $9 trillion over the next decade, according to the White House, in large part because of increased spending on benefit programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, as well as an explosion in interest costs on debt. Other economists say it could rise as much as $11 trillion, including a recent study by William Gale of the left-leaning Brookings Institution and Alan Auerbach, an economics professor at University of California, Berkeley. … "No one will step up right now and suggest broad-based spending cuts or tax increases, but that is what we need both for the magnitude of the effect involved, but also the sense that there's going to be shared sacrifice," said Mr. Gale, an economist with Brookings, a Washington think tank.
  • Democrats Tie Portman to Bush
    June 6, 2010
    Columbus Dispatch, by Jack Torry and Jonathan Riskind
    "He has a reputation for being smart and really very effective," said Isabel Sawhill, a Clinton administration budget aide and current senior fellow at the liberal Brookings Institution in Washington. "He has a strong reputation for being someone who reaches out and listens, and I don't think just to one side."
  • Deficit Panel Eyes Another Bite at Healthcare
    Reuters, by Jessica Renaldi
    "The problem is that Republicans are pretty uniformly opposed to any increase in revenues and Democrats aren't willing to cut spending unless taxes are on the table. So we have an impossible situation," said Isabel Sawhill, a budget expert at the Brookings Institution. Sawhill says lawmakers should strengthen the authority of an independent payment board that is to propose Medicare payment savings if specific cost-cutting targets aren't met. The first proposals would not go into effect before 2015 and some providers, such as hospitals, are off limits until 2020. She also suggested lawmakers take another look at a provisions that create a new government insurance program to help the elderly and disabled stay in their homes. Many experts say it could add significantly to long-term deficits. "It's a ticking time bomb in terms of its impact on deficit," Sawhill said.
  • "Public Provisions" Pitfalls
    June 2, 2010
    Oregon Catalyst, by Christina Martin
    Commenting on these reforms, Ron Haskins, a scholar for the Brookings Institute, agrees that using “carrots and sticks” is the most effective way to get individuals out of poverty. Yet, even if the government would build further upon such reforms, it could not substitute for charity, nor could it escape trampling on individual liberty.
  • Debt Experts Toll Recovery Warning Bell
    May 27, 2010
    Dallas Morning News, by Jim Landers
    Hensarling and seven others on the 18-member commission said they should focus on ways to start paying off debt. "Total debt, the gross debt, has got to come down, or we won't have done our jobs," said Alice Rivlin, a former Federal Reserve governor.
  • U.S. And Global Debt Outlook
    May 26, 2010
    C-SPAN
    The National Committee on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform held a public meeting on the outlook for the national debt and ways in which deficit reduction might impact the U.S. economy. Witnesses focused on the size of public and private debt, possible austerity measures, and various programs to target in finding ways to reduce the deficit. Alice Rivlin asks a question at 1:30:18.
  • US Deficit Panel Chiefs Ask Hill For Help on Message, Votes
    May 26, 2010
    Market News International, by John Shaw
    The Bipartisan Policy Center has created a fiscal task force that will be chaired by former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici and former White House director Alice Rivlin.
  • Crisis Deferred, Uh, Averted
    May 10, 2010
    CBS MoneyWatch, by Eric Schurenberg
    Projections of President Obama’s budget by Alan Auerbach of the University of California, Berkeley and William Gale of the Brookings Institution would put the national debt over the 90% tipping point by 2020. Unless the deficit is brought under control, say Auerbach and Gale, the upshot will be reduced national income and a falling standard of living. That is as true for Europe as it is for the U.S.
  • Management 101: What the Democrats Need to Learn
    May 6, 2010
    Time Magazine, by Joe Klein
    Bureausclerosis can be mitigated. Orszag learned his trade in the Congressional Budget Office, an agency known for a culture of excellence created by its first director, Alice Rivlin, and reinforced by rewards and punishments that resemble those found in the private sector. And the Obama Administration has worked hard to manage its programs well: the stunning absence of corruption in the disbursement of stimulus funds is attributable, in large part, to Vice President Joe Biden's vigilance. Orszag says updating the government's antediluvian computer systems could increase efficiency dramatically.
  • Deficit Credits Target Tax Breaks
    May 5, 2010
    Washington Post (appeared in Denver Post)
    "Our tax system is inefficient and riddled with special exceptions," said Alice Rivlin, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and a member of President Barack Obama's bipartisan deficit commission, which held its first meeting last month. "If you are looking for additional revenue over time, one approach is to move in the direction of reforming the income tax."
  • Debt Commission Member Talks Of Raising Revenues With "Pro-Growth" Taxes – Video
    May 3, 2010
    RealClearPolitics.com
    "If we can put forward some practical proposals that control the rate of spending in the future and that raise revenues in a pro-growth way, I think we’ll get a hearing in the Congress," said Alice Rivlin, a former White House budget director for President Jimmy Carter, who is one of 18 commission members.
  • Dems on Obama Fiscal Commission Raise Conservative Hackles with Talk of ‘Pro-Growth’ Tax Hikes
    May 3, 2010
    The Daily Caller, by Jon Ward
    “If we can put forward some practical proposals that control the rate of spending in the future and that raise revenues in a pro-growth way, I think we’ll get a hearing in the Congress,” said Alice Rivlin, a former White House budget director for President Jimmy Carter, who is one of 18 commission members. … Rivlin went so far as to say, at a summit hosted by the Peterson Foundation, “one can make a case for being a little bit conservative, especially on spending.” … Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, has a much different philosophical orientation on taxes than Ellis, but agreed that tax increases would not be “pro-growth.”
  • Looking for a Benefits-Spending Cuts Deal to Reduce the Deficit
    May 2, 2010
    Washington Post, by David S. Broder
    Simpson, blunt as always, had publicly acknowledged that they were on "a suicide mission," whose recommendations might well antagonize both Democrats and Republicans. Those gathered in the Reagan building — including former President Bill Clinton, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, former Federal Reserve Chairmen Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker, former Congressional Budget Office Directors Alice Rivlin and Robert Reischauer, and current budget chief Peter Orszag — insisted that however tough the odds, the crisis demands action.
  • Tax Breaks and Loopholes that Cost Us $1 Trillion a Year have Staunch Defenders
    May 2, 2010
    Washington Post, by Edmund L. Andrews and Lori Montgomery
    "Our tax system is inefficient and riddled with special exceptions," said Alice Rivlin, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and a member of President Obama's bipartisan deficit commission, which held its first meeting last month. "If you are looking for additional revenue over time, one approach is to move in the direction of reforming the income tax."
  • The Keys To Dealing With U.S. Debt
    May 2, 2010
    NPR – All Things Considered –
    Raz: Former CBO director Alice Rivlin is a member of that commission. Welcome.
    Ms. Alice Rivlin (Economist; Co-Chair, Bipartisan Policy Center, Debt Reduction Task Force): Glad to be here.
    Raz: You've described the debt as an imminent threat. President Obama has been saying that all options must be on the table to address this problem. What is it going to take to rein in this massive federal debt?
    Ms. Rivlin: Well, first, it isn't the debt itself that's such a threat. It's the fact that it is rising faster than our economy is growing. And as we look ahead, it's on track to keep rising faster than the economy is growing. That's what the threat it. We're not Greece, but we could face a situation in which we simply couldn't borrow that much, and that would be pretty dire for our economy. So we have to do something.
  • Report: Major Policy Changes Needed to Get Deficit Under Control
    April 30, 2010
    The Hill, by Vicki Needham
    The ratio of the deficit to gross domestic product is expected to ease through 2014 -- declining from about 10 percent of GDP to 2.3 percent -- but costs spiral out of control after that, a new report released Friday by the Tax Policy Center predicted. Without major changes in budget policy, deficits are expected to climb to nearly 7 percent of GDP by 2020, more than twice the Congressional Budget Office's forecast, according to Bill Gale, co-director at the TPC and Alan Auerbach, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
  • Fiscal Commission Has the Knives Out for Safety Net Spending
    April 30, 2010
    FireDogLake.com, by David Dayen
    Co-chair Erskine Bowles is on the record that the commission will “mess with Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, because if you take those off the table, you can’t get there.” Ann Fudge sits on a bunch of corporate boards and doesn’t have a clear position at this point. Alice Rivlin has been dying to get her hands on Social Security. Even Andy Stern said recently that entitlement programs “need to be re-examined”. These are the four Democrats the President placed on the panel.
  • Are We Smart Enough to Think About the Deficit?
    April 30, 2010
    The Atlantic, by Derek Thompson
    At the Peterson Foundation Fiscal Summit in Washington DC today, most panelists tried to distingiush between necessary short-term deficits and harmful structural long-term deficits. "I think Americans are smart enough to think about two things at the same time," former CBO director Alice Rivlin said.
  • Controversy Swirls Over Possible U.S. VAT Tax
    April 30, 2010
    Xinhua Newswire
    Isabel V. Sawhill, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank, wrote in the Nation that the tax is "a relatively efficient way of raising revenue, producing far fewer distortions than the current income tax." And by encouraging saving and productivity, "it is exactly what the nation needs to raise future standards of living," she wrote. She noted that a 10-percent broad-based VAT could generate around 500 billion dollars a year by 2012, citing the Brookings-Urban Tax Policy Center. "In my view, the way to make this politically palatable while advancing other policy goals is to use some of the revenues to provide a refundable credit to lower-income households, thereby offsetting the regressive features of the tax, some to lowering the corporate tax rate to make the U.S. more competitive with other countries, and some to eliminating income taxes for many in the middle class ... More affluent Americans would continue to pay income taxes," she wrote.
  • Cleansing the Temple
    April 29, 2010
    American Prospect, by Tim Fernholz
    "I don't think that supervising individual banks is important to making monetary policy," Alice Rivlin, a former vice chair of the Fed, told the Senate Banking Committee last summer. "That was said around the table when I was at the Fed, but I didn't really experience that we learned a lot from the supervising [of] particular banking institutions."
  • To Fix the National Debt, 'Everything Is On the Table'
    April 29, 2010
    US News & World Report Online, by Linda Killian
    Alice Rivlin, former head of the CBO and OMB and a member of the commission, known for her fairness and hard headed economic analysis, put it succinctly. “There’s fear mongering on one side and denial on the other.” Rivlin said we need to put forward some practical solutions to controlling the rate of spending and she hopes after the November election the public and Congress will be ready to do that. She pointed out that spending went up slowly throughout the 1990s under a Republican Congress and a Democratic president. “Spending restraint is not impossible,” said Rivlin.
  • U.S. Deficit Serious, Action Needed: Policymakers
    April 28, 2010
    Reuters, by Kim Dixon
    “We’re not Greece, but Greece can serve a useful lesson,” said Alice Rivlin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office who sits on the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform established by Obama. “If you have massive debt, eventually your creditors loose confidence,” Rivlin, who now works at the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution, said in remarks at a conference sponsored by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation in Washington.
  • Attendees Agree to Disagree on Deficit
    April 28, 2010
    NBC.com, by Ali Weinberg
    Alice Rivlin, also on the debt commission and the first director of the Congressional Budget Office, struck a conciliatory tone, saying that while there was “too much talk about Social Security,” raising the retirement age in the future would prove that Washington is “grown up enough to do something about” the program, which most economists agree is dangerously close to reaching insolvency.
  • Your Guide to the Debt Commission
    April 27, 2010
    PBS – NewsHour Online, by Carolyn O’Hara and Quinn Bowman
    He also named three Democrats: Alice Rivlin, a former vice chair of the Federal Reserve who also served as director of the Congressional Budget Office and the White House budget office; Andrew Stern, retiring president of the 2.2 million-member Service Employees International Union; and Ann Fudge, former head of Young & Rubicam Brands, a global marketing and communications company.
  • 'Many Difficult Tradeoffs' on Federal Debt
    April 27, 2010
    CNN Money.com, by Jeanne Sahadi
    Put more starkly: "We're facing a serious and perhaps catastrophic threat to the future prosperity of the United States," said Alice Rivlin, a commission member appointed by Obama who served as White House budget director during the Clinton Administration.
  • Now Comes the Hard Part for U.S. Fiscal Commission
    April 27, 2010
    Reuters, by Steve Holland
    "An unsustainable path," said Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. "On a ruinous path," said Republican Representative Jeb Hensarling. "This debt is like a cancer," said commission chairman Erskine Bowles. "Catastrophic threat," said former Fed Vice Chair Alice Rivlin.
  • Debt Commission Gets Started With 'Everything' on the Table, Including National Sales Tax
    April 27, 2010
    FoxNews.com
    But finding common ground will be the biggest challenge as 12 of the commission members -- six Democrats and six Republicans -- are currently members of Congress appointed by their party leaders. The other six -- Simpson, Bowles, former Young and Rubicam CEO Ann Fudge, former Federal Reserve Vice Chairwoman Alice Rivlin, Service Employees International Union chief Andy Stern and Honeywell Corp. Chief Executive Dave Cote were appointed by the president.
  • US Politics Risks Impeding New Fiscal Commission
    April 26, 2010
    Financial Times, by Edward Luce
    “The problem is that there is no tipping point that will force politicians from both parties to face up to the seriousness of the US fiscal crisis before it happens,” says Bill Gale, an economist at the Brookings Institution. “If you look at the persistence of low yields on US Treasury bonds, we already arguably have a bubble in public debt that could explode well before lawmakers get serious about tackling this crisis.”
  • Accountability is an Important Lesson
    April 25, 2010
    Columbus Dispatch, by Jonathan Riskin
    Economist Alice Rivlin, a former Clinton administration budget director who is going to serve on Obama's fiscal commission, addressed that issue last week during a Hamilton Project seminar in Washington on economic-growth strategies. There's nothing wrong with short-term spending now to get the country through the recession, as long as a plan is put in place for dealing with the long-term, unsustainable growth of Social Security and Medicare, Rivlin said.
  • National Debt: A Tsunami of Red Ink
    April 25, 2010
    Chicago Tribune, by Adam Zoll and Steve Layton
    Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said the debt represents an urgent and growing concern in the wake of costly government initiatives such as the Bush tax cuts, the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the Obama stimulus package. She cites five issues — higher interest rates, higher taxes, inflation, impact on foreign affairs and reduced flexibility in a crisis — as potential danger points. The biggest immediate danger posed by the debt, Sawhill said, is that U.S. Treasury securities, the world's favorite "safe" investment, won't be seen as quite so safe by foreign lenders, who currently own more than half of all publicly held U.S. debt.
  • The National Debt and Washington's Deficit of Will
    April 25, 2010
    Washington Post, by Joel Achenbach
    "This is all an exercise in current generations shifting burdens on future generations," Brookings Institution economist William Gale says. "Future generations don't vote, of course."
  • Interview of Isabel Sawhill
    April 23, 2010
    C-SPAN – Washington Journal
    Curtis Dubay, Heritage Foundation, Senior Policy Analyst & Isabel Sawhill, Brookings Institution, Economic Studies Senior Fellow have a discussion on the use of a Value Added Tax (VAT) as a means to curb U.S. debt. In an interview with CNBC, President Obama when asked about the use of the tax said it would be "novel" for the U.S to incorporate one.
  • The Recession Will Increase Inequality
    April 20, 2010
    Washington Post, by Ezra Klein
    I'd been hoping that the recession would do a little bit to lower inequality in the country. But Brookings Institution inequality and mobility expert Isabel Sawhill says that the opposite is going to happen. In a forthcoming paper for the Tobin Project, she argues that the recession is likely to worsen inequality because losing your job has consequences beyond temporary unemployment: It makes it likelier that your next job is worse, and that your skills deteriorate, and that your economic position is forever weakened compared with what it would have been if you hadn't lost your job.
  • Summers Smokes as Obama Puts Politics Above All
    April 19, 2010
    Bloomberg, by Kevin Hassett
    We have been blessed that important policy insiders in both parties have, at substantial personal cost, resisted the temptation to put politics ahead of policy. I’m thinking about people like Herb Stein (my former colleague at the American Enterprise Institute) and Greg Mankiw, who served in Republican administrations, and Alan Blinder and Alice Rivlin, who served in Democratic ones. Rivlin, for example, risked her standing in Bill Clinton’s White House by publicly questioning whether funds devoted to domestic programs might better be used to reduce the deficit. She has stuck to the same policy views whether she has been inside or outside government.
  • Networks Fail to Discuss VAT Tax Since Volcker Call for Tax Increases
    April 14, 2010
    Conservative Blog Watch
    Proponents of a VAT often lament that the U.S. is only developed nation that doesn't have one. That was Alice Rivlin's argument for a VAT in the film I.O.U.S.A. Solutions. Rivlin, senior fellow for the liberal Brookings Institution, said "all the industrialized countries have a national sales tax of some sort." … "In New Zealand, it [VAT] contributes about 25 percent to the government's bottom line, and the Tax Policy Center in December projected that a 5 percent VAT tax here would generate over $3 trillion in revenue by 2019. That's not enough to cover America's huge debt obligations, of course, but it's a start," CNN said.
  • As Analysts Ponder Grand US Fiscal Deal, VAT Seen As Ace Card
    April 14, 2010
    Market News International, by John Shaw
    Bill Frenzel, a former Republican congressman who is now a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, says that he doesn't think the two parties are now ready to enter into frank negotiations on the nation's serious fiscal problems. "I don't think either the president or the Congress is ready to move in a serious way on the budget deficit. But events may very well force them to get serious about the deficit pretty soon, say in three or four years," Frenzel said. "Clearly it's going to take a lot of incentives on the spending side for Republicans to give on taxes. And giving in on the VAT is probably the last thing they will do," he added. … Isabel Sawhill, a budget expert at Brookings, argues in a recent essay that the eventual imposition of a VAT could be coupled with a reduction in corporate tax rates to make it politically acceptable. "In the end, any tax increase will be a heavy lift in a country that seems allergic to paying its bills. But it will have to happen sooner or later and sooner would be much better," she writes, adding that increased revenues should be coupled with spending savings in a comprehensive package. "As Larry Summers once noted, Republicans don't like value-added taxes because they are a revenue machine and Democrats don't like them because they are regressive. We will get a VAT when Democrats realize they are a revenue machine and Republicans realize they are regressive," Sawhill says.
  • Warning of Higher Taxes
    April 13, 2010
    The Hill, by Walter Alarkon
    Alice Rivlin, who headed the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget, said that the highest priority is to reduce healthcare spending but that reforms to entitlement programs and higher taxes should also be considered. “We have to ‘bend the curve,’ as they say in medical cost increases,” she said. “And Social Security is a rather minor part of the problem, but fixing that would have a lot of confidence-building effects, I think, and we have to take action on the revenue side as well.” Rivlin is one of 18 members on the debt commission, which is to provide recommendations to Obama and Congress by December on getting the U.S. fiscal house in order. … Rivlin said Monday that the commission will consider how to slow the rate in health spending, which is among the biggest sources of debt in 2020 and beyond. She praised the healthcare bill Obama signed into law for provisions seeking to stem the increase in health spending, but she said those cost-control mechanisms should be strengthened. “We’ve got to take much more drastic action now, because the future spending is largely driven by the combination of an aging population, particularly with the bulge of the baby boom and rising per capita healthcare costs,” Rivlin said. Rivlin said she’s “optimistic” the White House effort will produce something “constructive,” but Domenici is less hopeful. “I believe that there is a better than a reasonable chance that the presidential commission will not succeed,” he said. Domenici and Rivlin are co-chairmen of a separate panel organized by the Bipartisan Policy Center that will also produce long-term budget recommendations in December.
  • The Roundup
    April 13, 2010
    FireDogLake.com, by David Dayen
    Despite the better news on the deficit front, official Washington is just dying to do something to “deal with” the budget woes, even during a jobs crisis. Alice Rivlin floats Social Security changes as some kind of confidence-building maneuver that Congress can get something done. She’s on the President’s deficit commission, so that’s not nothing. Meanwhile, the talk of a regressive VAT tax, basically a national sales tax, is growing.
  • Ex-CBO Director Rivlin Says More Still Needed to Constrain Health Costs
    April 12, 2010
    The Hill, by Walter Alarkon
    Alice Rivlin, the first Congressional Budget Office director and budget aide to President Bill Clinton, said policy makers who just passed a healthcare reform bill will need to do more to rein in health costs that are driving long-term debt projections. "I think that the health reform put in place some mechanisms that can help, that probably need to be strengthened," she said in an interview with The Hill. She said stronger health cost controls will be one issue that the White House deficit commission will consider. Rivlin is part of the 18-member panel of lawmakers and economic experts that President Barack Obama has asked to produce a plan to rein in the growing $12.8 trillion debt…
  • Robert Rubin Returns
    April 9, 2010
    POLITICO, by Eamon Javers
    Although Obama’s team faces very different economic circumstances than Rubin did at Treasury, “the basic philosophy of free-market liberalism is still there,” said Alice Rivlin, who worked with Rubin when she ran Bill Clinton’s Office of Management and Budget. “If I were running things again, I would certainly want to know what Bob Rubin thought,” Rivlin said. “I wouldn’t necessarily do it, but I’d want to know what he thought.” … Today, Rubin spends the bulk of his time in an office he pays for himself at the Council on Foreign Relations headquarters in New York’s Upper East Side. As co-chairman of the board, he spends his time talking about China and Russia with Henry Kissinger and African development ideas with Kofi Annan. He is the chairman of the Local Initiatives Service Corp., a community development organization. He’s also vice chairman of Mount Sinai Hospital, sits on Harvard’s governing board and oversees the Hamilton Project, an economic initiative of the Brookings Institution.
  • Economic Expert Voices Sound Advice
    April 9, 2010
    Oakland Press, by Joseph Szczesny
    In addition, stabilizers put in during the Great Depression of the 1930s also helped prevent the U.S. economy from sinking even further in autumn 2008 and winter 2009, notes Alice Rivlin, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who was recently named to a new presidential panel on controlling the federal deficit. … OK, lots of progressive or liberal leaning economists might make the same arguments as those advanced by Rivlin during her appearance last week at Wayne State University. Rivlin also has a long history of working with both Democrats and Republicans and has a well-earned reputation as a deficit and budget hawk. Indeed Rivlin, while working as one of Bill Clinton’s top economic advisers during the 1990s, was instrumental in setting in place polices that helped balance the budget for four consecutive years and making a dent in the size of the federal debt. During her visit, Rivlin credited the “bi-partisan” policies advanced by a coalition of Republican and Democrats in the 1990s for moving toward bringing the federal budget in line.
  • Further Reading
    April 8, 2010
    Financial Times, by Clive Crook
    Consider a VAT. Isabel Sawhill, Brookings. Paul Volcker agrees, much to WSJ’s disgust. My thoughts on the matter: here, here and here.
  • Divided Government
    April 6, 2010
    Financial Times, by Clive Crook
    Isabel Sawhill’s comment on the Brookings exchange is intriguing. “Why not try a third party?” she asks. The gap between Democrats and Republicans keeps getting wider. That space in the middle looks increasingly vacant. But if it would take electoral reform to achieve this breakthrough, as she suggests, what are the chances of that?
  • Kuttner: Peterson Forum Political Folly
    April 6, 2010
    Nonprofit Quarterly, by Cynthia Gibson
    In Sunday’s Huffington Post, Robert Kuttner, co-editor of the American Prospect, took issue with an upcoming fiscal summit sponsored by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation to “further a national dialogue on solving America's fiscal challenges through several moderated discussions with leaders on the issue from across the political spectrum.” Among those leaders are Bill Clinton, Bob Rubin, Alan Greenspan, Alice Rivlin, Paul Volcker, Judd Gregg, and John Podesta. Kuttner, basically disagrees with the idea that this group constitutes a "political spectrum".
  • Commentary - Financial Regulatory Reform
    April 6, 2010
    PBS - Nightly Business Report Online
    “Protecting consumers from predatory lenders need not be complicated. Back when we did housing finance right, long-term fixed rate loans with moderate down payments financed high rates of home ownership. Secondary markets spread risk and brought capital into the housing market. Government agencies could give low-cost guarantees, because most Americans paid on time. But this good record disappeared as lenders pushed people with questionable credit into loans they were unable to repay -- often with no down payments, no proof of income and teaser rates set to go much higher with penalties for pre- payment. Lenders made huge profits, feeding a monster that packaged and repackaged low quality mortgages into securities with inflated credit ratings. One obvious lesson of this costly catastrophe is that we need strict rules to protect borrowers from getting in over their heads. Predatory lending does not help low-income families become long-term homeowners and never was mandated by the unfairly maligned Community Reinvestment Act. Congress should create a strong, independent consumer protection agency to enforce national rules for mortgage lending, credit cards and other consumer loans. This agency will not need an army of regulators, since its rules will be easy to verify. It should be a stand-alone agency and not have other duties. Protecting borrowers is enough. I'm Alice Rivlin.”
  • Fiscal Folly
    April 5, 2010
    Huffington Post, by Robert Kuttner
    The purpose of this event is to further a national dialogue on solving America's fiscal challenges through several moderated discussions with leaders on the issue from across the political spectrum. In addition to President Bill Clinton, who will be interviewed by George Stephanopoulos, we will hear from a range of experts, including Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan, Former Chairmen of the Federal Reserve; Bob Rubin, Former Secretary of the Treasury; Alice Rivlin, former OMB Director and Member, National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform…
  • Obama's Deficit Commission: No Friend of Social Security?
    April 2, 2010
    Campaign For America’s Future, by Nathan Tabak
    Alice Rivlin, former Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve. In 2004, Rivlin coauthored a Brookings Institution study advocating, among other proposals, an "increase in the retirement age under Social Security" and "more accurate inflation adjustments to Social Security benefits." Rivlin is also a former board member of the Public Agenda Foundation, an organization largely devoted to destroying Social Security under the guise of “entitlement reform,” and which has called on lower-income Americans to “sacrifice.”
  • Solutions For Bringing Down The National Debt
    April 1, 2010
    NPR - Talk of the Nation
    “But now to get to your question. I have no idea, but, threaded through the 18-member commission are people like Alice Rivlin, who spoke up during the Clinton administration. And it wasn't the president who sent it to Outer Siberia, it was the staff who heard her mention Social Security needed some attention.” – Senator Alan Simpson
  • The Ecstasy of Fiscal Policy
    April 2, 2010
    New York Times, by David Brooks
    The history of commissions is the history of failure. Stuart M. Butler of the Heritage Foundation and Henry J. Aaron of the Brookings Institution argue compellingly that it is simply impossible in a democracy to rewrite the social contract without popular consent. Commissions are fine, but they have to be embedded in a broader democratic process.
  • Budget Games
    March 29, 2010
    Atlantic Onlines, by Megan McArdle
    Let's think about the theoretical CBO--the institution that Alice Rivlin and her merry band of madmen dreamed into being in the wake of the Nixon presidency. The idea is that Congress proposes legislation, and the CBO tells you how much that legislation costs. Maybe you modify some provisions that cost too much or increase the deficit. Then you pass the legislation. Or don't, if it turns out to be a bad idea.
  • Our Grandmothers, Ourselves: Social Security Under Fire
    March 27, 2010
    Huffington Post, by Lynn Parramore
    Obama's Fiscal Commission has been created to propose ways to reduce the current deficit, including possible cuts to Social Security. But there is only one woman among his five appointees, Alice Rivlin. And there is only one woman, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, among all the other appointments made by McConnell, Reid, Boehner, and Pelosi. Two women out of 18 appointees? That's 11 percent.
  • New U.S. Deficit Panel Faces Big Personality, Policy Challenges
    March 26, 2010
    Market News International, by John Shaw
    In addition to naming Simpson and Bowles as the panel's co-chairs, Obama appointed Alice Rivlin (former director of the Congressional Budget Office, White House budget office and vice chair of the Fed), David Cote (CEO of Honeywell International), Andy Stern (president of the Service Employees International Union) and Ann Fudge (former CEO of Young and Rubicon Brands) to the panel.
  • Roster for Deficit Commission is Complete
    March 26, 2010
    CongressDaily, by Humberto Sanchez
    His appointees also include Honeywell International Inc. CEO David Cote, a Republican; former Congressional Budget Office Director Alice Rivlin, a Democrat; Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern; and Anne Fudge, former CEO of Young & Rubicam Brands.
  • Fed’s Hoenig Says Removing Bank Oversight Would Worsen Crisis
    March 24, 2010
    BusinessWeek/Bloomberg, by Scott Lanman
    His appointees also include Honeywell International Inc. CEO David Cote, a Republican; former Congressional Budget Office Director Alice Rivlin, a Democrat; Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern; and Anne Fudge, former CEO of Young & Rubicam Brands.
  • Secondary Sources: Health-Care Economists, Financial Overhaul, Wages
    March 22, 2010
    Wall Street Journal – Real Time Economics, by Phil Izzo
    Health-Care Economists: Robert Hahn and Peter Passell jump up from Menzie Chinn’s geographical breakdown of the dueling economist letters on the health-care overhaul. … The most persuasive explanation is that the organizers of the pro letter were in a hurry, and turned first to colleagues whose positions were known in advance and wouldn’t need persuading. Is it really any surprise that a letter drafted by Henry Aaron (Brookings), David Cutler (Harvard) and Alice Rivlin (Brookings) would be signed by five academics from Harvard, five from Princeton and four from Michigan? Indeed, if there is anything disturbing here, it is how much more concentrated the network of liberal policy works is than the network of their conservative counterparts: The 131 signers of the anti letter are connected to institutions in 33 states. Or maybe conservatives just have more practice with e-mail blasts.”
  • Can the U.S. Still Tackle Big Problems? Lessons from the Health-Care Battle.
    March 21, 2010
    Washington Post, by William D. Eggers and John O’Leary
    Avoiding this problem begins by realizing that it's far better to replicate an approach that has already proved itself in the real world than to launch an entirely novel solution. For example, welfare reform succeeded in part because Congress had the luxury of learning from innovative approaches in Wisconsin, Oregon and elsewhere. "We had a lot of evidence about what would work," explained Ron Haskins, who was the senior congressional staffer who wrote the legislation. "Many states had demonstration programs before we wrote the bill. We just rode the wave."
  • Bernanke: Keep Fed as Watchdog of Small US Banks
    March 20, 2010
    Associated Press, by Jeannine Aversa
    Dodd's staff pointed to testimony from a former Fed vice chairman, Alice Rivlin, and a former Fed director of monetary affairs, Vincent Reinhart. "I didn't really experience that we learned a lot from the supervising particular banking institutions that was useful to monetary policy," Rivlin told the committee last July.
  • Romancing the CBO
    March 18, 2010
    Slate Magazine, by Christopher Beam
    One of the best policy ideas in the health care bill, according to most economists, is the tax on so-called "Cadillac" health care plans. It's also one of the most controversial, particularly among unions. Perhaps that's why the tax doesn't kick in until 2018, when Barack Obama is no longer president and the 111th Congress is a distant memory. The problem is, there's no guarantee it will ever kick in. Congress could simply overturn it in 2018. And opponents now have eight years to rally against it. One of the best revenue streams for health care reform is thus not only delayed but also uncertain. "To some it does seem, if not ludicrous, very iffy," says Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution.
  • Social Immobility: Climbing The Economic Ladder Is Harder In The U.S. Than In Most European Countries
    March 17, 2010
    Huffington Post, by Dan Froomkin
    "The way I usually put this is that when the rungs of the ladder are far apart, it becomes more difficult to climb the ladder," Brookings Institution economist Isabel Sawhill tells HuffPost. "Given that we have more inequality in the U.S. right now than at any time since the 1920s, we should be concerned that this may become a vicious cycle. Inequality in one generation may mean less opportunity for the next generation to get ahead and thus still more inequality in the future." There are things governments can do to reduce inequality, the OECD points out. Progressive tax systems and social programs help reduce income inequalities between parents "so that their descendants' income would converge more quickly."
  • What Do Leading Economists and Pro-Life Progressive Activists Have in Common? They Both Support Health Reform
    March 14, 2010
    Huffington Post, by Harold Pollack
    Signers include three Nobel Prize winners, including Kenneth Arrow, who founded the modern field of health economics. Nerd confession: I own "Economist trading cards" for Arrow and others who signed this letter. Randall Ellis doesn't have a card, but he is President-Elect of the American Society of Health Economists, and he signed the letter. I don't have cards for Henry Aaron, Alan Blinder, David Cutler, Alan Garber, Jon Gruber, Daniel Kahneman, Harold Luft, Will Manning, Len Nichols, Alice Rivlin, Harold Pollack, Richard Thaler, and Richard Zeckhauser. They signed it too.
  • Hensarling Has Doubts About How Successful Deficit-Reduction Commission Will Be
    March 14, 2010
    Dallas Morning News, by Todd J. Gillman
    Obama named Bill Clinton's former chief of staff Erskine Bowles and former GOP Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming to co-chair the commission. There will also be three Democratic senators and three House Democrats yet to be named, plus Stern, head of the Service Employees International Union; Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin; and two business executives chosen by the White House.
  • Republicans Name 6 to Debt-Reduction Panel
    March 12, 2010
    New York Times, by Jackie Calmes
    The delay in filling a commission that Mr. Obama created three weeks ago is frustrating members who have been picked. “We’d like to get started — time’s a-wasting,” said Alice Rivlin, a former director of the Congressional and White House budget offices who is one of Mr. Obama’s appointees.
  • Sen. Sessions Pushes for Limits on Federal Spending
    March 11, 2010
    Will Anderson Show Blog
    A bipartisan group of budget watchdogs has endorsed the plan as a positive step towards budget responsibility. Supporters include the National Taxpayers Union, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Heritage Foundation, and the Concord Coalition. Budget experts Alice Rivlin, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, and Alan Viard are also backing the proposal.
  • Blue Dogs Only Chasing Their Tail
    March 9, 2010
    Huffington Post, by Will Marshall
    A better idea, from the Brookings-Heritage Fiscal Seminar, is to bring Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security on budget, which would require Congress to bring Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security on budget, which would require Congress to periodically reconcile income and spending to keep the programs solvent.
  • The Deficit Commission Trap
    March 9, 2010
    Wall Street Journal Editorial
    By contrast, Mr. Obama has allowed himself to make selections from outside Congress, and he has already chosen former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Republican Senator Alan Simpson as his co-chairs, as well as Honeywell CEO David Cote, former advertising executive Ann Fudge, Alice Rivlin of Brookings, and that great advocate of spending restraint, service workers chief Andy Stern.
  • Supplemental Poverty Measure Announced
    March 3, 2010
    Institute for Research on Poverty
    IRP Director Tim Smeeding and Ron Haskins, Brookings Senior Fellow and Co-director of the Center on Children and Families, have been discussing these same technical issues involved in poverty measurement, with a group of experts who first met at Brookings Institution in October 2009. They released a letter in support of the Commerce Department’s announcement.
  • Boehner Says Deficit Commission Should Report Before Election
    March 3, 2010
    Bloomberg, by Nicholas Johnston and Hans Nichols
    Obama created the 18-member National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility last month and directed it to issue a final report by Dec. 1, after the November elections. Obama has named six members of the panel, including the co-chairmen, and Honeywell International Inc. Chief Executive Officer David Cote and former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alice Rivlin. Congressional Republicans and Democrats name the rest.
  • The Truth about the Deficit Commission
    March 3, 2010
    Washington Times, by Monica Crowley
    Alice Rivlin, President Clinton's White House budget director, was part of an administration that worked with a Republican Congress to reduce the deficit and produce a budget surplus. But that was the same administration that also ratcheted up the Community Reinvestment Act, the policy germ that diseased the entire economy via the subprime mortgage crisis.
  • The Future of Social Security Rests with Nancy Pelosi
    March 2, 2010
    Huffington Post, by Ross Eisenbrey
    That's why polls show that most people -- Republicans and Democrats -- are happy to pay modestly higher payroll taxes to preserve Social Security benefits. You would hardly think this was an option listening to Obama's appointees. Alice Rivlin, a Democratic appointee, has already announced that her answer to the deficit includes raising the Social Security retirement age. This is a benefit cut, plain and simple.
  • Vice Chairman of Federal Reserve to Leave in June
    March 2, 2010
    Pittsburgh Tribune Live
    It's "very possible" for Obama to name Tarullo vice chairman and appoint economists or academics to the other vacancies, said Camden Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers of America, a Washington group representing about 5,000 firms with $1 trillion in assets. Romer or Yellen "would be terrific if they wanted to do it," said Alice Rivlin, Fed vice chairman from 1996 to 1999.
  • Geithner, Summers Leading Search for Successor to Fed’s Kohn
    March 2, 2010
    Bloomberg, by Scott Lanman and Nicholas Johnston
    It’s “very possible” for Obama to name Tarullo vice chairman and appoint economists or academics to the other vacancies, said Camden Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers of America, a Washington group representing about 5,000 firms with $1 trillion in assets. Romer or Yellen “would be terrific if they wanted to do it,” said Alice Rivlin, Fed vice chairman from 1996 to 1999.
  • Hoyer: Failure Not an Option. Really.
    March 1, 2010
    CNN, by Rich Barbieri
    And on Friday, Obama named four additional members including Alice Rivlin, one of Washington's leading fiscal hawks and founding director of the Congressional Budget Office.
  • Opinion: Putting our Fiscal House in Order
    March 1, 2010
    The Hill, by Peter Orszag
    The two commission chairmen have proven records of working across party lines on difficult issues and have the commitment and skills to do this hard work. The president’s other selections — Andy Stern, Alice Rivlin, David Cote and Ann Fudge — represent a wide range of experiences, skills and views. Our belief that the commission can play a constructive role in putting the nation back on a stable fiscal trajectory is underscored by the involvement of these distinguished leaders. – Peter Orszag
  • Right-Wing Media Outraged by Labor Representation on Deficit Commission
    March 1, 2010
    MediaMatters.org
    In addition to Simpson and Bowles, the commission includes two members with business backgrounds -- Republican and Honeywell CEO David Cote, and Ann Fudge, former CEO of Young & Rubicam Brands and executive at General Mills and Kraft -- Stern, the one representative from labor, and Alice Rivlin, who the Journal called "the widely respected founding director of the Congressional Budget Office and one of the nation's most authoritative voices on the federal debt."
  • Neither Kooks nor Dummies
    February 28, 2010
    Scripps News Service, by Jay Ambrose
    Think the concern about the national debt is loony? Those who are similarly concerned include such economists as Alice Rivlin, who served in President Bill Clinton’s Cabinet; Isabel Sawhill, a budget expert at Brookings Institution; and Paul Volcker, past chairman of the Federal Reserve.
  • Meet the Commission to Save the Country from Default
    February 27, 2010
    Portfolio.com, by Steve Rosenbush
    The president announced his remaining four picks on Friday. They include former Fed vice chairman Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institution, Honeywell CEO David Cote, Young & Rubicam CEO Ann Fudge, and Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union.
  • Obama Rounds Out Deficit Panel with Honeywell Chief
    February 26, 2010
    Reuters, by Jeff Mason
    The president named Honeywell Chief Executive David Cote, a Republican, and Democrat Alice Rivlin, a former Federal Reserve vice president who was also budget director under former President Bill Clinton.
  • Obama: Four Diverse Picks for Debt Panel
    February 26, 2010
    WSJ/ Washington Wire, by Jonathan Weisman
    Finally, he picked Alice Rivlin, the widely respected founding director of the Congressional Budget Office and one of the nation’s most authoritative voices on the federal debt.
  • SEIU Chief Gets Deficit Panel Nod
    February 26, 2010
    National Journal Hotline, by Reid Wilson
    Obama also named 3 other members of the committee. Honeywell CEO Dave Cote, a GOPer, and Ann Fudge, the former chair and CEO of Young & Rubicam Brands, will serve on the commission alongside ex-CBO head/ex-Fed vice chair Alice Rivlin, now at the Brookings Institute. Ex-Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY) and ex-WH CoS Erskine Bowles will chair the 18-member panel.
  • Obama's Bipartisan Move on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform
    February 26, 2010
    All Headline News, by Tejinder Singh
    The other four persons named bymembers of the commission are Dave Cote, chairman, chief executive officer and president of Honeywell; Ann Fudge, former chairman and chief executive officer of Young & Rubicam Brands; Alice Rivlin, senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and visiting professor at Georgetown University; and Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union.
  • Obama Makes Picks for Debt Commission
    February 26, 2010
    Associated Press
    President Barack Obama rounded out his appointments to his new deficit commission, naming former Federal Reserve Vice Chair Alice Rivlin and three others to serve on the panel.
  • Cote, Rivlin Said Among Picks for Deficit Commission
    February 26, 2010
    Bloomberg.com, by Hans Nichols and Roger Runningen
    Honeywell International Inc. Chief Executive Officer David Cote and former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alice Rivlin will be named today by President Barack Obama to a commission on cutting the federal deficit, an administration official said. Rivlin, 78, a former director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, currently serves as a senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington and is a visiting professor at Georgetown University. The founding director of the Congressional Budget Office, Rivlin graduated from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and received her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
  • Ways and Means Leader is Wary of Deficit-Cutting Panel
    February 25, 2010
    Government Executive, by Humberto Sanchez
    Obama last week named Erskine Bowles, chief of staff to former President Bill Clinton, and former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., to chair the panel. He is also considering three others: Honeywell International Inc. CEO David Cote, a Republican; former Congressional Budget Office Director Alice Rivlin; and Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, both Democrats.
  • Jay Ambrose: Saluting our Tea Party Saviors
    February 25, 2010
    Scripps Howard News, by Jay Ambrose
    Think the position on debt is loony? Those who are similarly concerned include such economists as Alice Rivlin, who served in President Bill Clinton's Cabinet; Isabel Sawhill, a budget expert at Brookings Institution and Paul Volcker, past chairman of the Federal Reserve.
  • Baucus, Conrad, Durbin Join Deficit Commission
    February 23, 2010
    FireDogLake.com, by David Dayen
    Speculation on Obama’s other four choices outside of Bowles and Simpson have gone anywhere from the CEO of Honeywell to Andy Stern of the SEIU to deficit scold Alice Rivlin.
  • Broken Government: Middle Class Fed Up?
    February 22, 2010
    CNN/American Morning, by Carol Costello
    “None of them are willing to do the unpopular things, which means they're not willing to raise taxes, and they're not willing to cut spending. So we're at an impasse.” – Isabel Sawhill
  • Obama Leans Toward Centrists on New Deficit-Reduction Panel
    February 22, 2010
    The Hill, by Walter Alarkon
    Alice Rivlin, President Bill Clinton’s budget director from 1994 to 1996, is being considered to join the commission tasked with coming up with a plan to tackle the country’s growing $12.3 trillion debt, according to an administration official. Rivlin would join former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), whom Obama named as the panel’s co-chairmen last week. All three had a hand in deficit reduction moves during the 1990s. Simpson voted for a 1990 agreement between President George H.W. Bush and Democrats that raised taxes to reduce the deficit and was opposed by most Senate Republicans. Rivlin and Bowles helped craft Clinton’s budget proposals and deals with GOP-led Congresses that led to four years of surpluses starting in 1998.
  • Honeywell CEO Eyed for Obama Deficit Panel
    February 21, 2010
    Reuters
    The newspaper said that Republican David Cote of Honeywell and Democrats Andrew Stern, president of the 2.2 million-member Service Employees International Union, and Alice Rivlin, the former Fed vice president who was also budget director under former President Bill Clinton, could be named within days.
  • Eclectic Trio of Candidates Considered for Obama Deficit Panel
    February 21, 2010
    Washington Post, by Lori Montgomery
    The White House is also considering appointing two Democrats: Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, and Alice Rivlin, a budget expert and former vice chair of the Federal Reserve who recently launched a separate, independent effort to draft a bipartisan plan to stabilize government borrowing. … Stern and Rivlin are well-known in Washington. … Rivlin was founding director of the Congressional Budget Office and White House budget director under Bill Clinton. She has long called for a mix of new taxes and changes to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to bring budget deficits under control.
  • Economy Could be Crushed by Borrowing
    February 21, 2010
    Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, by Debra Erdley
    "We're becoming dangerously dependent on other countries lending us all this money," said economist Isabel V. Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and associate director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration. "At some point, this will raise interest rates and could retard the recovery or lead to another economic crisis. We are passing an enormous debt burden to our children and grandchildren that many would say is almost immoral or unethical. And we have no room to deal with any contingency that might come along. If another Katrina, or a flu outbreak or another financial crisis were to occur we're getting to the point where we have no options left. "We're losing control of our economic destiny," Sawhill said.
  • Rivlin: How to Solve the National Debt Crisis
    February 19, 2010
    US News & World Report, by Jessica Rettig
    As founding director of the Congressional Budget Office and director of the White House Office of Management and Budget during the first Clinton administration, Alice Rivlin is a renowned expert on U.S. economic policy. Now, as she and her cochair, former Republican chairman of the Senate Budget Committee Pete Domenici, launch the Debt Reduction Task Force, a nongovernment initiative backed by the Bipartisan Policy Center, she will step up to the plate yet again to develop a strategy to confront the national debt. She recently spoke with U.S. News about the problems associated with a large debt. Excerpts [of the interview]…
  • Washington's Time for Bipartisanship: Retirement
    February 19, 2010
    Time Magazine, by Michael Scherer
    "We are all less inhibited when we are not there, when we are not elected," says Republican Pete Domenici, who retired last year after a 36-year career as a New Mexico Senator that included several important bipartisan accomplishments. He is now leading a U.S. debt-reduction task force with Alice Rivlin, a Democrat who directed the Office of Management and Budget for President Clinton.
  • The Magic Debt Reduction Commission
    February 19, 2010
    The New Republic Blog, by Jonathan Chait
    Economist Alice Rivlin of Brookings, who's not exactly naive, has a post explaining why the commission "just may prove the right tool for galvanizing action." Here is the entire portion of Rivlin's post…
  • Induced Inflation Feared as Way to Cut Debt
    February 19, 2010
    Washington Times, by Patrice Hill
    "As our debt mounts, the risk grows that our creditors, especially foreign creditors who own half our debt, will lose confidence in our ability to get our house in order and will demand dramatically higher interest rates," said Alice Rivlin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office. Significantly higher rates would "derail the economic recovery and balloon the cost of servicing the federal debt."
  • Debt Commission Needed?
    February 18, 2010
    CNBC
    Discussing whether we need another commission, with Alice Rivlin, Brookings Institution and Sen. Domenici, Bipartisan Policy Center.
  • Can Obama's Debt Commission Overcome Congress' Politics?
    February 17, 2010
    McClatchy Newspapers, by David Lightman and William Douglas
    "I'm really hopeful. I wouldn't have said that two years ago, but the long-run problem today is closer than it used to be," said Alice Rivlin, a former Federal Reserve Board vice chairman who's the co-chair of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Debt Reduction Task Force. "What's changed today is that the last couple of years, the level of debt has risen so dramatically that we're close to not being able to finance additional debt," she said. Rivlin said that a commission would help educate the public about the debt crisis, and that politicians would come around. "The public is listening, and the government will respond," she said.
  • Borrowing toward Financial Disaster
    February 15, 2010
    Chicago Daily Observer, by Dennis Byrne
    Alice Rivlin (above right), co-chair of the BiPartisan Policy Center Debt Reduction Task Force and past director of the Bureau of the Budget, recently put it this way …
  • Curbing Debt: Should, Coulda. Now Gotta.
    February 15, 2010
    CNN Money.com, by Jeanne Sahadi
    "And [the plan] must have the support of the leadership of both political parties," said Alice Rivlin, former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, former White House budget director under President Clinton and former director of the Congressional Budget Office. Rivlin and former Republican Senator Pete Domenici have formed a bipartisan debt-reduction task force that will craft a debt-reduction budget plan for Congress and the public to consider by the end of the year. They, like other deficit-hawk groups, are suggesting that lawmakers seriously reconsider a number of proposals made in the past five years. Here are just five that likely will get more play in coming months.
  • In Hard Times, Americans Blame the Poor
    February 15, 2010
    Philadelphia Inquirer, by Alfred Lubrano
    The United States "is very heterogeneous with very little ability to empathize with groups that are poor," said Washington economist Isabel Sawhill. That general lack of empathy can inspire anger toward the poor, especially from the right, experts say. … Welfare rolls are down around 60 percent since the mid-1990s, when welfare was switched from an entitlement to a work program that requires recipients to have jobs, said Ron Haskins, who drafted the so-called welfare-reform bill of 1996 as the Republican staff director of the U.S. House Ways and Means committee. … "Unplanned childbearing contributes to poverty," said Sawhill, the economist. Others disagree. "Having a kid is not the problem," O'Brien said. "Growing up in poverty is."
  • Ex-Fed Vice Chair Rivlin: US Budget on 'Dangerous Trajectory'
    February 11, 2010
    Market News International, by John Shaw
    Alice Rivlin, the former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and White House budget director, said Thursday that U.S. fiscal policy is on a "dangerous trajectory," adding that it's imperative for policymakers to craft a serious deficit reduction program soon. "On any reasonable set of economic assumptions, the U.S. budget is on an unsustainable track," Rivlin told the Senate Budget Committee, adding that the gap between revenues and spending is huge -- and growing. "Ultimately, we will not be able to borrow enough to finance the widening gap between spending and revenues," she said. Rivlin said the nation's dark fiscal future has worsened "dramatically" by the combined effects of the 2007-8 financial crisis and the ensuing recession. "Complacency about the fiscal threat is no longer possible. Unfortunately, complacency has been replaced by strident partisan blaming," she said …
  • Congress Takes a Knife to Obama's $3.8 Trillion Budget Proposal
    February 11, 2010
    Fiscal Times, by Katherine Reynolds Lewis and Elaine S. Povich
    "Almost everybody who looks at these issues has pretty low expectations right now," said Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of its Budgeting for National Priorities project. "Congress is so badly divided and so partisan on these questions. It's simply not possible for people to come together and agree to do anything very significant."
  • Alice Rivlin: Reducing the Federal Debt Requires the Courage to Cut Spending and Increase Taxes
    February 11, 2010
    U.S. News & World Report
    Alice Rivlin, who is happy to call herself a "budget scold," warns that the rising federal debt is going to be "a real tsunami if we don't get ahead of it." But putting the federal budget back in balance without stalling a still-fragile economy is a huge challenge. We can start, Rivlin says, by trimming outmoded federal programs and increasing revenue over the long term by raising the retirement age for Social Security and means-testing Medicare benefits. "We can't get out of this problem without doing both spending cuts, especially slowing the growth of entitlement, and tax increases." …
  • With Moody's Credit Warning, It's Time for U.S. to Suck in its Deficit Glut
    February 9, 2010
    St. Petersburgh Times, by Robert Trigaux
    So here are five ways to get this country back on a sounder footing. These are recommendations espoused by many experts on debt reduction ranging from liberal-leaning Brookings budget maven Isabel Sawhill and conservative Columbia Business School dean (and ex-chairman of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers) Glenn Hubbard to Bloomberg News columnist David Pauly. …
  • Racking Up Miles? Maybe Not.
    February 7, 2010
    Washington Post, by Ashley Halsey III
    "As vehicles become more fuel-efficient, revenue from gas taxes falls," said a Brookings Institution report co-authored by Alice M. Rivlin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office. "A more sustainable solution . . . is road-use pricing."
  • Obama Submits Largest Budget in History, But Portrayed as Fiscal Conservative by Networks
    February 7, 2010
    Business & Media Institute, by Julia Seymour
    The networks should have consulted more budget and tax experts including Isabel Sawhill, a budget expert at the liberal Brookings Institution. The Wall Street Journal on Feb. 1 quoted her as saying, “‘The pay-go rules will make it more difficult for Congress to dig the hole deeper but won't affect currently projected red ink; and the commission will likely be a paper tiger,’ she wrote on Friday. ‘In short, these proposals will still leave us with unsustainable deficits as far as the eye can see. It is depressing to discover that we can no longer even aspire to balance the budget once the recession is over.’”
  • Cut Spending to Reduce the Federal Deficit
    February 3, 2010
    Journal & Courier (Lafayette)
    In the days before World War II, it was a common bipartisan belief that the government should live within its means, Isabel V. Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution wrote Friday in her blog at brookings.edu. This meant that spending was cut and taxes increased to match the government's outlays. Record deficits are driving up the debt and diverting revenue for interest payments on the nation's loans from funding services, Sawhill noted. The deficits also are tying up the money needed to get out of debt. Sawhill warned that the pattern of deficit spending leads to the public's distrust in the government and also conditions taxpayers to accept the dangers of deficit spending. By looking at congressional approval ratings, partisan bickering and gridlock, it appears we have already reached the dysfunction Sawhill predicted.
  • Douglas Elmendorf: The Numbers Man Whom D.C. Trusts — and Loathes
    February 3, 2010
    Time, by Karen Tumulty
    Elmendorf's pronouncement led the White House to regroup. A few days later, Obama summoned Elmendorf, former CBO director Alice Rivlin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Jonathan Gruber and Harvard University's David Cutler to the Oval Office to go over the bills and find other ways to wring out savings.
  • Obama's Deficit in Details, Not Just Budgets
    February 3, 2010
    Washington Examiner, by Jay Ambrose
    In the end, this budget proposal is more of the same -- spend more and more with nothing to reverse course. As Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution is quoted in the Wall Street Journal, the proposals give us "unsustainable deficits as far as the eye can see." A president who dismisses his critics as always partisan or ideological ought to know that this is an objective, expert analyst talking.
  • In a $3.8 Trillion Budget, Pork Is Hardly the Biggest Problem
    February 2, 2010
    AOL News/Daily Finance, by Jonathan Baer
    Isabel Sawhill, senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, says the search for pork is getting more difficult because there's less of it. "There is no line item called 'pork'," she says. "That does not mean we don't have a huge fiscal problem, but it isn't driven by pork." … But eliminating even the most wasteful government programs in Washington is practically impossible because some member of Congress often emerges as a white knight to save it from the fiscal chopping block. Sawhill dealt with this reality in the early 1990s when she was deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget and "tried to get rid of a lot of stuff," in her words.
  • Boggling Deficits and Blue Smoke
    February 2, 2010
    Washington Times, Examiner Editorial
    But the reality is, as the Brookings Institution's Isabel Sawhill told the Wall Street Journal, "these proposals will still leave us with unsustainable deficits as far as the eye can see. It is depressing to discover that we can no longer even aspire to balance the budget once the recession is over."
  • Deficit Climbs to Record Under Obama's Budget
    February 2, 2010
    San Francisco Chronicle, by Carolyn Lochhead
    But even liberal economists questioned whether Obama is doing enough. Urban Institute economist Isabel Sawhill called such measures "totally insufficient," saying it is "depressing" to see the administration abandon even the goal of a balanced budget.
  • Commentary-President's Budget Commission
    February 1, 2010
    PBS – Nightly Business Report
    “The president is creating a budget commission because the United States is facing a debt tsunami and normal political processes are too broken to deal with it. The prospect of dangerously escalating public debt predates the recession and the measures taken to mitigate it. An aging population and rising medical spending are pushing the cost of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security up faster than current taxes can support. Commitments made over many years by both Republicans and Democrats cannot be financed by ever-increasing borrowing. Even if we want to pass these bills on to future taxpayers, we will not be able to borrow what we need from the rest of the world without raising interest rates to killer levels and overwhelming taxpayers with debt service. The sensible approach is for both parties to work together on a package of long-term reductions in spending growth and increases in revenue, phased in slowly so it wont derail recovery or endanger those already at or near retirement. But current politics isn't sensible. Republicans won't talk about taxes and Democrats won't talk about entitlement cuts. Can the president shame both sides into backing the commission and voting on its recommendations? Let's hope so, because we can't hide from the debt tsunami much longer. I'm Alice Rivlin.”
  • Deficit Expert: 'We Shouldn't Give Up Balancing The Budget'
    February 1, 2010
    NPR – All Things Considered
    President Obama introduced a 2011 budget Monday that contains a record-breaking $1.56 trillion deficit. Isabel Sawhill, senior fellow the economics program at the Brookings Institution, says that our tolerance for a deficit has grown, but that's not necessarily a good thing. "I think we shouldn't give up on the idea that we should try to balance our budget," she tells NPR's Robert Siegel.
  • Can Washington Tackle the Debt?
    February 1, 2010
    NPR / WBUR – On Point w/ Tom Ashbrook
    Isabel Sawhill appears in a panel discussion on the national debt and the projected budget deficits.
  • Sawhill on Obama’s Goal of Cutting Deficit to 3% of GDP
    February 1, 2010
    MSNBC – Andrea Mitchell Reports
    “First, and foremost, Congress is not going to accept all the things that the President is proposing, so that is going to lop off some of the progress that is otherwise in the budget. In addition it is not a very ambitious goal to get the deficit down to 3.9% of GDP…” – Isabel Sawhill
  • Huge Deficits May Alter U.S. Politics and Global Power
    February 1, 2010
    New York Times, by David E. Sanger
    Republicans stayed largely silent about the debt during the Bush years. Democrats have described it as a necessary evil during the economic crisis that defined Mr. Obama’s first year. Interest in a long-term solution seems limited. Or, as Isabel V. Sawhill of the Brookings Institution put it Monday on MSNBC, “The problem here is not honesty, but political will.”
  • Re-Litigating The Past
    February 1, 2010
    Forbes, by Reihan Salam
    In January of 2009, before the stimulus package was passed, Alice Rivlin, the distinguished Brookings Institution economist and the director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Clinton, strongly recommended that the recession-fighting elements of the package, like extending unemployment insurance, should be separated from the public investment program. Because infrastructure spending represents a long-term commitment that won't immediately improve the employment picture, Rivlin felt that the country would be better served by a more carefully crafted infrastructure bill that would also incorporate reductions and new revenues, thus making it more fiscally sustainable.

  • Deficit to Hit All-Time High
    January 31, 2010
    Wall Street Journal, by Jonathan Weisman
    Isabel Sawhill, a budget expert at the Brookings Institution, criticized the president's goal— a deficit of 3% of GDP long after the recession has ended—saying it amounted to "defining deficits down." "The pay-go rules will make it more difficult for Congress to dig the hole deeper but won't affect currently projected red ink; and the commission will likely be a paper tiger," she wrote on Friday. "In short, these proposals will still leave us with unsustainable deficits as far as the eye can see. It is depressing to discover that we can no longer even aspire to balance the budget once the recession is over."
  • Some Truths about that Deficit
    January 29, 2010
    Boston Globe, by Scott Lehigh
    “When other people aren’t spending, then government has to play the role of spender of last resort,’’ says Isabel Sawhill, an economist at Brookings and a former associate director of the Office of Management and Budget. “The really serious problem is when you look out a decade or two from now, the deficits just keep getting worse.’’
  • Decreasing The Federal Deficit
    January 29, 2010
    Forbes.com, by Oxford Analytica
    …a bipartisan Brookings Institution policy group featuring former Republican Sen. Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin, former President Bill Clinton's director of the Office of Management and Budget.
  • Deficit Soars while Congressional Earmarks Continue Unabated
    January 28, 2010
    Dakota Beacon, by Beacon Author
    Alice Rivlin, formerly a director of both the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget and one of the authors of the report, noted that, "Previously, when we were worried about deficits, we could take comfort in the fact that the debt was not very high relative to the economy. But now the debt has shot up. The cushion is gone. If the same thing (a severe recession) happened again, we wouldn't be able to borrow to deal with it."
  • Obama Aid Plans for ‘Strained’ Middle Class Limited in Reach
    January 28, 2010
    Bloomberg, by Mike Dorning
    Overall, the scale of proposals, which also address easing the burden of student-loan payments on graduates in low-paying jobs, is “small potatoes” said Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution. The limited scope, she said, reflects the budget constraints the Obama administration faces as it seeks to narrow a deficit forecast to be $1.35 trillion this year. “It is in the context of an overall freeze in discretionary domestic spending,” Sawhill said. “Given the deficit situation and the public anger toward government spending, it’s hard to see how they could have done a lot more.”
  • Obama Credits Pay-As-You-Go Rule with Producing 1990s Surpluses
    January 27, 2010
    Politifact.com
    Alice Rivlin, budget chief under President Bill Clinton, characterized PAYGO as a significant factor. She said in a recent interview on PBS's Frontline that PAYGO and other budget rules "made it easier for the Clinton administration to work on the budget deficit." She said the PAYGO rule provided discipline so policymakers could resist tempting but expensive programs. The rule "meant that the president could say no, and the Congress could say no to a lot of good-sounding ideas, including Medicare prescription drugs" that would have made it difficult to balance the budget.
  • What the Economists Say about Obama
    January 27, 2010
    CNBC TV
    Two economists weigh in on their opinions on President Obama, with Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission member and Alice Rivlin, Brookings senior fellow.
  • Triangulation Makes a Comeback
    January 27, 2010
    Politico.com, by Eamon Jamers
    “It is an effort to demonstrate that the president understands that deficits must come down over time, and he’s taking a small first step,” said Alice Rivlin, who headed the Office of Management and Budget under Clinton. “It’s quite small, but it’s a step.”
  • Senate Rejects Obama-Backed Commission on National Debt
    January 27, 2010
    Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, by Daniel Malloy
    On Monday, the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank, announced the formation of a task force to take a yearlong look at the debt. Former Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Alice Rivlin, who ran the Office of Management and Budget under former President Bill Clinton, will lead the group. They said their work would run parallel to any debt-reduction effort on Capitol Hill and would be completed after the November elections.
  • Obama's Baby Steps
    January 27, 2010
    Denver Post (Op-Ed), by Vincent Carroll
    Walker, who was appointed by President Clinton and now heads the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, probably wouldn't agree with that gloomy assessment. But he does concur that the national debt and unfunded liabilities cannot be brought under control simply by raising taxes … Walker's anti-deficit coalition visiting The Post included a pair of left-right bookends, Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution and Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation.
  • Budget Deficit for 2010 Paints 'Bleak' View
    January 27, 2010
    Wall Street Journal, by John D. McKinnon
    The CBO report makes it less likely that the U.S. will extend those tax breaks permanently. Instead, many tax experts believe temporary extensions are likely later this year. "It's hard to see how it makes sense to enact long-term tax cuts right now" given the deficit problem, said William Gale, a tax expert at the liberal Brookings Institution.
  • If Only Someone Had Thought of That
    January 26, 2010
    Matthew Yglesias Blog
    Alice Rivlin appealed to the liberals to drop their reflexive resistance to a commission that would reduce spending. “Cutting spending, especially entitlement benefits that people have counted on, will cause real pain, but it’s nothing [compared] to what would happen if we pretend that we can go on this trajectory,” she said.
  • The Domenici/Rivlin Debt Reduction Task Force
    January 26, 2010
    Heritage Foundation/Foundry Blog
    Today in Washington, the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) launched its new Debt Reduction Task Force, chaired by former Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) and former OMB director and CBO director Dr. Alice Rivlin. The task force will aggressively address the abysmal fiscal outlook of the United States economy due to government spending. As Domenici and Rivlin displayed, the amount of debt held by the public is set to reach 100% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2019. Under the same trajectory, the debt would reach 400% of GDP by 2049. As Rivlin pointed out, however, this outlook is completely unrealistic. Far before the debt reached such gargantuan proportions, lenders would refuse to continue purchasing our debt and the United States would find itself in economic ruin…
  • Analysis: Deficit-Cutting Vows Not Matched by Acts
    January 26, 2010
    Associated Press, by Tom Raum
    Domenici is now teamed up with economist Alice Rivlin, budget director in the Clinton White House and vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve from 1996 to 1999, in heading a private-sector debt task force sponsored by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank.
  • Debt and Joblessness
    January 26, 2010
    NPR – Diane Rehm Show
    Alice Rivlin appears in a debate over the role of the Federal government and Federal Reserve in steering the U-S economy out of recession, addressing the deficit and improving the outlook for jobs.
  • Alice Rivlin Says New Fed Benchmark Rate a 'Good Idea': Video
    January 26, 2010
    Bloomberg TV
    Former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alice Rivlin talks with Bloomberg's Bernard Lo about the Fed's consideration of adopting a new benchmark interest rate to replace the one they’ve used for the last two decades. Fed policy makers, who began a two-day meeting at 2 p.m. today in Washington, have said they may replace or supplement the fed funds rate with interest paid on excess bank reserves. Rivlin also discusses Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke's performance.
  • Don't Let America's Red Ink Scare You
    January 26, 2010
    Christian Science Monitor, by David R. Francis
    Former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and Office of Management and Budget Director Alice Rivlin listens as former Sen. Pete Domenici, R-Minn., speaks at the Bipartisan Policy Center at a conference to launch its Debt Reduction Task Force in Washington on January 25.
  • As Senate Defeats Debt Commission, Plans to Rein In Deficit Abound
    January 26, 2010
    Wall Street Journal/Washington Wire Blog, by John D. McKinnon
    In addition, think tanks and nonprofits were cranking out ideas and even setting up blue-ribbon panels of their own to come up with new plans. The Bipartisan Policy Center, for example, has formed a task force co-chaired by former Sen. Pete Domenici (R., N.M.) and Alice Rivlin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office.
  • Bipartisan Group is Latest to Urge Cutting U.S.' Record $12 Trillion Debt
    January 26, 2010
    Dallas Morning News, by Todd J. Gillman
    "Raising taxes causes real pain. Cutting spending, especially entitlement benefits that people have counted on, will cause real pain," said co-chairwoman Alice Rivlin, the Clinton-era budget director. But such steps – in some combination that so far has eluded policymakers – will be required, because the explosion of debt is unsustainable, she said. "It's fantasy. We couldn't borrow that much money. No one would lend it to us. And the interest rates that we would have to pay would sink our economy," she said.
  • U.S. Senate Stymies Obama on Deficit Cuts
    January 26, 2010
    Globe & Mail (Canada), by Kevin Carmichael
    “The situation is very, very bad,” Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said in an interview. “I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel. We have absolutely no willingness in the Congress to address the issue.”
  • New Initiative to Lower Debt
    January 26, 2010
    WSJ – Wire Watch, by Susan Davis
    Lowering the Deficit: The Bipartisan Policy Center will announce this morning the launch of its Debt Reduction Task Force to work out a plan to cut the U.S. debt. Former New Mexico Republican Sen. Pete Domenici and former Congressional Budget Office Director Alice Rivlin will co-chair. Former Senate leaders Bob Dole and Tom Daschle will also attend.
  • Setting a Target for Fiscal Responsibility
    January 26, 2010
    Washington Times (Op-Ed), by Robert Greenstein
    In the past eight months, major long-term budget analyses have come from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Congressional Budget Office, economists Alan Auerbach of the University of California at Berkeley and William Gale of the Brookings Institution, the Government Accountability Office, the Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform and a committee established under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Public Administration (NAS-NAPA). They all agree on the following…
  • Bipartisan Action on the Federal Debt -- Outside the Capitol, of Course
    January 26, 2010
    Washington Post, by Dana Milbank
    The two men, along with Alice Rivlin, who served as budget director and as a Fed official under President Bill Clinton, were in the offices of the Bipartisan Policy Center to announce that they were forming a private-sector debt commission. They recruited a group of heavy hitters, including two former governors and a former commerce secretary, but all they can do is make suggestions -- which, if past is prologue, Congress will ignore.
  • Commissions to Examine Paring Costs From Medicaid, Medicare
    January 25, 2010
    Kaiser Health News
    Another federal panel could be created to review overall federal spending, and a similar, unofficial taskforce has begun to coalesce that includes prominent former elected officials, The New York Times reports. The unofficial groups' "goal is to, by December, give Congress and Mr. Obama a multiyear plan to raise tax revenues and pare spending, especially for the Medicare and Medicaid programs, which are the biggest factors driving the projections of future high deficits, [former Senate Budget Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M.,] and [Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin] said in a joint interview"
  • Sen. Sessions Introduces Amendment to Limit Federal Spending
    January 25, 2010
    WAAY 31.com
    As the vote on the amendment nears, a bipartisan group of budget watchdogs has endorsed the plan as a positive step towards budget responsibility. Supporters include the National Taxpayers Union, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Heritage Foundation, and the Concord Coalition. Budget experts Alice Rivlin, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, and Alan Viard are also backing the proposal.
  • The Senate’s Opportunity to Reduce the Deficit
    January 25, 2010
    Christian Science Monitor, by the Editorial Board
    The commission was announced Monday and will be led by former Senate budget chairman Pete Domenici, a Republican, and Alice Rivlin, a Democrat and former White House budget director.
  • Obama's Twin Fiscal Headaches: The Debt and Deficit
    January 25, 2010
    USA Today
    Heading up the task force: former Republican senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico and former Congressional Budget Office director Alice Rivlin, a Democrat. Calling each other "Senator Pete" and "Doctor Alice," they vowed to make the hard decisions that presidents and Congresses haven't been able to do since the last significant deficit-cutting deal in 1997.
  • Independent Group to Look at Ways to Reduce Debt
    January 24, 2010
    New York Times, by Jackie Calmes
    The blue-ribbon group of 18 to 20 members will be led by Pete V. Domenici, a Republican former senator from New Mexico who for years was the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, and Alice Rivlin, a Democrat and former budget director for both Congress and President Bill Clinton who is also a former vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve.
  • White House Toughens Tone
    January 23, 2010
    Wall Street Journal, by Jonathan Weisman
    Concurrently, a group of retired senators on Monday plans to announce that former Republican Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin, a top Democratic economist, will spearhead a yearlong effort to devise a plan to slash the federal debt. Unlike many other studies, the Domenici-Rivlin panel will put forward a detailed blueprint for the country's future solvency.
  • Testimony: Robert Greenstein on the Long-Term Budget Problem Facing the United States
    January 21, 2010
    Center on Budget & Policy Priorities
    In the last eight months, budget projections and analyses of the scope of the fiscal problem over the long term have been issued not only by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, but also by CBO, the economists Alan Auerbach of the University of California at Berkeley and William Gale of the Brookings Institution, the Government Accountability Office, a commission supported by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts…
  • Bipartisan Policy Center to Launch Debt Reduction Task Force
    January 20, 2010
    FoxNews.com
    Under the leadership of former Senator Domenici and Dr. Alice Rivlin, the BPC's Task Force, composed of the nation's leading budget authorities from both sides of the aisle, will develop a comprehensive and politically-viable plan for consideration by Congress and the Administration. Federal budget expert Charles Konigsberg recently joined the BPC and will direct the Domenici-Rivlin Task Force.
  • Upset May Put Wall Street Back on Firing Line
    January 20, 2010
    National Post/Financial Post, by Janet Whitman
    Wall Street reform, which has tremendous resonance with many Americans, is the one area in which Democrats and Republicans could find common ground, policy experts said. There is a danger, however, that Democrats could push too far, said Isabel Sawhill, a Brookings Institution economist who served as a senior official in the Clinton White House budget office. "They could bash Wall Street and use it as a whipping boy, which isn't conducive to making the policy changes that are badly needed." … "I think Obama has for the most part been a moderate Democrat in most of the positions he had taken, so his ability to move further to the centre is somewhat limited," said Ms. Sawhill, who describes herself as "a very militant moderate. "Republican policy positions have been so unclear and have been so rhetorical in their criticisms that it is hard to see where he could find compromise."
  • How Does Health Care Reform Fit in Budget?
    January 19, 2010
    Politico, by Chris Frates
    And the sense among the experts is that pass, fail or still undecided, health care reform will at least make a cameo in the president’s budget. “It’s one of the president’s main priorities, and it will be in the budget, but not necessarily with a lot of details,” said former White House budget director Alice Rivlin. She helped draw up President Bill Clinton’s budgets during his failed push for health care reform in 1993 and 1994 and said she doesn’t remember the ongoing legislative efforts as large stumbling blocks to writing the spending plans. Besides, Rivlin said, reform’s most significant changes, including subsidies to help low- and middle-income people buy insurance and the creation of exchanges to help consumers purchase coverage, don’t take effect until after 2011 and will have little effect on next year’s spending plan.
  • Why the Left Should Support Entitlement Reform
    January 12, 2010
    TaxVox: the Tax Policy Center, by Howard Gleckman
    Former senior Clinton Administration budget aide Belle Sawhill has worried about this squeeze for years, and some progressives are listening. But most just can’t hear.
  • They Are Blowing the Tax Horns
    January 11, 2010
    EconomicPolicyJournal.com
    Alice Rivlin, a former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and the 1st Director of the Congressional Budget Office where she was a staunch critic of Reaganomics, has penned a column for Bloomberg, warning about government debt.
  • Changes Brewing for Holding Company Oversight
    January 11, 2010
    American Banker, by Stephanie Kaper
    But a growing roster of former regulators and key academics are challenging that view. Alice Rivlin, a former Fed vice chairman and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the central bank should be a systemic-risk regulator but does not need to supervise all holding companies. "It should have access to all the data … , but I don't think they have to be the regulator," she said.
  • 2009: Hard-Pressed Nonprofits Wait, Hope for Recovery
    December 30, 2009
    Philanthropy News Digest
    Proposals designed to help the sector navigate the economic storm included setting up a $15 billion bridge loan fund targeting human service providers, the extension and expansion of an IRA charitable rollover, and investing 10 percent of any stimulus directly into nonprofits. "We can take advantage," said the Brookings Institution's Isabel Sawhill at the time, "of a huge network of institutions that work hard...to improve the welfare of communities and individuals, that will spend the money quickly, that have the capacity to spread the dollars widely, and that in the absence of such help will need to shrink and thus become another drag on the economy."
  • 2009 vs. 1999: Are You Better Off?
    December 22, 2009
    MSN Money, by Dalia Fahmy
    "This hasn't been a sterling decade," says Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution and the author of "Creating an Opportunity Society." She argues that the American dream of prosperity and advancement has turned into a myth. "The average American family hasn't been able to improve its financial situation."
  • The Case Against the Millionaire Surtax
    December 21, 2009
    Tax Notes, by Alan D. Viard
    The conclusion about the limits of taxing the very wealthy does not rest on my calculations. The conclusion has been reached by a wide range of analysts across the political spectrum: Henry J. Aaron and Isabel V. Sawhill (Brookings Institution): "There is no way to restore this nation to fiscal health without higher taxes--for the middle class, as well as the rich."
  • Economists to Sen. Reid: ‘We Urge Enactment’ of Your Healthcare Reform Bill
    December 21, 2009
    Wall Street Journal/Real Time Economics, by Kelly Evans
    Two dozen economists - including Nobel laureates hailing everywhere from Harvard University to the University of California, Berkeley to The Brookings Institution - wrote a letter Monday to Senator Harry Reid (D, Nevada) expressing their support for his latest proposed healthcare reform bill now that his Manager’s Amendment includes “important elements of fiscal sustainability.”
  • Tax Impact Could be Crucial to Recovery
    December 21, 2009
    Washington Times, by David M. Dickson
    "We need to send a signal to the financial markets that we are getting serious about our fiscal situation," said Isabel Sawhill, an economist and budget expert at the Brookings Institution. "However, it is not desirable to raise those taxes immediately. They could be phased in gradually as the recovery unfolded, perhaps triggering them to reductions in the unemployment rate," Ms. Sawhill said.
  • Healthcare Reform: Prescription for Deficit Reduction?
    December 21, 2009
    Senior Market Advisor, by SMA Staff
    However, the CBO also determined that the bill would not significantly curtail the country’s record deficit. According to Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution, “The hope that healthcare reform would take care of our budget problem has evaporated."
  • John Eby: We better resolve to face reality, not watch it on TV
    December 19, 2009
    Niles Daily Star, by John Eby
    Alice Rivlin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget, told Washington Post columnist David Broder that “the cushion is gone. If the same thing (a severe recession) happened again, we wouldn’t be able to borrow to deal with it.”
  • Obama Shifts Focus to Jobs as US Employment Slides
    December 19, 2009
    China Daily
    Gary Burtless, a Senior Fellow and The John C. and Nancy D. Whitehead Chair at the Brookings, told China Daily that he still wants to know how big the efforts are and how much resources are available. "The program could put lots of the unemployed but skilled workers in construction and other sectors back to work," he said. Isabel Sawhill, also a Senior Fellow of Economic Studies at the Brookings, said Obama laid out an ambitious although targeted second round of stimulus. She said with unemployment at 10 percent and projected to remain high for several more years at least, "we need government spending and tax cuts to fill the gap until the private sector recovers." Sawhill rejects the criticism that Obama's efforts would add to the deficit. "The solution to the deficit problem is to enact measures now that will only kick in once the economy is back to normal.
  • Rivlin Says U.S. Will Need `Drastic' Moves to Lower Debt: Video
    December 19, 2009
    Bloomberg TV
    Alice Rivlin, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, talks with Bloomberg's Margaret Brennan about U.S. debt. The House of Representatives voted 218-214 yesterday to raise the debt ceiling to $12.394 trillion, the fourth such increase in 18 months. Rivlin also discusses Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke's performance.
  • Confront `Debt-Driven Crisis'
    December 17, 2009
    Miami Herald, by David Broder
    The reason was explained to me by one of the Democrats, Alice Rivlin, formerly a director of both the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget. ``Previously, when we were worried about deficits, we could take comfort in the fact that the debt was not very high relative to the economy,'' she said.``But now that debt has shot up. The cushion has gone. If the same thing (a severe recession) happened again, we wouldn't be able to borrow to deal with it.''
  • Battle Lines Drawn Around ‘Person of the Year’
    December 16, 2009
    PBS.org/NewsHour
    “I think the whole financial community bears a lot of responsibility. And there were regulatory failures. And the Fed acted too slowly. But, when the crisis came, Ben Bernanke was absolutely the right person to be there. He was calm and collected. He was very knowledgeable. He was bold in using the powers of the Fed to stabilize the financial system. It was a really dangerous, chaotic situation. We could have had domino effect, big institution after big institution going down, and a total meltdown of the financial system. He avoided that. … I don't have a good explanation of why so many people who watched the Fed carefully and who watched the markets carefully missed this crisis, but almost all of us did. And I don't think Bernanke, who came in rather late in the development -- he took over the Fed in 2006 -- now, they might have acted more quickly in 2006 and '07, before the crash, but nobody saw this coming. And I don't think it's fair to say Bernanke should have seen it, when nobody else did.” … - Alice Rivlin
  • Increasing the Debt Limit, Along with the Peril
    December 15, 2009
    San Francisco Chronicle, by Carolyn Lochhead
    "The long-run future is upon us," said former Clinton administration budget chief Alice Rivlin. Bush administration debt, rapidly escalating health care costs, a deep recession that has slashed tax revenue, and record government spending this year on a $787 billion stimulus and a $700 billion bank rescue have, she said, “raised the debt very, very rapidly, to nervous-making levels.”
  • U.S. Red Ink Flirts with Crisis, Panel Warns
    December 15, 2009
    Washington Times, by David M. Dickson
    In the past year alone, the U.S. debt level soared from 41 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to 53 percent, said the report by the Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform, prepared in cooperation with the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The group comprises former members of Congress, including co-chairmen Bill Frenzel, Tim Penny and Charlie Stenholm, as well as former heads of the Office of Management and Budget, the Congressional Budget Office, the Government Accountability Office and other fiscal analysts…If the White House doesn't begin taking big steps, congressional Democrats "will get killed in the next election," said Alice Rivlin, the founding director of the Congressional Budget Office who headed the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the Clinton administration. Developing a credible debt-stabilization package with Congress would be "a preventive antidote to a landslide" by Republicans in the 2010 election, said Ms. Rivlin, a member of the group that issued the report…Asked what makes this fiscal crisis different from previous fiscal problems, Ms. Rivlin said, "It is the urgency of the problem and the shift in focus from the [budget] deficit to the public debt," which essentially represents the accumulation of all previous budget deficits and surpluses. "The debt-to-GDP ratio has been moderate until recently" but is now poised to explode, said Ms. Rivlin, a Brookings Institution scholar who noted that "the long-run deficits are not being driven by military spending."
  • Deficit Experts See Grim Future, Bitter Remedy
    December 14, 2009
    National Journal, by John Maggs and Alexis Simendinger
    Alice Rivlin, former vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve Board and the founding director of the CBO, said that the longstanding challenge of growing entitlement spending had combined with profligate budget policy over the last decade and the recent commitments to rescue the U.S. economy to greatly advance the day of reckoning for fiscal policy. "What was a 30-year problem has become a 10-year problem," Rivlin said. Net federal debt, which is running at about $8.8 trillion this year, will more than double to $17.4 trillion in 2018, rising from 60 percent of annual gross domestic product to 85 percent, she said.
  • U.S. Red Ink Flirts with Crisis, Panel Warns
    December 14, 2009
    Washington Times, by David M. Dickson
    "However, before the debt reached such high levels, the United States would almost certainly experience a debt-driven crisis something previously viewed as almost unfathomable in the world's largest economy," the commission concluded in its report, "Red Ink Rising: A Call to Action to Stem the Mounting Federal Debt." The report warned that "a loss of confidence by international creditors could precipitate a financial crisis." It also declared that "the growing debt will jeopardize the American living standard and U.S. economic leadership." … "The debt-to-GDP ratio has been moderate until recently," but is now poised to explode, said Alice Rivlin, a Brookings scholar who noted that "the long-run deficits are not being driven by military spending." If the White House doesn't begin taking big steps, Ms. Rivlin said, congressional Democrats "will get killed in the next election." Developing a credible debt-stabilization package with Congress would be "a preventive antidote to a landslide" by Republicans in the 2010 election, Ms. Rivlin said.
  • Peterson-Pew Commission Budget Reform Discussion
    December 14, 2009
    C-SPAN
    The Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform released a report on the federal debt and looked at ways to change the budget process. The group is a joint venture of the Peter G. Peterson, Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Cmte. for a Responsible Federal Budget and includes former members of Congress and two former directors of the OMB. Alice Rivlin & William Frenzel participate in a discussion.
  • No Illusions
    December 14, 2009
    White House.gov/Orszag OMB Blog Post
    Indeed, economists have agreed upon the pillars of a fiscally responsible health reform. In a recent letter, 23 of America's leading health economists (including former CBO Directors Alice Rivlin and Robert Reischauer, and a Director of CMS during the Bush Administration, Mark McClellan, as well as other Republicans) identified those four pillars.
  • Mobility Bust Bad for Vegas
    December 12, 2009
    Las Vegas Sun, by J. Patrick Coolican
    "People are underwater on their homes and that affects mobility," said Isabel Sawhill, a Brookings Institution economist. … “People are anxious about whether they can get another job,” Sawhill said. “They’re thinking they better stick to the one they have in this very uncertain environment. You’ve heard of discouraged job seekers. These people are discouraged job holders,” she said. … Sawhill said Las Vegas should use this period of stagnation to think about the future and a diversified economy that will provide more sustainable prosperity. This means improving schools and building clean-energy facilities and transportation infrastructure, she said. Without that reset, even if growth returns, “You’ll be overwhelmed with social problems,” she added.
  • Afghanistan Costly, but No Budget Buster
    December 11, 2009
    Xinhua Newswire, by Matthew Rusling
    Isabel Sawhill, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said while costs could become a concern if the conflict drags on for several years, war spending could boost the economy in the short term. "Any kind of spending -- even a war -- can be good for the economy," she said. "That's how we got out of the Depression in the 1930s."
  • U.Va. Conference Looking at Governing in a Time of Debt
    December 10, 2009
    Richmond Times-Dispatch, by Bryan McKenzie
    Former government officials, including former White House Budget Director Alice Rivlin, members of the Federal Reserve, economists and scholars will discuss debt and its impacts on health care, global trade, investment, and state and local governments.
  • Senate Clears First Two Amendments to Healthcare Bill
    December 3, 2009
    Baltimore Sun/Chicago Tribune, by Noam Levey
    Thursday, a group of 10 conservative and liberal budget experts issued a joint statement endorsing proposals for more taxes on high-end "Cadillac" health plans, a more powerful commission to cut Medicare spending and changes to medical malpractice law. "Slowing the pace of rising costs, while expanding coverage, must be an urgent priority," said the experts from groups including the Urban Institute, the Concord Coalition, the Heritage Foundation and the Progressive Policy Institute.
  • White House Calls Senate Health Care Reform Bill Fiscally Responsible
    November 30, 2009
    CCH Group
    The findings were included in a letter to President Obama on November 17 from 23 leading economists, including Alice Rivlin, Robert Reischauer, Mark McClellan, and Laura D'Andrea Tyson. "As economists, we believe that it is important to enact health reform, and it is essential that health reform include these four features that will lower health care costs and help reduce deficits over the long term," Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution stated in the letter.
  • Rising Debt Could Derail Congress on Just about Everything
    November 30, 2009
    McClatchy Newspapers, by David Lightman
    There are few politically viable fiscal alternatives left, said Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow in economic studies at Washington's Brookings Institution, a center-left research center. "We're not going to be able to raise taxes; the president has all but taken that off the table," she said. "Social Security would be very tough to take on, and defense spending is going up, not down."
  • In Health-Care Reform, No Deficit Cure
    November 30, 2009
    Washington Post, by Lori Montgomery
    "The hope that health-care reform would take care of our budget problem has evaporated," said Isabel Sawhill, a fiscal expert at the Brookings Institution…Even some staunch reform advocates concede, however, that the ideas are unlikely to produce fast results. Brookings Institution health policy expert Henry Aaron, one of 23 economists who endorsed aspects of the Senate bill in a letter widely touted by the White House, said the measure "is necessary but not sufficient for dealing with our long-term budget problems." "It was foolhardy to suggest that those changes were going to come easily or quickly," Aaron said. "What we're dealing with is a huge industry, and the truth of the matter is we don't really have the levers to bring about a fundamental transformation in that system."
  • Congress Grows Fed Up Despite Central Bank's Push
    November 23, 2009
    Wall Street Journal, by Sudeep Reddy
    "Anger toward the Fed "seems to be at a fairly high pitch right now," said Alice Rivlin, a former Fed vice chair. "There's an anti-Fed mentality. Some of this anger is generalized and has to do with the bailouts and the rescue." ... The legislative provision that would allow the congressional Government Accountability Office to audit Fed monetary policy, pushed successfully in the House Financial Services Committee by Rep. Ron Paul (R., Texas), is causing particular alarm. Ms. Rivlin deemed it "quite dangerous with respect to the independence of the Fed."
  • A Great Burden Grows
    November 22, 2009
    Washington Post, by Susan Kinzie
    Alice Rivlin, an economist at the Brookings Institution and a former Federal Reserve governor, told community leaders that the downturn had worsened the socioeconomic divide in the city. There's low unemployment in wards 2 and 3, she said, but "in Ward 8 it's a Great Depression, it's 25 percent unemployment."
  • $4.8 trillion - Interest on U.S. debt
    November 19, 2009
    CNN Money.com, by Jeanne Sahadi
    "There will be less debt outstanding than if we don't get the deficit down. It may also reduce [the average interest rate on the debt] since less debt means less pressure on interest rates," said William Gale, co-director of the Tax Policy Center. But whether they can do that within a few years of an economic recovery is another matter. "Even under the president's [2010] budget as evaluated by the CBO we do not get anywhere close to that," Gale said.
  • Stemming the Tide: America’s Fiscal Deficit
    November 19, 2009
    Economist
    Early last year the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) thought federal debt held by the public, then about 40% of GDP, would fall to 28% in a decade’s time. It now sees it reaching 82%. As William Gale and Alan Auerbach, two prominent fiscal experts, put it: “The future is now.”
  • Isabel Sawhill is Interviewed by Neil Cavuto on Fox Business
    November 18, 2009
    Fox Business News
    “I think that’s right. I think, as you say, ‘there is no such thing as a free lunch.’ Expanding health care is expensive and I think we have got to find a way to pay for it. We don’t want it to make the budget deficit worse. The deficits in our future are already horrendous. I think the most sensible idea that is on the table right now is the idea of taxing what are called “Cadillac” health insurance plans because that will discourage people from spending as much as they have been spending on health care, and we’re not getting good value for our health care dollar that way.” – Isabel Sawhill
  • Clinton’s Budget Director Backs Congestion Pricing, VMT Tax
    November 10, 2009
    DC.StreetsBlog.org, by Elana Schor
    Alice Rivlin, now at the Brookings Institution, is one of the capital's most experienced economic hands… So it's reasonable to ask how Rivlin would approach the federal government's transportation funding crisis. And she answered the question yesterday during a legal conference. The Bond Buyer, a trade newspaper, put her remarks near the end of a related story…
  • Tomorrow's burden; America's public debt
    October 22, 2009
    Economist
    In 2004 William Gale of the Brookings Institution and Peter Orszag, now Barack Obama’s budget director, estimated that an increase of 1% of GDP in future deficits would raise long-term interest rates by 0.4-0.7 percentage points.
  • U.S. Deficit Biggest Since 1945
    October 16, 2009
    CNN Money.com, by Jeanne Sahadi
    The financial and economic meltdowns of the past year have accelerated the strain on federal coffers. So much so that now the 10-year forecast as well as the longer-term outlook are considered unsustainable, according to deficit experts William Gale and Alan Auerbach.
  • Will The Growing US Deficit Necessitate a VAT? -- Rationale & Implications
    October 15, 2009
    SpendMatters.com, by William Busch
    William Gale then discussed our Fiscal Gap -- which Wikipedia defines as "a measure proposed by economists Alan Auerbach and Lawrence Kotlikoff, [that] measures the difference between government spending and revenues over the very long term, typically as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product" -- that is presently $1.3 trillion/year and said that while we must reduce spending and raise taxes we can't get another 5% of GDP from existing taxes (the amount needed) without severely damaging the economy. And on a humorous note it was said: "The taxes we have are really bad and we don't have enough of them".
  • Is VAT Something You Might Be Interested In?
    October 14, 2009
    Atlantic Monthly Online, by Derek Thompson
    To answer that question, the Atlantic's Clive Crook tracks down this Washington Post column by Henry Aaron and Isabel Sawhill called Bend the Revenue Curve. Crook is right: This is a really great column
  • Pawlenty wants more troops in Afghanistan; knocks Obama on spending
    October 13, 2009
    Minnesota Public Radio, by Tom Scheck
    MacGuineas and Isabel Sawhill with the Brookings Institution say the deficit can't be fixed by spending cuts alone. Sawhill said spending cuts and tax increases, something Pawlenty has long opposed, are needed to fix the problem. "I would try to get entitlement spending under control but I also see no way that we can get around the need to raise revenues," Sawhill said. "There aren't enough spending cuts that are reasonable to close the gap that we face. The gap is so large." Sawhill said another fast growing part of the deficit is interest. In fiscal year 2008, the federal government paid $451 billion in interest on the federal debt.
  • U.S. Corporate Tax Hikes Likely Delayed
    October 13, 2009
    Reuters
    "The inescapable truth is that deficits will grow unless taxes increase," wrote Brookings Institution economists Henry Aaron and Isabel Sawhill, in a Washington Post editorial on Tuesday. The two economists from the center-left leaning think tank suggest a VAT be enacted only after unemployment falls, or after a certain period of time. They propose that the funds raised be used to get a handle on healthcare spending, which has risen at double the rate of inflation in recent years.
  • Analysts size up health bill in final stretch
    October 12, 2009
    San Francisco Chronicle, by Carolyn Lochhead
    "We're not going to be able to do that, we've never been able to do that," said economist and health care expert Isabel Sawhill of the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. CBO director Douglas Elmendorf warned that his projections hinge on the assumption that "the proposals are enacted and remain unchanged throughout the next two decades, which is often not the case for major legislation."
  • Developing a Progressive Approach to the National Deficit
    October 8, 2009
    Center for American Progress
    The final panel was devoted to discussing options for increasing revenues. William Gale, co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, though in favor of raising taxes, said that tax and spending debates should happen simultaneously so that “the American public [can] understand better what they are getting for their tax dollars.” Raising taxes has often been politically challenging because it has never been linked to spending on programs that people care about such as education and energy. Gale also said the tax system needs to be simplified so that the burden on different types of income taxes is even.
  • Children are at risk in the current health care system
    September 26, 2009
    uExpress.com, by Cynthia Tucker
    “The elderly are not only a powerful but also a growing segment of the population," said Isabel Sawhill, co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution. "Families with children under 18 are not”… "A lot of advocates for children are also advocates for the poor, and Americans, as we know, are less willing to support low-income families than people in other Western countries. Americans believe that everybody in this country has the opportunity to get ahead, and if they don't get ahead, it's probably something they've done," Sawhill said.
  • U.S. sees debt, deficit everywhere one year after economic crisis
    September 24, 2009
    Xinhua News
    Some Americans contend that since the U.S. economy is much larger than that of any other country in the world, it doesn't need to worry a lot about the accumulation of public debt. But William Gale, budget deficit expert at the Brookings Institution, begs to differ. In a paper he wrote earlier this summer, Gale argued that both deficit and debt-to-GDP ratio were projected to be at "unsustainable" levels in the next decade, even if "everything goes the way the Obama administration wants and the economy recovers and grows steadily" for the next 10 years. He forecasts federal deficit to be at 5.5 percent of GDP, an "extremely high figure," and public debt at 82 percent of GDP by 2019.
  • Fiscal Wake-Up Tour
    September 20, 2009
    The Scoop, Heritage Foundation
    Sometime next month the Senate will be forced to raise the federal debt limit beyond a record $12.1 trillion. While the current recession has exacerbated the problem, our rising national deficits are actually a structural problem a long time in the making. In the coming decades, the cost of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits will leap from 8.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) to 18.6% of GDP—an increase of 10.2% of GDP. To educate Americans about our nation’s large and growing fiscal imbalance The Heritage Foundation has, since 2005, teamed up with the The Concord Coalition, The Brookings Institution, and former U. S. Comptroller General David Walker to encourage Americans to demand action through a Fiscal Wake Up Tour.
  • A Voice of Grim Fiscal Reality
    September 19, 2009
    Post and Courier
    Two and a half years ago, David Walker brought his "Fiscal Wake-Up Tour" to Charleston. Then serving in his 10th year as U.S. comptroller general, he was leading a bipartisan chorus warning that our nation was on a path toward fiscal calamity. Though he's no longer comptroller general, he's still sounding that alarm. And due to an ominous -- and ongoing -- acceleration of reckless spending policies in Washington, Mr. Walker has justifiably intensified his pleas for a long-overdue commitment to budgetary responsibility by both elected officials and the U.S. public.
  • Fed's steps to aid banking system raise risks, too
    September 14, 2009
    Associated Press, by Jeannine Aversa
    "They changed forever what the Fed does in a crisis," says Alice Rivlin, who served as the Fed's No. 2 official in the late 1990s. "The next time we have a major, or perhaps a minor, crisis, people will expect the Fed to take much more aggressive action than they expected this time."
  • More Americans use public health insurance plans
    September 14, 2009
    The Tennessean, by Getahn Ward
    "The last decade has been marked by a steady increase in public insurance programs," said Mark McClellan, director of the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution, a research group… The poverty rate probably will keep rising through 2012, even after the recession ends, adding to pressure on the Obama administration to enact a second economic stimulus package, said Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "We will likely have not only a jobless recovery, but also a poverty-ridden recovery," Sawhill said. "The stimulus money is going to go away long before the poverty rate peaks."
  • Interview with Alice Rivlin
    September 11, 2009
    The Daily Gazette, by Joe Emont
    "Yes, that is a commission set up by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and I have been co-chairing it. It’s focused not on healthcare but on health, and on lifestyles and other good things, exercise, better nutrition, early childhood things and so forth…” – Alice Rivlin
  • Alice Rivlin Lectures On "Saving Market Capitalism"
    September 10, 2009
    The Daily Gazette, by Joe Emont
    On Thursday night, Alice Rivlin, former Cabinet official and first Director of the Congressional Budget Office, presented the annual Bernie Saffran Lecture, this year entitled “Saving Market Capitalism.” Rivlin gave solutions to what she identified as the primary flaws of America’s capitalist system, its instability and its inequality, and argued that only by finding a true middle ground would Democrats be able to pass their necessary reforms.
  • Ezra Klein on Pants-Wetting Filibusters, Betsy McCaughey and the Juice Box Mafia
    September 3, 2009
    Washington Post, (Ezra Klein Q&A)
    A number of pundits, columnists, and congresspersons keep talking about a government mandate for individuals to purchase health insurance as if there were no serious Constitutional issues associated with that feature of health-care reform. I read the piece in the Post by Alice Rivlin which seemed to lay out a fairly well documented case against an individual mandate on Constitutional grounds. Can the Post run a column that lays out why this mandate would not be unconstitutional?
  • About the Fed
    September 2, 2009
    Steamboat Pilot (Editorial), by Joe Meglen
    Alice Rivlin, a former vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, packed the house at the Seminars at Steamboat forum Aug. 21 with her topic, “The Future of Capitalism.”… Mrs. Rivlin cited the myth taught in government schools that the Great Depression was caused by stock market speculation. Absent was the part about where the credit explosion came from that fueled the speculation — bad judgment and fraud. Like today’s “Great Recession,” the Fed created the roaring ’20s bubble by increasing credit at below-market interest rates, geometrically expanding the money supply through the Ponzi scheme called fractional banking.
  • Credit Addict: Paying Later for Today’s Choices
    September 1, 2009
    SFO Magazine, by Kira McCaffrey Brecht
    Looking at the overall picture, Isabel Sawhill, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., warns: “The long-term deficits are very dangerous for the economy. They are making us dangerously dependent on the rest of the world, borrowing half of what we need [from foreigners] to cover these deficits.”… “People talk about fraud, waste and abuse in government. But there is no greater waste of your tax dollars than having to have a big chunk earmarked for interest on the debt, because you don’t get anything for that,” Sawhill says.
  • What's $2 Trillion Among Friends?
    August 31, 2009
    Weekly Standard, by Irwin M. Steltzer
    Throw in another trillion-plus for Obamacare, and it is no surprise that senior economist Bill Gale, at the liberal Brookings Institute, says that the deficit will hit over $10 trillion over the next decade, a figure he finds “deeply alarming.”
  • Soaring deficits cast a shadow over the dollar
    August 30, 2009
    The Sunday Times, by Irwin Steltzer
    Throw in another $1 trillion for Obamacare, recognise the irrational exuberance of Obama’s economic and revenue projections, and it is no surprise that senior economist Bill Gale, at the liberal Brookings Institution, says that the deficit will exceed $10 trillion over the next decade, a figure he finds “deeply alarming”.

  • Stimulus Spending: Questions & Answers
    August 30, 2009
    Policy & Practice
    “The most important goal of the stimulus money is to, well, stimulate the economy. Taxpayers are out $789 billion because economic theory says government spending will induce recovery when the economy is in recession. So goal one is to spend the money—quickly. Goal two should be to use the money in a way that the spending can be stopped after two years without causing huge withdrawal pains. Unfortunately, no one knows which programs will be continued and which halted. A third goal is to actually do some good by helping the poor and afflicted. One of my top candidates for helping the poor would be covering more destitute people under the TANF program…” – Ron Haskins
  • Tax Pledge Is a Target As Deficits, Debt Grow
    August 29, 2009
    Washington Post, by Lori Montgomery
    "If you rule out inflating our way out of the problem and defaulting on the debt, there are two ways: Cut spending or raise taxes," said William G. Gale, an expert on fiscal policy at the Brookings Institution. With more than 80 percent of federal spending devoted to politically untouchable programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, he said, "it's going to be really hard to make significant headway on the spending side. So that means you've got to think about taxes.”
  • Pangloss revisited
    August 27, 2009
    The Economist
    It would be risky, even counterproductive, to tighten fiscal policy too quickly when the economy is weak. But there is scant risk of too much fiscal probity in Washington. As William Gale of the Brookings Institution puts it, raising taxes or cutting spending over the next five years will be “very hard”, because Republicans say no to any new taxes, Democrats are against any new taxes on 95% of households, and three-quarters of all spending is on defense, entitlements such as Medicare and Medicaid, and interest payments.
  • U.S. Economic Outlook
    August 27, 2009
    Diane Rehm Show/WAMU
    “Well the basic news is that it’s not getting worse as fast as it was before and that means there’s hope that we will get to the bottom quite quickly and the economy will begin growing slowly again, and there are some signs that the housing market is bottoming out, also, as they say. Prices are beginning to rise in most major metropolitan areas which is good news. And a few other things – as you say durable goods – but lets not go overboard here. We’re in a very deep recession. Unemployment is still rising and is likely to continue to rise well into 2010 over 10%, so this is the worst recession that we’ve had since the early 1980s (and probably worse than that one) so it’s a very serious situation still…” – Alice Rivlin
  • Senator Collins Takes Part in 'Fiscal Wake-Up Tour’ Forum.
    August 26, 2009
    Newswire
    Senator Collins participated in a Fiscal Wake-Up Tour event hosted by the Concord Coalition. Senator Collins, former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, Concord Coalition Executive Director Bob Bixby, Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation, and Will Marshall from the Progressive Policy Institute discussed present and future fiscal policy.
  • Are higher taxes inevitable?
    August 26, 2009
    Christian Science Monitor, by Mark Trumbull
    “My guess is that at some point this administration and this Congress will have to take on tax reform,” says Isabel Sawhill, a Brookings Institution specialist on fiscal policy. In the process, “some revenue raising … will need to occur.”…“There is no way that we can solve the problem just on the spending side alone,” Ms. Sawhill says. “Nor can we solve it just by raising taxes on the top 5 percent [of earning households].”…Sawhill says the government could secure about $1 trillion a year in new revenue while leaving tax brackets the same – just by removing layers of credits, deductions, and loopholes.
  • Alice Rivlin on Bernanke’s Reappointment and the New Deficit Numbers
    August 25, 2009
    Business News Network, “The Close”
    "I don’t know why, specifically, [they announced Bernanke’s reappointment] today, but I think that as soon as they made the decision it was a wise thing to announce it. It’s good for confidence, for not having uncertainty, for the markets not wondering ‘is there a strong hand at the Fed?’ Nobody wants that. The crisis is better but it isn’t over and this is a moment to be calm and deliberate and announce the Fed chair reappointment well in advance”… – Alice Rivlin
  • US says debt outlook worsening
    August 25, 2009
    Financial Times, by Sarah O’Connor, Edward Luce, and Krishna Guha
    “If you include the administration’s fiscal plans, this implies a deficit increase way in excess of $10 trillion over the next decade – the numbers are deeply alarming,” said Bill Gale, a senior economist at the Brookings Institution.
  • Obama taps Bernanke for second term
    August 25, 2009
    CNN Money.com, by Jennifer Liberto
    Alice Rivlin, who served as White House budget director in the Clinton administration and later vice chairwoman of the Fed, said she was pleased but not surprised by Tuesday's announcement. "It's the right thing for the president to do, because he's done a very good job, the best job that could have been done during these horrendous economic times," said Rivlin, who directs the Greater Washington Research project at the Brookings Institution. "It would have been hard to find someone better."
  • Federal deficits: $9 trillion and counting
    August 25, 2009
    CNN Money.com, by Jeanne Sahadi
    "Deficits will gradually divert capital from productive domestic uses, through a rise in interest rates. This diversion reduces the amount of capital available to U.S. workers, lowering their wages and hence their living standards," deficit experts Alan J. Auerbach and William G. Gale wrote in a CNNMoney.com commentary. "If our deficits are financed from abroad, interest rates may not rise as much, but interest payments on these deficits will flow back abroad."
  • Economist calls for reasonable solution
    August 23, 2009
    Steamboat Pilot & Today, by Blythe Terrell
    It will require a “coalition of the sensible” to mend the battered U.S. economy, economist Alice Rivlin told a Steamboat Springs audience Thursday. Belle Sawhill, chairwoman of the seminar speaker committee, in­­troduced Rivlin as an optimist and a groundbreaking economist…“Back in the dark ages, when there were exactly 2 1/2 women economists in the entire world, she was one of them,” Sawhill said, “and I was trying to become the other one, and she was an inspiration to me.”…“Market capitalism channels savings into their most productive uses and does it far more effectively than any central planning system can, and it even reduces many of the risks inherent in economic activity,” Rivlin said.
  • Economists Give Fiscal Stimulus Mixed Grades
    August 22, 2009
    Wall Street Journal/Real Time Economics, by Jon Hilsenrath
    In a paper being presented Saturday at the conference, Alan Auerbach of the University of California at Berkeley and William Gale of the Brookings Institution noted problems the U.S. had in the 1930s and Japan had in its 1990s “Lost Decade” making fiscal policy work. “The remarkable fact is that sustained fiscal policy expansion was not attempted in either episode,” the economists wrote, in part because policy makers were focused on balancing budgets even as they tried to pump money into the economy.
  • Alice Rivlin to speak at Seminars at Steamboat on Thursday
    August 19, 2009
    Steamboat Pilot, by Blythe Terrell
    "I want to talk about the opportunities that we have now to repair our economic system, and particularly market capitalism, and do some of the things that we probably should have done a long time ago but that are dramatized by this crisis,” Alice Rivlin said…“The rising cost of health care is a major problem for the economy going forward and particularly for the federal budget because the rising costs of Medicare and Medicaid are driving future federal budget deficits,” she said.
  • The Recovery And The Deficit
    August 17, 2009
    National Journal Experts Blogl
    "I doubt that the deficit will be a serious drag on the recovery. The Treasury hasn’t had much difficulty selling its debt so far and interest rates remain at reasonable levels. In addition, even if the economy starts moving in the right direction, it will likely remain depressed for several years, limiting the demand for credit from the private sector. And if the recovery is short-lived or falters, then another stimulus could be needed and should not be held hostage to concerns about short-term deficits…” – Isabel Sawhill
  • Analysts Give Stimulus Mixed Reviews
    August 16, 2009
    Sunday Times, by Tony Allen-Mills
    "The rapid deterioration of the economy has slowed down," said Alice Rivlin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office. “But if you have lost your job, the worst may not be over for a long time. If you have a job, you may still lose it.”
  • A Taxing Dilemma
    August 7, 2009
    InsideNOVA.com, by Marsha Mercer
    Isabel V. Sawhill, an economist at the Brookings Institution who was on Clinton’s budget team, is among those saying higher taxes for the middle class are inevitable. Sawhill told New York Times reporter Jackie Calmes, "There is no way we can pay for health care and the rest of the Obama agenda, plus get our long-term deficits under control, simply by raising taxes on the wealthy," adding, "The middle class is going to have to contribute as well."
  • Ask the Economists: Obama's second 100 days
    August 5, 2009
    CNNMoney.com, by Kim Thai
    "I would rate their performance very high, given they were handed an enormously difficult situation. I agree that a large stimulus was necessary and they moved very quickly on that. I had some reservations about how the stimulus was done, but I think that most of it was exactly what was needed, especially the part that got money out to people who would spend it quickly." - Alice Rivlin
  • Read their lips: Mixed Signals from Obama Team on Taxes
    August 3, 2009
    Christian Science Monitor, by Mark Trumbull
    Whereas conservatives talk about solving the budget problem by cutting spending, and liberals (including Obama) call for making the highest-earning Americans pay more, the scale of the challenge may end up defying those prescriptions. The federal deficit “is projected to average at least $1 trillion per year for the 10 years after 2009, even if the economy returns to full employment and the stimulus package is allowed to expire in two years,” economists William Gale of the Brookings Institution and Alan Auerbach of the University of California, Berkeley, concluded in a study earlier this year. They say the US must close a gap equal to about 8 percent of gross domestic product. That means if the nation acts now, taxes must either go up that much or federal spending must go down that much, permanently, to put government finances on a sustainable course.
  • Colloquy Remarks of U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and U.S. Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) -- Middle-Class Tax Increase
    August 3, 2009
    Floor Remarks of U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.)
    I am sure the Senator from Arizona remembers Isabel Sawhill’s distinguished service. She had some comments on tax increases as well. "There is no way we can pay for health care and the rest of the Obama agenda, plus get our long-term deficits under control, simply by raising taxes on the wealthy," said Isabel V. Sawhill, a former Clinton administration budget official." The middle class is going to have to contribute as well."
  • Health Care Battle - Andrea Mitchell Interviews Sen. Alexander
    August 3, 2009
    MSNBC - "And this weekend, Isabel Sawhill, who was in the Clinton administration, and many others were saying in order to pass the Obama agenda, you're going to have to tax them middle class. So I thought the comments yesterday were honest and I think the comments today are misleading." - Senator Alexander
  • Obama’s Pledge to Tax Only the Rich Can’t Pay for Everything, Analysts Say
    July 31, 2009
    New York Times, by Jackie Calmes
    "There is no way we can pay for health care and the rest of the Obama agenda, plus get our long-term deficits under control, simply by raising taxes on the wealthy," said Isabel V. Sawhill, a former Clinton administration budget official. "The middle class is going to have to contribute as well."
  • Bernanke explains Fed’s new openness
    July 30, 2009
    Financial Times, by Edward Luce
    "I would be astonished if Ben isn’t re­appointed," says Alice Rivlin, a former vice-chairman of the Fed. "He has become very good at interacting with people beyond the usual circles and he is good at avoiding traditional Fed-speak."
  • Fed Struggles with Perceptions of Transparency
    July 30, 2009
    PBS/NewsHour - "They have been less and less secretive over the years. This started back in the Greenspan years. There was a time when the Fed didn't tell anybody anything about what they were doing, even on monetary policy. They didn't say what they had done. They allowed the markets to guess." - Alice Rivlin
  • Bernanke out in the open
    July 28, 2009
    Chicago Tribune, by Don Lee
    Following the financial crisis, Greenspan, who was lionized during his two decades of Fed leadership, has been roundly criticized for not getting on top of lax mortgage lending standards in 2002 and 2003, when things got out of hand. Bernanke joined the Fed board as a governor in 2002. "The whole board shares some blame for that," said Alice Rivlin, a Fed governor from 1996 to 1999 and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
  • Tales From the Fed: Rivlin on the Perfect Storm
    July 26, 2009
    PBS/NewsHour (Solman)
    Alice Rivlin on Wall Street's perfect storm of 2008 and what it means for the Federal Reserve – “Sometimes clichés are apt, and this is a very good example. It was a “perfect storm” in the sense that everything that could go wrong went wrong at the same time and produced a cataclysm. How did it become an “ice storm” – meaning that the banks stopped lending – confidence plummeted and banks were afraid of failing, and when they’re afraid of failing and they’re distrustful even of each other they stop lending…”
  • $1 Trillion: What Does It Look Like?
    July 24, 2009
    NPR/Morning Edition
    "A trillion dollars is definitely a lot of money. Even if we're already now spending trillions of dollars on things like the financial bailout, the economic stimulus package and so on, we shouldn't get inured to the idea that just because we got to spend that, that it's not a huge amount of money." - William Gale
  • New Concerns Over Meeting Between President and CBO Director
    July 23, 2009
    FOX News/Neil Cavuto
    "I met with President Carter several times - not one on one - but in meetings like this meeting on Monday (which I was also at) it wasn’t any big deal. I got criticized fairly heavily on the Hill once for meeting with David Stockman who was Reagan’s budget director. I was rather surprised by that criticism. I think it’s very important for the Executive branch and the Congressional people to be understanding each other or talking about how they get to different estimates. That was not what the Monday meeting was about." - Alice Rivlin
  • Soak the Rich
    July 21, 2009
    National Journal Experts Blog
    "Given the growing inequality of incomes, especially at the very top of the distribution, asking this group to pay higher taxes seems like the right thing to do. And I have never been persuaded that people at the top of the distribution are going to work or save less just because their taxes have gone up from present levels." - Isabel Sawhill
  • Obama Met With Outside Econs Monday to Discuss Healthcare Costs
    July 21, 2009
    WSJ /Real Time Economics, by David Wessel
    President Barack Obama, reaching beyond his own team of health advisers and economists, invited four outside economists - including the current director of the Congressional Budget Office - to meet with him Monday to discuss ways to slow the growth of healthcare spending. Besides Douglas Elmendorf, the current CBO director, the attendees included Alice Rivlin, who was White House budget director in the Clinton administration and CBO director prior to that…
  • The 411 on the Congressional Budget Office
    July 20, 2009
    Politics Daily, by Matt Lewis
    Economist Alice M. Rivlin was the founding director of the CBO. Current director Elmendorf was a Brookings senior fellow from 2007 to 2009…Ironically, Elmendorf's predecessor is Peter Orszag (also from Brookings), who now serves as director of the Offiice of Management and Budget for the Obama administration.
  • Ballooning federal deficits putting US in dire straits
    July 19, 2009
    McClatchy Newspapers, by Kevin G. Hall
    A June study by the Brookings Institution, a center-left policy research group, found that current increases in spending and continuation of most George W. Bush-era tax cuts will combine to produce a 10-year deficit of $9.1 trillion. That will drive interest payments on the national debt — the total of accumulated annual deficits — to about 3.8 percent of the GDP by 2019…"All of these figures are poised to rise further after 2019, implying that the situation is unsustainable," wrote the Brookings authors, William Gale and Alan Auerbach.
  • W.H. tries to regain stimulus momentum
    July 17, 2009
    Charleston Gazette
    In many ways, the expectations trap has been looming for months. “Whatever you say about ‘shovel ready,’ it takes time to spend infrastructure money, and we all knew that,” said Alice Rivlin, who served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Bill Clinton. As a result, she said, the White House allowed expectations to grow. “People were going to say, ‘Ah, yes, the stimulus bill is going to stop the recession.’ And that was never realistic.’ To Rivlin, the White House would have done well to keep infrastructure spending out of the stimulus bill all together. “I think they made a mistake on shovel-ready projects, and I think that stimulus should be getting money out the door quickly, on things like unemployment, food stamps, tax benefits and money to the states.”
  • How expensive is proposed healthcare legislation?
    July 17, 2009
    Christian Science Monitor, by Peter Grier
    “Comprehensive health care reform means finding ways to deliver health care more efficiently, and that will help us restrain the rate of growth of government spending over the long run. We can’t start that soon enough,” said Alice Rivlin, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former CBO chief, in an analysis posted on the Brookings website Thursday.
  • As federal debt soars, where's all the money to come from?
    July 14, 2009
    McClatchy Newswire, by Keven G. Hall
    "All of these figures are poised to rise further after 2019, implying that the situation is unsustainable," wrote researchers William Gale and Alan Auerbach, the Brookings authors…"The good news is they're waking up the people. The bad news is it is not evident to me (that) they're willing to sit down and put everything on the table," said Isabel Sawhill, a top-level budget official in the Clinton administration.
  • Do We Need Another Stimulus?
    July 11, 2009
    Washington Post, Topic A
    Another stimulus separate from the regular budget process is a bad idea. My opposition reflects neither anticipation of quick recovery nor insensitivity to the human cost of this economic debacle. Even if gross domestic product stops falling soon, unemployment will continue to rise, and recovery will be slow. Overspending, overborrowing and undersaving caused this crisis, and household wealth has plummeted. Cautious spending will continue, which is not fundamentally bad but will delay the return to full employment. – Alice Rivlin
  • Weaning Economy Off Federal Stimulus Fraught With Risk
    July 7, 2009
    Investor’s Business Daily, by Jed Graham
    Economists warn that a premature pullback in fiscal policy could choke off recovery, which played a role in the economy's relapse, as it did in 1937, when the deficit shrank by 5.4% of GDP over two years. Japan's 1997 value-added tax hike and America's "restrictive tax and spending policies enacted in the mid-1930 s" both backfired, wrote Brookings Institution economist William Gale and University of California, Berkeley professor Alan Auerbach in a new paper.
  • Stimulus, Part Two?
    July 9, 2009
    NPR/On Point
    “I have been worrying on the deficit front and I think that the warnings are important but they don’t preclude doing something now. There are a lot of budget people that think that fixing the budget is more important than fixing the economy. I think that we have to keep our eye on the economy. Fixing the economy is not only more important than fixing the budget, it’s the best way to fix the budget in the long-term. But that still doesn’t necessarily militate in favor of a new broad-based stimulus package now for a couple of reasons. One – not much of the existing stimulus has been spent and both the high spending and the high multiplier – the things that are supposed to have a big effect – are not likely to kick in until the rest of the summer and the fall (and that’s by design)…My second concern is whether bond markets will let us do another stimulus.” – William Gale
  • Staggering Budget Gap and a Reluctance to Fill It
    July 7, 2009
    New York Times, by Peter S. Goodman
    “We are not an island,” said Martin N. Baily, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton and now a fellow at the Brookings Institution. “We are part of the global economy, and there are concerns out there among those who have been buying our debts that we owe too much.” … “The budget outlook at every horizon is troubling,” declared Alan J. Auerbach, a finance expert at the University of California, Berkeley, and William G. Gale, an economist at the Brookings Institution, in a recent paper. “The fiscal year 2009 budget is enormous; the 10-year projection is clearly unsustainable; and the long-term outlook is dire and increasingly urgent.”
  • Did team Obama get it wrong on the stimulus?
    July 7, 2009
    McClatchy News, by Kevin G. Hall and David Lightman
    "I think politically it's a major impediment to getting a second stimulus plan. But it shouldn't be," said Isabel Sawhill, a budget expert at the Brookings Institution, a center-left policy research organization. Short-term deficits are acceptable, she said, as long as creditors see the U.S. taking steps to rein in longer-term spending, such as overhauling the finances of Social Security and Medicare. "The fear is if we just let the economy continue to be a big hole, that in itself will balloon the deficit, because revenues are just anemic right now," Sawhill said.
  • Fed fretting over deflation, ex-exec says
    July 7, 2009
    NW Arkansas News, by Vincent Del Giudice and Thomas R. Keene
    The Federal Reserve is more concerned about the possibility that the U.S. will suffer an extended period of falling prices than the prospect that the record budget deficit will fuel inflation, Alice Rivlin, former Fed vice chairman said Monday. "The standard thought is if the budget deficit is very large, that's inflationary," Rivlin said. "But it's only inflationary if the economy is functioning well, if we are ... close to full employment. We're not there now."
  • Ballooning Debt
    July 6, 2009
    FundStrategy.co.uk, by Tomas Hirst
    While it may be fortuitous to pin the blame of tax hikes on his predecessor, this may not be sufficient to maintain confidence in the American economy. In a paper entitled ‘An Update on the Economic and Fiscal Crises: 2009 and Beyond’ William G Gale, vice president and director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution, and Alan J Auerbach, of the University of California, argue that the deficit is not as worrying as the lack of a coherent plan to reduce it.
  • The U.S. Treasury Moves The Goal Posts
    July 1, 2009
    Forex News, by Chuck Butler
    And then there was Alice Rivlin, she of former Budget Director, and former Fed Reserve member, fame, had a few things to say to the House Budget Committee… Good stuff, but you have to wonder if anyone was paying attention! Here’s Alice! “No one needs to remind this Committee that the outlook for the federal budget is worrisome indeed, scary. Long before the financial crisis and the current deep recession, this Committee was anxiously pointing out that current federal spending and revenue policies are on a risky, unsustainable course…”
  • Consumer Spending Up Even as More Save
    June 27, 2009
    Washington Post, by Annys Shin
    Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institution said the stimulus is having an impact on consumer spending. It's just hard to measure. "It's a 'compared to what' question," she said. Consumers "are spending more than they would have if they hadn't had this income."
  • Cost of rescues: $835 billion this year
    June 26, 2009
    CNN Money.com, by Jeanne Sahadi
    But pay-go wouldn't be enough to get the federal budget onto a sustainable path, said former CBO Director Alice Rivlin, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "The biggest threat to future budget solvency is not new legislation. It is the budgetary consequences of legislative decisions already made -- both with respect to mandatory spending and the tax code," Rivlin said in written testimony for the House Budget Committee on Thursday.
  • White House pushes 'pay-as-you-go' bill
    June 26, 2009
    Washington Times, by David M. Dickson
    Statutory PAYGO rules were in effect from 1991 through 2002, when the U.S. budget moved from then-record deficits to record surpluses. Although sequestration was never invoked, Alice Rivlin, a PAYGO proponent who served as President Clinton's budget director, has noted that "many of [the administration's] most cherished ideas could not even be proposed because we could not find a way to offset them under the PAYGO rules."
  • Americans Increasingly Skeptical of Obama's Pledge of Fiscal Discipline as Deficit Grows
    June 25, 2009
    FOX News, by Mike Emanuel and Daniela Sicuranza
    William Gale from the Brookings Institution says the cause of the deficit is no mystery. "We have an economic downturn, we've had massive financial intervention, massive stimulus, so the big deficits right now aren't that big a deal from a long term perspective," Gale told FOX News. "At some point, we have to switch from fiscal stimulus to fiscal discipline," he said. "That's a very tricky balancing act. If we start imposing fiscal discipline too soon, cutting spending, raising taxes, we risk pushing the economy back down into a deeper hole."
  • Alice Rivlin Says U.S. Jobless Rate Could Reach 11%
    June 24, 2009
    Bloomberg TV
    “I think Bill Poole is right but that doesn’t mean that the whole Fed – Treasury program is wrong. The Federal Reserve leaped in when nobody was lending and has been very, very aggressive. It is quite costly in terms of the debt but I think it has stabilized the financial sector and helped save a lot of the economy. We are not quite there yet but it is not getting worse as fast as it was...” – Alice Rivlin
  • As Economy Begins Recovery, Analysts Watch National Debt
    June 23, 2009
    Sarasota Herald-Tribune, by Ernest “Doc” Werlin
    Alice Rivlin, the first director of the Congressional Budget Office, testified before a congressional committee on June 18. "Federal expenditures are projected to grow substantially faster than revenues, opening widening deficit gaps that cannot be financed," Rivlin said. "Unpopular actions to restrain future spending and augment future revenues must be taken now, even before recovery has been achieved. Putting Social Security on a sound fiscal base, credibly reducing the rate of growth of federal health spending, and raising future energy-related and other revenues are all actions that could be taken now to reduce future deficits."
  • Can They Pay it Back?
    June 22, 2009
    Maclean’s (Canada), by Colin Campbell
    “The whole process can start to feed on itself,” says Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former budget official in the Clinton administration. “You get into a vicious cycle which can become explosive at some point.”
  • Warner: Another Ex-Governor Adapts To the Senate
    June 22, 2009
    CQ Politics, by Joseph Schatz
    On the Banking Committee, Warner has allied with Sen. Bob Corker , a first-term conservative Republican from Tennessee, to educate members of the broader Senate — particularly younger members — on financial regulation issues, in part by bringing in speakers like former Office of Management and Budget director Alice Rivlin, currently at the Brookings Institution.
  • In D.C., More Jobs and More Jobless
    June 20, 2009
    Washington Post, by V. Dion Haynes and Emma L. Carew
    D.C. "is a city like many central cities with a substantial low-income population with low skills," said Alice Rivlin, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who served as chairman of the District's financial control board when the city was going through a financial crisis in the 1990s. "We have plenty of jobs, but mostly high-skill jobs that require education beyond high school."
  • D.C. Unemployment Rate Soars Past 10 Percent
    June 20, 2009
    Associated Press
    Alice Rivlin, senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, says D.C. is similar to other central cities that have a large low-income population. She says that although job opportunities are plenty in D.C., they often require education beyond high school.
  • Fed and Obama on a Collision Course?
    June 20, 2009
    Globe & Mail (Canada), by Barrie McKenna
    Now isn't the time to change course, argued Alice Rivlin, a former Fed vice-chairwoman. Mr. Bernanke was put to the test during the financial meltdown and he clearly passed. Now, for the sake of stability, he should stay, she said. “I think they would be very smart to keep him,” Ms. Rivlin explained. “He's done a very good job and he's there. Unless you had some doubts about his capacity, and I don't see any reason why they would, I would just keep him.”
  • Expanded Fed role may weigh on monetary tasks
    June 18, 2009
    Reuters, by Mark Felsenthal and Alister Bull
    "That is a big set of responsibilities," said former Fed Vice Chairwoman Alice Rivlin. "That's enough. I would not give them a major regulatory responsibility."
  • Administration’s Regulatory Proposal Faces Immediate Opposition
    June 17, 2009
    Congressional Quarterly Politics, by Phil Mattingly
    Corker said in an interview that he and Warner, both junior members of the Banking Committee, have been working to educate their colleagues on issues relating to an expected financial industry overhaul. On Tuesday, for example, they brought in Alice Rivlin, director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration, to talk with a group of senators.
  • U.K.'s Budget Woes Put Olympic Dream in Crosshairs
    June 16, 2009
    Wall Street Journal, by Mark Whitehouse
    "This is going to be painful," says Bill Gale, director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "We're going to be digging out for a long time."
  • Put Away the Frisbee and Move on to Debt
    June 15, 2009
    The National (Abu Dhabi), by Stephen Glain
    Authored by Alan Auerbach, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and William Gale of the Brookings Institution, the study projects federal deficits will average at least US$1 trillion (Dh3.67tn) for the next 10 years…“Although fiscal policy problems are usually described as medium and long-term issues, the future may be upon us much sooner than previously expected,” they wrote.
  • Rein in unspent money
    June 15, 2009
    Washington Times, by David Lambro "Part of the $800 billion wasn't really temporary stimulus," said economist Alice Rivlin, former budget director in the Clinton White House. "It was investments in infrastructure, education, health, information technology, etc., that we need to have a more productive economy in the longer run. The case for these investments isn't affected by quick recovery, even if it happens," Rivlin told me.
  • Stimulus spending so far in New York: More 'cushion' than hardhats
    June 14, 2009
    Syracuse Post-Standard, by Michelle Breidenbach
    Ron Haskins, a Brookings Institution senior fellow and former White House welfare adviser under President George W. Bush, said Americans are not all happy about the increased spending on social programs. "I think in general Americans are very understanding about additional spending during a recession," he said. "But I think that given our budget situation ... there is a growing feeling on the part of the American public that we are spending too much."
  • Fixing the global financial system
    June 10, 2009
    Australian School of Business
    “If we don’t change the rules it will happen again. We know the capitalism is a great system. It is very productive but it is inherently unstable. Things go up and things go crashing down, but this was a very serious crash and we have got to fix the rules so that it doesn’t happen again.” – Alice Rivlin
  • Stop kicking the fiscal can down the road
    McClatchy Newspapers (op-ed)
    While the government has been busily bailing out the private sector, few people seem to be worrying about who's going to bail out the U.S. government when our creditors tire of lending us so much money. The nation's fiscal imbalances are already driving up interest rates, which could imperil economic recovery. So, as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke warned recently, it's time for Congress and the administration to get serious about how we are going to get our fiscal house in order once the recession is over. – Isabel Sawhill
  • GOP seeks to trim stimulus, cut deficit
    June 8, 2009
    Washington Times, by Donald Lambro and S.A. Miller
    "I am not that optimistic about the recovery, so I think it would be risky to pull back the stimulus now," said economist Alice Rivlin, who was President Clinton's budget director and a former member of the Federal Reserve. "Even if GDP stops falling, unemployment is likely to rise well into 2010. Recovery is likely to be long and slow," Ms. Rivlin said. "Moreover, part of the $800 billion wasn't really temporary stimulus. That is why it is not spending out faster. It was investments in infrastructure, education, health information technology, etc., that we need to have a more productive economy in the longer run.”
  • Will Your Retirement Be Worse Than Your Parent’s Was?
    June 8, 2009
    U.S. News & World Report, by Emily Brandon
    Or as Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution puts it, “Every working couple can have their own elderly person that they are supporting and they can be pen pals.”
  • Obama promises 600,000 new jobs from stimulus spending
    June 8, 2009
    Christian Science Monitor, by Ron Scherer
    The sheer size of the spending package is perhaps the largest impediment, says Isabel Sawhill, a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. In addition, many agencies in the new administration are still not fully staffed. “So the capacity of the federal government is somewhat reduced, and you have a real challenge on your hands,” says Ms. Sawhill, a member of the Office of Management and Budget during the Clinton administration.
  • Retirement problems are starting to get old
    June 5, 2009
    St. Louis Post-Dispatch, by David Nicklaus
    Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, goes even further. She says the nation needs to forge a new social compact, encompassing tax code changes and educational funding as well as retirement policy. Older workers and retirees may have to give up tax breaks and accept less-generous benefits, she says, in order to invest more in the young.
  • Hello, Poppy? Obama here. Need some advice.
    June 4, 2009
    Crosscut.com, by Ted Van Dyk
    The independent, bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, led by people such as former Fed Chair Paul Volcker, Council on Foreign Relations Chair Pete Peterson, former Fed Governor Alice Rivlin, and former Johnson White House chief of staff Jim Jones, issued a document regarding upcoming health-care reform legislation. Any such legislation, the group said, must slow health-care costs; be fully offset by federal spending cuts elsewhere; be sustainable in its financing; and be accompanied by other federal budget reforms.
  • Social Mobility
    June 3, 2009
    KNPR-Nevada Public Radio
    “We’ve done some very interesting research on this question of what happens to people who were born into less-advantaged circumstances…and the answer is that many of them [have a shot at the “American Dream”], but your family impact – where you began – does have a big impact on where you end up. It’s not that easy to make it into the middle class…and it may be getting more difficult.” – Isabel Sawhill
  • Obama's Federal Deficit Crisis
    June 3, 2009
    American Daily Review, by Dr. Tony Magana
    In March Ron Haskins, Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institute, said the Obama budget is “unsustainable”. He said that at a minimum the President should sponsor cutting both tax cuts and spending increases in half. This week another expert from Brookings, Isabel Sawhill, former associate director of the Office of Management and Budget, was more grim and called for even more severe steps. She questioned the Obama claim that savings in health care reform will reduce the deficit.
  • Time for a "New Contract" with Kids
    June 1, 2009
    Pajamas TV
    “I think that we are engaged, right now, in putting just about everything that we do at the federal level on the national credit card. In other words we’re borrowing the money and that’s creating a mountain of debt and we are leaving that mountain of debt to the next generation. That is not a moral thing to do, and furthermore, it risks another economic crisis down the road.” – Isabel Sawhill
  • Fixing retirement — For the Kids
    June 1, 2009
    St. Louis Post Dispatch, by David Nicklaus
    “It’s children who are going to have to pay the bills for the retired. …We have made commitments to the elderly, through Social Security and Medicare, that are becoming unaffordable. Even maintaining current commitments to the elderly is not affordable, especially not if you think we also should be investing more in younger Americans.” – Isabel Sawhill at the National Press Club
  • Government Debt Swells as Choices Get Harder
    May 24, 2009
    San Francisco Chronicle, by Carolyn Lockhead
    "We are accumulating a massive debt. We owe about half of that debt to foreigners, including the Chinese and others whose foreign policy is not always well aligned with ours," said Isabel Sawhill, a former Clinton administration budget official who now co-directs the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution. "So we are really losing control of our economic destiny and possibly losing control of our foreign policy as well."
  • RealClearPolitics - Future Prosperity Depends on 'New Contract for Kids’
    May 20, 2009
    Real Clear Politics, by Mort Kondracke
    President Barack Obama plans to tackle, one by one, the biggest problems threatening America's future prosperity, but he needs to fashion nothing less than "a new social contract between the generations." That means, said Brookings Institution scholar Isabel Sawhill, gradually shifting the balance of federal spending from seniors to children to enable them to support both themselves and their elders in the future.
  • Obama's Vast Agenda Sparks Concern
    May 19, 2009
    Washington Times, by Donald Lambro
    "I don't buy the 'too much on the plate' argument," said Alice Rivlin who was Mr. Clinton's budget director. "I think the Obama team is right to move ahead on health care and the environmental issues, even as they work to get the economy back on track.”
  • US Medicare Funding Under Threat
    May 17, 2009
    Atlanta Journal Constitution
    Among others seeking to instill a sense of urgency is the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bipartisan group whose directors include former Office of Management and Budget directors Alice Rivlin, who served during the Clinton administration, and David Stockman, who was a top adviser to President Ronald Reagan.
  • President Obama’s Job Jumpstart?
    May 10, 2009
    MSNBC - Andrea Mitchell Reports
    “I think there are a few green shoots, but I think it’s really premature to say whether we are out of the woods or not. This is clearly going to be a long and deep recession.” – Isabel Sawhill
  • Budget Proposes Cuts in 121 Programs
    May 7, 2009
    Wall Street Journal, by Jonathan Weisman
    "There is a kind of 'Nixon going to China' aspect to this," said Isabel Sawhill, co-director of the Center of Children and the Family at the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution. Just as only Republican President Richard Nixon could go to communist China in 1972 without being destroyed politically, only a popular Democrat could challenge liberal groups on sacrosanct programs that may have outlived their usefulness, she said.
  • Obama's Budget Knife Yields Modest Trims
    May 7, 2009
    Washington Post, by Lori Montgomery and Amy Goldstein
    "Even if you got all of those things, it would be saving pennies, not dollars. And you're not going to begin to get all of them," said Isabel Sawhill, a Brookings Institution economist who waged her own battles with Congress as a senior official in the Clinton White House budget office. "This is a good government exercise without much prospect of putting a significant dent in spending."
  • Obama set to suggest $17B in cuts
    May 6, 2009
    USA Today, by Richard Wolf
    Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution, a liberal-leaning think tank, says it pays for a president to try cutting programs even if he doesn't succeed. "It's always difficult, because Congress usually says no," says Sawhill, a Clinton administration budget official.
  • Budget Targets Fraud and Errors in Social Programs
    May 5, 2009
    Wall Street Journal, by Jonathan Weisman
    If only a Republican like Richard Nixon could be the first president to go to China, only a Democrat like Mr. Obama could persuade Democrats to cut payments for unemployment and disability, said Isabel Sawhill, co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution. "When Republicans talk about program integrity, Democrats worry it's just a smokescreen for cutting programs. When Democrats do it, it looks a lot more credible," she said.
  • Congress Approves $3.5 Trillion Dollar Budget Plan
    April 30, 2009
    PBS – NewsHour
    Isabel Sawhill, director of the Center for Budget and National Priorities at the Brookings Institution said the reconciliation rule is crucial to the Democrats goal of reforming U.S. health care coverage. "Even though it's rather arcane, the reason (reconciliation) is so important is that it may determine whether we have health care reform this year or we don't have health care reform this year," Sawhill said. "I don't think it's going to be possible to get meaningful health care reform if you have to have a bipartisan vote."
  • The First 100 Days: Grading President Obama
    April 29, 2009
    The New Ledger, by Ben Domenech
    On the domestic front, such non-conservatives as David Brooks, Alice Rivlin and the editors of the Washington Post attest to the dangerous irresponsibility of his fiscal policy. [Obama] has helped popularize the phrase “generational theft” — and it will take generations to dig us out of the mess. His plans domestically on everything from healthcare to cap and trade to education bespeak a statist, bureaucratic mindset that is unsuited to a free and dynamic society.
  • Sizing Up Spending
    April 28, 2009
    CNBC – Closing Bell
    Isabel Sawhill is interviewed about spending during Obama’s first 100 days as President (starts at minute 4:35)
  • Obama Overthrows Reagan’s Government-Bad Dogma to Rescue Market
    April 27, 2009
    Bloomberg, by Rich Miller and Matthew Benjamin
    And budget experts are skeptical even that can be achieved. “We’re not going to be able to turn off the spigot completely when this downturn ends,” says Isabel Sawhill, who’s at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
  • $1 Billion a Day for Stimulus
    The Obama administration has committed $75 billion in stimulus money in 10 weeks. So far $14.5 billion has been spent, mostly for Medicaid.
    April 28, 2009
    CNNMoney.com, by Tami Luhby "There's a natural tension between using taxpayers' money in a prudent way and getting the money out the door quickly," said Isabel Sawhill, a Brookings Institution senior fellow.
  • Obama Budget Cuts Deemed Symbolic
    April 24, 2009
    UPI
    Isabel V. Sawhill, a Clinton administration budget official who directs the Budgeting for National Priorities project at the Brookings Institution, voiced doubts the budget plan would help convince people Obama cares about responsibility.
  • CBO Names New Panel of Economic Advisers
    April 24, 2009
    Wall Street Journal – Real Time Economics Blog
    Among the returning economists are former Fed Vice Chairman Alice Rivlin, Martin Baily…& rounding out the new members are Henry J. Aaron of the Brookings Institution, an expert on health-care.
  • President's Critics See a Dull Knife
    April 24, 2009
    Washington Post, by Philip Rucker
    Isabel V. Sawhill, a Clinton administration budget official who directs the Budgeting for National Priorities project at the Brookings Institution, said she feared the cuts would be "lampooned" on late-night talk shows. "I'm not sure I thought it was a good step towards convincing people that he cares about fiscal responsibility," she said.
  • Concerns raised on pace of stimulus
    April 20, 2009
    USA Today, by Brad Heath
    Critics say the government should speed up spending. "It's disappointing, given the urgency ... that we've only been able to spend $60 billion," says Brookings Institution economist Isabel Sawhill. She says the government must hire contractors and get projects reviewed — safeguards that slow the flow of money.
  • As We See It: Tax and spend - Santa Cruz Sentinel
    April 15, 2009
    Santa Cruz Sentinel
    Alice Rivlin, director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration, was joined by Jim Nussle, who held the same post in the last Bush administration. Amid a back-and-forth discussion on budget deficits, earmarks, entitlement programs and bailouts, the liberal Rivlin and conservative Nussle also tackled tax reform and government spending.
  • Obama on Tightrope in Government Budget
    April 1, 2009
    Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, by Craig Gilbert
    "I think people who talk about Europeanization don't know much about Europe," said Alice Rivlin, a Brookings Institution fellow and former budget director for President Bill Clinton, who criticized the size of the deficits in Obama's budget but rejects the conservative charge that "we are actually moving toward socialization."
  • Global Recession, Security Challenges Test Obama's Popularity Among World Leaders
    March 25, 2009
    FOXNews, by Stephen Clark
    "I think it's fair to say on these economic issues, there seems to be a critical divide between the U.S. and some of our friends in Europe that is going to make it more difficult for the G20 to be successful," said Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow in economic studies at Brookings Institution. But Sawhill and other economists downplay the growing friction between Obama and Europe. "I don't think it has much of anything to do with him," Sawhill told FOXNews.com. "I think it has to do with a disagreement about what's the best response to the global recession. And many of the European countries are uncomfortable about the pressure they [see] us bringing to bear on them to stimulate the economy as much as we have ours."
  • CBO: US Deficit Ballooning to Record $1.7 Trillion
    March 20, 2009
    Christian Science Monitor, by Ron Scherer
    “It will be much more difficult to reform health care, move on the energy front and invest in education,” said Isabel Sawhill, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington and a former official at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the Clinton administration. “It makes his whole reinvestment agenda much more problematic, especially if there is not something done to curb entitlement spending in Social Security and Medicare.”
  • Resolving the Economic Crisis: An Interview with Alice Rivlin
    March 19, 2009
    St. Louis Beacon, by Mary Delach Leonard
    Even as the nation fixates on the employee bonuses handed out by taxpayer-bailed-out insurance giant AIG, the key to fixing the nation's economy still hinges on getting the banking system functioning again, says Alice Rivlin, a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve and budget director for President Bill Clinton.
  • Obama Team Touts Economic Plans
    March 14, 2009
    Washington Post, by Lori Montgomery
    Brookings scholar Alice Rivlin, a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve and a budget director for President Bill Clinton, said the campaign appears to have two goals: First, to respond to the "flak" the administration is taking over its $3.6 trillion budget request. And second, to tamp down unrealistic expectations for a speedy recovery.
  • Obama's Budget Trades Steep Deficits for Broad Goals
    February 27, 2009
    The Los Angeles Times, by Maura Reynolds and Peter Nicholas
    "There's a lot of rhetoric about it, but no plan," said Isabel Sawhill, a former associate director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration. "Right now, they're singing the right song about fiscal responsibility, but they don't have a plan to get there."
  • Obama Announces the 2010 Budget
    February 25, 2009
    The First Post
    Writing in the Guardian, Isabel Sawhill says that though there is little political appetite for the tax cuts and spending plans, they are a financial necessity. "The problem is not a lack of resources – the problem is a lack of political will to make the sacrifices that our current predicament requires. But at least we have started the conversation."
  • Real Reaganites Raise Taxes
    February 21, 2009
    National Journal, by Jonathan Rauch
    "I'm going to say spending is never going to go below 21 percent again in this country," says Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. At the Brookings Institution, Isabel Sawhill, an economist and a former Clinton administration budget official, says, "My best guess would be 24 percent in 2012."
  • “Next, Cut Spending”
    February 10, 2009
    New York Post, by Paul Weinstein Jr.
    If we don't [address burgeoning retirement and health-care costs], and insist on maintaining the tax burden where it has been over the last 50 years (about 18 percent of GDP), the Fiscal Seminar group estimates public debt will most likely exceed 100 percent of GDP within 25 years.
  • The ‘W’ Word, Re-engaged
    Feb. 7, 2009
    The New York Times, by Jason DeParle
    “This tension waxes and wanes — but it remains a tension, absolutely,” said Isabel V. Sawhill, a researcher at the Brookings Institution. “Americans understand that some people are poor through no fault of their own. On the other hand, they suspect that some people aren’t doing all they could to help themselves. It’s pretty deep-seated in our national mindset, this belief that you can succeed.”