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• Analysts: debt deal not up to the job
  August 21, 2011
  New York Post – by Gregory Bresiger
  The committee is bipartisan debt-reduction commission, which in the fall is to The commission will specify $1.5 trillion in further cuts over the next decade, or cuts of the same amount would go into effect through “an enforcement mechanism.” But one can’t count on the automatic trigger, “because Congress has done this before and then reversed itself,” says William Frenzel, a guest scholar with the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank.

• Chitchat With Leon and Hillary on the Defense Budget
  August 19, 2011
  Huffington Post – by Winslow T. Wheeler
  Many -- including Obama's bipartisan 2010 National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, a separate task force put together by congressmen Barney Frank (D-MA) and Ron Paul (R-TX), yet another commission headed by former budget leaders Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) and OMB Director Alice Rivlin, and two alternative budget proposals from Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) -- have itemized how to save about $900 billion from the National Defense budget. The political landscape is littered with competent recommendations to remove many of the thick layers of hydrogenated fat from the Pentagon.

• Presidential candidates: Show us your budget plan
  August 15, 2011
  Washington Post
  Those who want to wade further into the weeds would do well to examine the recent reports of two deficit commissions, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, better known as Simpson-Bowles, and the plan developed for the Bipartisan Policy Center by a group chaired by Alice Rivlin and Pete Domenici. Weedier still: the invaluable set of budget options developed by the Congressional Budget Office.

• $24B up for grabs as Congress debates budget
  August 14, 2011
  Gannett Newswire – by Brian Tumulty
  Ron Haskins, a former advisor to House Republicans who's now at the Brookings Institution, is more pessimistic. "The Senate really has not shown that it is capable of producing a budget," Haskins said. "They have not been able to do anything definitive. To me it looks like the Senate is dysfunctional."

• Tinkering With the U.S. Tax Code
  August 14, 2011
  New York Times – by Charles R. Morris
  Your editorial recommends that “super-low tax rates for investment income should be ended.” In so doing, The Times echoed the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (Simpson-Bowles) and the deficit reduction plan put forward by the Bipartisan Policy Center, led by Alice Rivlin and Pete Domenici. Both reports called for equal taxes on capital gains, dividends and ordinary income like wages. Income inequality in America now stands at record highs — probably due, more than any other single factor, to grossly unfair tax breaks on capital gains and dividends. Is there any good reason to tax income from wealth at lower rates than income from work? Absolutely not.

• Debt panel a political gamble for Sen. Murray
  August 13, 2011
  Seattle Times – by Kyung M. Song
  Republicans and some independent observers continue to criticize Murray for accepting the simultaneous tasks of hitting up campaign donors, including lobbyists, while helping steer federal budget cuts. Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution and an expert on welfare issues, believes Reid should have bypassed Murray. "Everything she does has to be seen through that political filter," Haskins said. "There is obviously a conflict of interest here."

• Pressure’s on for deficit panel
  August 13, 2011
  Washington Post – by Rosalind S. Helderman and Felicia Sonmez
  “There’s a potential for a bipartisan deal here. There has been for a while,” said Alice Rivlin, a former White House budget director who chaired the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Debt Reduction Task Force. “The new element is the revulsion of the country and the world at the spectacle that we have just lived through.”

• Debt-Panel Outcome Clouded by Pressure From Lawmakers’ Backers
  August 12, 2011
  Bloomberg – by Kristin Jensen and James Rowley
  Retirees are among the largest givers to almost all the lawmakers, and members considering scaling back Social Security or the Medicare insurance program for the elderly will confront a barrage of lobbying by the seniors’ group AARP. “Nobody wants to promise their cohorts any kind of pain and suffering or divergence from the current theology,” said Bill Frenzel, a former congressman who served as the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee. Republican distaste for tax increases and Democrats’ insistence on protecting entitlement programs is a “doomsday formula,” he said. … When S&P on Aug. 5 lowered the U.S.’s AAA credit rating for the first time, it said lawmakers weren’t doing enough to reduce record deficits by raising taxes or cutting spending, and it dismissed the Aug. 2 deal that averted default and created the super committee as inadequate. A failure by the panel would renew the risk for the nation’s borrowing power. “If the S&P downgrade had any meaning, it is that our situation is worsening, our debt ratio increases and, even if the super committee on deficit reduction met this target, the debt ratio will still be increasing after 10 years,” said Frenzel, a scholar at the Brookings Institution. “If I were a rater, I would think that augured for bad days ahead.”

• Former budget director: Supercommittee won’t look to defense for cuts
  August 12, 2011
  The Hill – by John T. Bennett
  The supercommittee charged with paring the deficit will focus on entitlements and taxes, former OMB director Alice Rivlin said. The supercommittee charged with paring the federal deficit will focus on entitlements and taxes, meaning the Pentagon budget will be a “fallback” place from which to slice, former White House budget chief Alice Rivlin said Friday. Rivlin and former national security adviser Stephen Hadley applauded the appointments congressional leaders made to the special panel. They said the group is experienced and capable of striking a grand bargain on everything from Social Security to Medicare to tax policy to national security. “I don’t think the supercommittee will be [looking at] defense,” Rivlin said during a forum at the Brookings Institution. “Defense cuts are the fallback.”

• Leaders name Republicans on debt panel
  August 11, 2011
  Boston Globe - by Theo Emery
  While the composition of the committee is not complete - House Democrats have not yet been named to the committee - the six Republicans named yesterday and the three Senate Democrats picked Tuesday represent a potentially combustive mix. "They cover the waterfront,'' said Bill Frenzel, a GOP congressman of 20 years from Minnesota now affiliated with the Brookings Institution. "There are some rather left Democrats who are quite proud of being left and some rather right Republicans who are quite proud of being right.''

• Flaws alleged in debt deal
  August 9, 2011
  Boston Globe - by Heidi Pryzbyla
  Alice Rivlin, a Democrat who was the office's founding director in 1975, said she's holding out hope the six Democratic and six Republican lawmakers on the committee will reach a deal to head off the automatic cuts. None of the lawmakers, who will come from the House and Senate, have been named.

• E Tu Democrats: The Bloody Toga of the Middle Class
  August 8, 2011
  Huffington Post - by Paolo Romanacci
  According to William Gale of the Tax Policy Institute, "The deal is all spending cuts, no tax increases. In practical terms, that means that the burden of closing the gap will be placed on poor and middle-class households, rather than high-income or wealthy households." What that means in plain English is that the Middle Class has gotten screwed once more.

• Deficit hawks say downgrade shows need for grand bargain on debt
  August 8, 2011
  The Hill - by Erik Wasson
  Former Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin and former Republican Sen. Pete Domenici (N.M.) in a letter to congressional leaders on Monday urged them to seek a grand bargain including entitlement reforms and tax increases. Such reforms would allow the supercommittee to find greater deficit reduction than the $1.2 trillion currently envisioned. Rivlin and Domenici last fall produced a compromise plan similar to the Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission plan that reformed entitlements, including Social Security, while simplifying the tax code and raising new revenue to reduce the debt. "This committee has a historic opportunity to come to a broad bipartisan solution that will control debt and ensure America's future prosperity," they wrote. "We hope that this committee of twelve members of Congress can build on the recommendations of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Debt Reduction Task Force, which we proudly co-chaired, as well as the President's Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

• Former CBO Directors Say Spending-Cut Trigger May Fire Blanks
  August 8, 2011
  Bloomberg - by Heidi Pryzbyla
  Alice Rivlin, a Democrat who was the CBO's founding director in 1975, said she's holding out hope the six Democratic and six Republican lawmakers on the so-called super committee will reach a deal to head off the automatic cuts. None of the lawmakers, who will come from the House and Senate, have been named yet. … One target would be Medicare, though the spending reduction would be capped at 2 percent and aimed at health-care providers, not benefits. Funding would also be threatened for the National Institutes of Health, alternative energy programs and hundreds more government agencies. The former budget officials say there are various options for lessening the trigger's impact, particularly since there would be a year-long period before it kicks in. "If they want to finesse it, it's not hard," said Rivlin. … Rivlin, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said she's also more optimistic the trigger will exert pressure on lawmakers because the debt has reached crisis proportions unlike previous budget battles.

• Is this really a raw deal for Democrats?
  August 3, 2011
  Christian Science Monitor - by Joshua Roberts
  Bill Gale of the Brookings Institution provides an excellent summary of the good and the bad in the debt limit deal. The major "good news" is that if this breaks the impasse on passing an increase in the debt limit, the U.S. will avoid immediate default on its debt. The "bad news" is there wasn't much movement in terms of actual bipartisan policymaking, and the Democrats seem to have totally caved in to the Norquist-led entrenchment of the Republicans on taxes-as in No New Ones.

• Military hawks upset with debt deal
  August 2, 2011
  Al Jazeera - by Jim Lobe
  In the last year, two bipartisan commissions, one headed by former Republican senator Alan Simpson and Bill Clinton's chief of staff, Erskine Bowles; and the other, by Clinton's budget director Alice Rivlin and former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Dominici, called for $1tn in cuts in defense spending over ten years.

• Skepticism Greets Obama Debt-Accord Plan for Bigger Deficit Cuts
  August 2, 2011
  Bloomberg - by Heidi Pryzbyla
  "It's terrible," said Alice Rivlin, former President Bill Clinton's budget director who served on a fiscal commission President Barack Obama set up last year. "But it was much better than the alternative" of a U.S. government default. … Rivlin said that for all its flaws, the super committee approach remains the best option for some form of long-term deficit reduction. "Everybody's sick of committees and commissions, including me, but the ordinary political process is deeply broken and is not working," she said.

• One shot on taxes: Don't blow it, Democrats
  August 2, 2011
  Washington Post - by Ezra Klein
  In the past year, there have been two major attempts to develop a bipartisan deficit-reduction package: one by the president's fiscal commission, led by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, and one by the Bipartisan Policy Center's commission, led by Alice Rivlin and Pete Domenici. Rivlin, the first director of the Congressional Budget Office and one of the most respected fiscal hawks in Washington, had a particularly good vantage point on the two processes: She co-chaired one commission and served on the other. And she says Republicans and Democrats on both panels came to the same realization. "We always started by asking how to slow the growth of entitlements, because that's what's driving the budget deficits," she says. "But then we would find there's nothing you can do that gets you much money in the near term. Then we would go after discretionary spending, and cap or freeze that. But after we did all that, we would realize we hadn't closed the gap. This happened on both commissions. And that's when everyone would realize you need more revenue and turn to improving the tax code."

• Secondary Sources: Paychecks, Debt Deal, Middle Class Pain
  August 2, 2011
  Wall Street Journal - by Sara Murray
  Deal Dings the Middle Class: The Tax Policy Center's William Gale gives his take on the bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling, saying, "The deal is all spending cuts, no tax increases. In practical terms, that means that the burden of closing the gap will be placed on poor and middle-class households, rather than high-income or wealthy households. It's true that the second part of the deal involves the potential for tax reform, but the Republicans have been united in their 'no new taxes' pledge and the Democrats accommodated them both directly, in requiring no new taxes, and indirectly, in stating that the trigger mechanism, in case the Commission's report is not enacted, will be all spending cuts, no tax increases. It does not seem fair or reasonable to impose virtually the entire cost of this part of the fiscal burden on poor and middle-class households, but that is what a bipartisan act of Congress and the White House just did."

• How Clinton Handled His Debt Ceiling Crisis Better Than Obama
  August 2, 2011
  The New Republic - by Kara Brandeisky
  The most crucial difference between Clinton's debt limit battle and the current crisis is that, in 1996, the Republicans were bluffing. No Republican seriously considered defaulting on the debt to be a viable option. "It was essentially unthinkable," Alice Rivlin, director of the Office of Management and Budget under Clinton, told me. … "Even a Clinton, I think, would have had a very difficult time during this current crop of Republicans," Brookings senior fellow Isabel Sawhill told me.

• What China, Others, Are Saying About US Debt Deal
  July 31, 2011
  Forbes - by Kenneth Rapoza
  "Americans are not well informed about the economic crises that occurred in other countries to learn from them," said Isabel Sawhill, an analyst from the Brookings Institute in Washington. "They don't see any parallels with crises in other countries because they think the US has the capacity to resolve all problems. The population knows there is a problem, they just don't know to what extent or where it comes from."

• Why the Debt Crisis Is Even Worse Than You Think
  July 27, 2011
  Bloomberg - by Peter Coy
  There is one respect in which the national debt - all $14,342,841,083,049.67 of it - is a good measure of the problems facing the U.S. It's real money that's owed to real creditors. (Actually, some is intra-governmental, so only about $10 trillion is owed to the public.) "The numbers are hard enough. The creditors know how much they lent and how much they expect to get back," says former Congressman Bill Frenzel, the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee in the 1980s.

• Senators' deficit plan calls for tradeoff in taxes
  July 21, 2011
  Associated Press - by Stephen Ohlemacher
  "The bookshelves of policy analysts in Washington are loaded with statements of principle on tax reform that all sound good," said William Gale, an adviser to President George H. W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers and now co-director of the Tax Policy Center. "And then they all die when you try to specify the details."

• U.S. Debt Compromise Pressure Intensifies
  July 20, 2011
  Bloomberg - by Kate Andersen Brower and Julie Hirschfeld Davis
  Also praising it were former White House budget director Alice Rivlin, who served under Democratic President Bill Clinton, and former Senator Pete Domenici, a New Mexico Republican who headed the Budget Committee. The Gang of Six proposal "recognizes that all parts of the budget must contribute to any long-term solution, including defense spending, tax expenditures and entitlements," Rivlin and Domenici said in a statement. Saying they hoped the plan "leads to agreement by the president and both houses of Congress," they called on "members of both parties to put the good of the country ahead of ideology and return our nation to a fiscally responsible path."

• Only One Democratic Country, Besides America, Has a Debt Ceiling
  July 19, 2011
  ABC News - by Amy Bingham
  Barry Bosworth, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, said the U.S. debt ceiling "has no logical basis." Congress, through budget and appropriations bills, has sole authority to decide how much the government will spend, so he said "it makes no sense to have a secondary rule to then object to the deficit that emerges from the other decisions." The debt ceiling, Bosworth said, is a "political device" that the minority party uses "to fuss and posture." "But they ultimately accede because they understand that the change in the debt is just the result of their own decisions," Bosworth said. The idea behind creating a debt ceiling "was to make Congress slow down its spending, be more careful about what it expended and think more about the obligations it was pursuing," said former Minnesota Rep. Bill Frenzel, who served as the ranking member of the House Budget Committee and was an advisor to Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

• Raising Medicare costs may be gaining traction
  July 15, 2011
  Los Angeles Times - by Noam Levey
  "Over the long haul, beneficiaries will have to pay more and taxpayers will have to pay more," said Henry Aaron, a longtime healthcare expert at the Brookings Institution. "It's just too darn expensive."

• DEBT CEILING: Americans Increasingly Attuned to Debate, Stakes
  July 13, 2011
  FOX News - by James Rosen
  "If they don't reach an agreement, we can't borrow and we can't make all our payments," said Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "It would be exactly parallel to some husband and wife sitting around the kitchen table, and they're worried about their bills....They can't pay their bills unless they want to bounce a check and eventually get themselves in serious trouble. It's exactly parallel to the federal government. If they can't borrow the money, they can't pay their bills and a lot of people are going to suffer in very concrete ways."

• Barack Obama battles left and right for debt ceiling agreement
  July 12, 2011
  The Guardian - by Ed Pilkington
  At the heart of the Republican resistance is their refusal to contemplate tax increases, even those including removing tax loopholes on oil profits or private jets. The Democrats are also in a bind: many of their congressional members are unwilling to make concessions demanded by the right that would cut social programmes such as Medicare and Medicaid. "The Democratic party on average is further left, and the Republican party on average further right, than before," said Ron Haskins, a former adviser to George Bush and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "So they are trying to cut a deal between folks who are more driven by their ideologies and principles."

• Follow The States' Lead To Better Medicaid
  July 11, 2011
  Forbes - by Sally Pipes
  The U.S. House of Representatives agrees with the governors and included a plan to block grant Medicaid funds in its Fiscal Year 2012 budget. A similar proposal by Budget Chairman Paul Ryan and former Clinton economic adviser Alice Rivlin was scored by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) as saving about $680 billion between 2012 and 2020.

• Debt ceiling: Cut, cap and balance ... or else
  July 7, 2011
  CNN - by Jeanne Sahadi
  Democratic budget hawk Alice Rivlin, the founding director of the Congressional Budget Office, has said that 18% is not feasible "when we have a huge generation of baby boomers moving into retirement, longevity is increasing and medical costs are high and rising."

• This Deal Isn't Sounding So 'Balanced'
  July 6, 2011
  The New Republic - by Jonathan Cohn
  At the time, liberals and sympathetic policy analysts were ecstatic about the president's rhetoric but worried about the details of his plan. They - er, we - would have preferred a proposal that looked closer to the one that Alice Rivlin and Pete Domenici produced for the Bipartisan Policy Center. That plan, although not perfect, at least had a balance of spending cuts to tax increases of about one-to-one. And while we understood the difficulty of getting such a plan through Congress, we worried that Obama was effectively bidding too low - that by proposing a plan already skewed towards spending cuts, the final deal was likely to be even more skewed. That appears to be precisely what happened.

• Debt deal: Brace for spending cuts
  July 5, 2011
  CNN - by Charles Riley
  But already, $1 trillion in cuts is entering uncharted territory. The cuts would be some of the biggest in history. "It sounds as if the package is going to be all spending cuts with a few symbolic revenue increases," said Isabel Sawhill, an economist who studies fiscal issues at the Brookings Institution and worked in the Clinton administration. … Sawhill said the cuts are likely to be focused on non-security discretionary spending, a small section of the budget that includes funding for food inspectors, the FBI and education grants, among many other programs and services people associate with government. "The public is going to be a lot more concerned when they see the details and not just the abstraction of less spending," Sawhill said. … Ending the tax break for owners of private jets, for instance, would only save a few billion dollars, hardly enough to fund the Food and Drug Administration. "I understand the populist appeal," Sawhill said. "But those numbers are very small." … "Americans don't have a firm grasp on what it means to cut a trillion dollars," Sawhill said. "They think it's someone else's trillion dollars."

• Domenici's 'Truth Squad' Challenges Fellow Republicans on Debt-Cap Debate
  July 1, 2011
  Bloomberg - by Heidi Przybyla
  The report by Domenici's group grew out of a meeting he and Democrat Alice Rivlin, a former White House budget director, had with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner about two months ago on the default issue.

• Press Conference by the President
  June 29, 2011
  The White House
  "I don't think that's a sustainable position. And the truth of the matter is, if you talk to Republicans who are not currently in office, like Alan Simpson who co-chaired my bipartisan commission, he doesn't think that's a sustainable position. Pete Domenici, Republican, co-chaired something with Alice Rivlin, the Democrat, says that's -- he doesn't think that's a sustainable position. You can't reduce the deficit to the levels that it needs to be reduced without having some revenue in the mix." - President Obama

• U.S. law makers urged to take moves to avoid gov't default risks
  June 29, 2011
  Xinhua Newswire - by Jiang Xufeng and Liu Lina
  Experts reckon that without the willingness of both Democrats and Republicans to "take on their sacred cows," just as required by Obama, a debt reduction deal will still be a long shot. The major bottleneck for breaking the debt negotiation stalemate is that "Republicans don't want tax increases and Democrats do not want serious cuts in entitlements," said Ron Haskins, a senior fellow of the Washington-based Brookings Institution. "We won't get congressional action until a majority of one party and at least a substantial number from the other party support a compromise, which means Republicans agreeing to tax increases and Democrats agreeing to entitlement cuts. We appear to be a long way away from an agreement that is based on these two essential ingredients," Haskins added.

• Social Security faces second heist
  June 24, 2011
  San Antonio Express-News - by David Hendricks
  The Obama administration now is discussing moving the payroll tax reduction next year to employers. Employers pay half, or 6.2 percent, of the usual 12.4 percent Social Security tax. The discussions are "serious," Isabel Sawhill, a Brookings Institution senior fellow, said during a recent National Press Foundation program on retirement issues held in Washington.

• Balance the budget by locking in savings
  June 23, 2011
  POLITICO - by U.S. Senator Chris Coons
  SAVEGO closely mimics budget process reforms that helped produce balanced budgets in the 1990s .A bipartisan array of commentators, budget experts and former lawmakers - including New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, a Republican and former Budget Committee chairman, and Alice Rivlin, a Democrat and former White House budget director - agree SAVEGO has the potential to rein in deficits and restore fiscal sanity.

• Coalition Calls for 'Cut, Cap, And Balance' on Capitol Hill
  June 22, 2011
  CNBC
  CNBC - Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to gradually transform Medicare to a "premium support" system, allowing individuals more control over their health insurance dollars, has some backing from thoughtful Democrats like former CBO Director Alice Rivlin. It could be one starting point (not necessarily the end point) for an adult conversation on how to fix it.

• Why can't we fix Medicare once and for all?
  June 20, 2011
  Yahoo! News - by Geoff Colvin
  One way to fix it is the Brute Force approach. That's the concept on which Medicare was built. The federal government dictates which services are covered and how much will be paid to doctors, hospitals, and others for everything they do … The approach that would work, People Aren't Dummies, is at the heart of Rep. Paul Ryan's Medicare rescue proposal and has been demonized by Democrats and even some Republicans. But in fact it has a long history of bipartisan backing. Premium support, as it's called in Ryan's plan, was first proposed by two Democratic economists, Henry Aaron and Robert Reischauer. The Bipartisan Policy Center's Debt Reduction Task Force last year proposed gradually converting Medicare to premium support. The proposals' details differ, and hammering out agreement wouldn't be easy. But the basic approach is solidly in the center.

• "The Elderly" for Beginners
  June 17, 2011
  Baseline Scenario - by James Kwak
  As the AARP says that it is open to modest cuts in Social Security benefits, it's worthwhile asking a more fundamental question: are Social Security and Medicare programs that benefit the elderly? The answer may seem obvious. After all, the bulk of Social Security Old Age and Survivors Insurance benefits go to people over 62, and almost all Medicare beneficiaries are over 65. So it's often observed in passing that our long-range budget issues are the product of transfers to the elderly. For example, in Restoring Fiscal Sanity 2005, Alice Rivlin and Isabel Sawhill write, "These big programs, which benefit primarily the elderly, will drive increases in federal spending in the longer run" (p. 36).

• 'Vouchercare' Is the Right Name for Medicare
  June 15, 2011
  Bloomberg - by Laurence Kotlikoff
  The use of the V-word screams "far right wing." Its public utterance has become so dangerous that Democrat Alice Rivlin and Republican Paul Ryan, in proposing their Medicare fix last December, referred to vouchers as "payments to providers." Nonetheless, when Ryan put forward a similar plan this spring, Democrats immediately labeled it with the V-word. … All the plans -- Ryan's, Rivlin-Ryan, my own, the president's health-care exchanges and Medicare Part C - - explicitly or implicitly adjust payments according to the patient's risk profile, providing larger amounts for those with higher expected health-care costs.

• Wonkbook: Grover Norquist's small loss and big win
  June 15, 2011
  Washington Post - by Ezra Klein
  Health-care reform has unlocked a couple of potential grand bargains on health care, writes, well, me: "I don't think Republicans have really realized this yet, but the health-reform law unlocks a lot of potential reforms that they really like, and that no Democrat would accept in the law's absence....Taken together, Medicare and Medicaid comprise most of the government's control over the health-care sector. But if the Affordable Care Act's exchanges work well and the program's delivery-system reforms bring down costs, you could imagine eventually moving the two programs onto the exchanges, where beneficiaries would then be able to choose between the government insurer and a suite of private options. To some degree, that's what Paul Ryan is proposing for Medicare, but since he coupled it with repeal of the Affordable Care Act and vouchers that grow much more slowly than health-care costs, he made the idea completely unacceptable. But as his former co-sponsor Alice Rivlin has argued, if Republicans dropped those demands and left traditional Medicare as an option, the plan would be much more attractive to Democrats."

• Joe Biden group looks for budget deal
  June 13, 2011
  POLITICO - by David Rogers
  Compare, for example, Ryan's Medicare plan, approved by the House in April, to a bipartisan alternative crafted by his former partner, economist Alice Rivlin, who led the Congressional Budget Office for many years and later served as White House budget director in the Clinton administration. Both promise long-term savings by changing Medicare so the government provides only premium support or a "defined contribution" to the health care program - no longer a "defined benefit" for the elderly. But within this construct, Rivlin and retired Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) - a former Budget Committee chairman - allow a much gentler transition for seniors. The government contribution would grow at an annual rate of GDP plus 1 percent, a more generous formula than Ryan's plan allows - albeit one he has supported in the past with Rivlin. And while Ryan's approach would essentially force seniors to find care through private plans, the Rivlin plan maintains traditional Medicare as the default but would charge higher premiums if costs rise faster than the established limits. … The big catch: Rivlin's savings rate, while substantial, is estimated to be about half the rate envisioned by Ryan for his more severe proposal. And he apparently would need those savings to meet his deficit target and still avoid adding revenues.

• Retiring boomers, rising health costs are a frightening combination
  June 12, 2011
  Boston Globe - by Jay Fitzgerald
  "It's growing like gangbusters,'' said Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow and federal budget expert at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "and it's growing at a faster pace than the economy and the per capita income of Americans.''

• Parties agree on need to curb health-care spending but deadlock over Medicare
  June 10, 2011
  Washington Post - by Amy Goldstein
  Among the few Democrats who talk openly about an immediate need to address this fiscally treacherous future is Alice M. Rivlin, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former director of the Congressional Budget Office. She argues that waiting until after the 2012 presidential election - as many Democrats would prefer - "is too late. I don't think we have two years to play around with this." Rivlin favors a compromise that would keep the original fee-for-service version of Medicare, created in 1965, and add an alternative giving older Americans government subsidies to help pay for private health-care plans - a more moderate version of the proposal advanced by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). "The question," Rivlin said, "is whether Ryan has so poisoned the well that Democrats won't even talk about" any plan that includes premium supports.

• Deficit hawks: Don't go nuts on cuts
  June 9, 2011
  CNN - by Jeanne Sahadi
  Economist Alice Rivlin, the founding director of the Congressional Budget Office, told CNN's Candy Crowley "if you just slash spending now or if you raise taxes right now -- that's a very bad thing to do as the economy is beginning to strengthen." Rivlin would prefer if lawmakers offer additional aid to state and local governments to prevent more layoffs. But at the same time, she added, lawmakers should put a plan in place to cut long-term spending by making changes to entitlement programs and reforming the tax code.

• Pawlenty Calls for Greater Tax and Spending Cuts Than G.O.P. Rivals
  June 7, 2011
  New York Times - by Michael D. Shear
  Isabel V. Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who served in the Clinton administration, said it would take extremely deep cuts in federal spending and the elimination of individual tax deductions to offset tax cuts of the size that Mr. Pawlenty is proposing. "We need that money to reduce the deficit," Ms. Sawhill said. "If we use up all of these loopholes and all of these spending cuts to pay for very large, new tax cuts, we will have nothing left over to deal with what is a huge, gaping hole between revenue." Ms. Sawhill also said Mr. Pawlenty's assumption of 5 percent growth over a decade was "highly unlikely." She said that "long term growth has rarely been more than in the 3-percent range. That would be near the upper bound of anything that's realistic."

• A moral alternative for curing Medicare's ills
  June 5, 2011
  Los Angeles Times - by Michael Hiltzik
  Let's begin with the easy part. One of the basic flaws of Ryan's plan is that he folds Medicare's long-term fiscal problem into the near-term problem of the federal deficit. But these are two very different things. As Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution observes, the current government deficit is the result of an enormous tax cut mostly for the wealthy, of paying for two wars by credit card, of the Great Recession, and of spending to address that recession. Recovery will address at least some of that, and restoring income tax rates to pre-Bush levels would go a long way toward managing the rest.

• Rivlin backs linking debt limit hike to fiscal plan
  June 5, 2011
  POLITICO - by Josh Gerstein
  Top Democratic economist Alice Rivlin on Sunday appeared to endorse Republican demands that any increase in the debt limit be coupled with a plan to get the nation's long-term debt under control. "At the same time we raise the debt ceiling, we need to put in place this long-run plan...that shows the world we're actually getting our situation under control," Rivlin said on CNN's "State of the Union." Rivlin, who was a budget director in the Clinton White House, said there's "no mystery" about what needs to be done to get deficits under control. She mentioned long-term spending cuts, changes to entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid and lowering tax rates while broadening the tax base. While appearing to endorse the linkage proposed by the GOP and rejected by the White House, Rivlin did warn against any default on U.S. debt, calling such a prospect "unacceptable."

• States Curb Spending on Safety Net
  June 4, 2011
  Wall Street Journal - by Sara Murray
  Some critics of these programs see the cuts as a necessary pullback from the welfare state amid high deficits. But defenders worry about the effect on the needy at a time when the economy is losing steam. "No matter whose vision you're studying, they all realize we're going to have less spending," said Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who helped draft the 1996 welfare-overhaul law as a Republican congressional staff member. "There could be more cutting if the economy doesn't start behaving better."

• Alain Enthoven on Ryan's Medicare Plan
  June 3, 2011
  The Atlantic - by Clive Crook
  Alain Enthoven, pioneer of "managed competition" and esteemed authority on health-care economics, has an excellent column on Ryan's premium support plan (What Paul Ryan's critics don't know about health economics). Echoing arguments made by Alice Rivlin and Henry Aaron, he argues that the premium support approach would encourage the spread of accountable care organisations, and that these could make a big contribution to improving efficiency and lowering costs. Ryan's indexation formula is too severe, Enthoven says, but the basic idea is sound…

• Health Exchanges: Common Ground for Medicare Reform?
  June 2, 2011
  Bloomberg Businessweek - by Peter Coy
  Alice M. Rivlin, White House budget director under President Bill Clinton, sees that divergence as an opportunity for compromise. "Chairman Ryan has had trouble explaining why he is for exchanges in his Medicare reform and against them in ACA, and President Obama has the opposite problem," Rivlin, a Brookings Institution senior fellow, wrote on May 16 on The American Square blog. In a May 31 interview, Rivlin suggested the parties could meet in the middle on a plan that she and retired Senator Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) advanced last year as co-chairs of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Debt Reduction Task Force. A compromise would incorporate health exchanges into Medicare while keeping traditional fee-for-service care alive as one alternative. "There hasn't been a serious bipartisan negotiation," Rivlin says. "That has to happen." Boston University economist Laurence J. Kotlikoff agrees with Rivlin that the Ryan plan for Medicare is strikingly similar to the Obama plan for working-age Americans.

• Vanishing giants in a sharply divided U.S. Congress
  June 1, 2011
  Reuters - by Richard Cowan and Thomas Ferraro
  Bill Frenzel, a former Republican congressman who is a Brookings Institution scholar, said today's issues -- the country's staggering national debt, for example -- "clearly are more difficult and you have a young group in the House, young in seniority, who want to be fierce." Tea Party activists, Frenzel said, remind him of the big group of Democrats who entered the House after the 1974 post-Watergate elections. "They made it difficult for the speaker to do anything," Frenzel said. "It took them a little bit to settle down."

• Crashing Through the Debt Ceiling
  May 31, 2011
  Capitol News Connection - by Mary Kay Mallonee
  Alice Rivlin, the first director of the Congressional Budget Office and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said impacts of not raising the ceiling again would include "a huge spike in interest rates, a plummeting of the value of the dollar and a very, very deep recession." If it couldn't borrow more money, the government would not be able to pay federal workers or pay Social Security and veterans' benefits. To Rivlin, Congress is playing politics and putting the nation at risk. "I don't think some lawmakers understand how dire the situation is," Rivlin said. "Or they do understand and they think they can get some very serious concessions."

• Republicans ready to call Geithner's bluff on debt ceiling
  May 28, 2011
  WorldNetDaily - by John Rossomando
  Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, defended Geithner, saying plans such as those introduced by Republicans like Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey and South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney to avert default are "naïve." Each has sponsored legislation that would avert default by requiring the treasury to pay interest on the debt first before paying other obligations, thus averting default. "I think it's naïve to assume that even if we say we are going to pay interest on our debt, the fact we couldn't pay the rest of our bills wouldn't have a major impact both on financial markets and on life at home," Sawhill said. "If a business suddenly said to its vendors, 'Well, we are only going to pay interest on the debt and therefore we can't pay you what we owe you,' that business would be effectively bankrupt. I think it's either naïve or political posturing, one or the other," she said.

• Don't Scorn Paul Ryan
  May 27, 2011
  New York Times - by Joe Nocera
  Because even if Ryan's solution is wrongheaded, he's right that Medicare is headed for trouble. It might not be in nine years, but as health care costs continue to rise uncontrollably, and as baby boomers continue to age, Medicare will gobble up an ever larger percentage of the federal budget. "The problems are real," said Alice Rivlin, the Brookings Institution fellow and former Congressional budget director (and a Democrat). … Rivlin, along with former Senator Pete Domenici, a Republican, has come forth with a less-mean-spirited variant of Ryan's voucher plan.

• Five Medicare lessons from NY-26
  May 25, 2011
  POLITICO - by David Nather
  Under other versions of the Medicare premium support plan - like the bipartisan deficit proposal by former Sen. Pete Domenici and former Office of Management and Budget director Alice Rivlin - seniors can go into Medicare premium support if they want, but they can also stay in traditional Medicare if they want. Making it a choice, rather than a requirement, might make Medicare premium support a bit less scary to seniors. And there are other bipartisan ideas that leave Medicare the way it is but get money out of milder changes, like making seniors pay higher cost-sharing. The deficit commission headed by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles is the most well-known example, but there are others, like the Domenici-Rivlin plan. Any idea pulled from one of those plans - like higher cost-sharing for seniors - gives either Republicans or Democrats an instant political shield that can at least limit the damage. By choosing a mandatory Medicare premium support program, Ryan didn't have that kind of cover.

• Paul Ryan's Medicare plan is not Bill Clinton's fault
  May 25, 2011
  Washington Post - by Ezra Klein
  The idea of giving Medicare beneficiaries a choice of private plans in addition to traditional Medicare fee-for-service - in wonk parlance, "premium support" - does have Democratic backers. Some months ago, in fact, I interviewed Henry Aaron, a center-left health-care expert who is one of the idea's creators. And he said the problem with Ryan's plan is that it's not premium support. Premium support, Aaron explained, was designed to create competition without allowing cost-shifting. The key feature was that payments kept pace with the cost of health care. That way, either there'd be savings from competition, or there wouldn't be savings. And you can see that in the bipartisan committee's proposal. They authors write that "on average, beneficiaries would be expected to pay 12 percent of the total cost of standard option plans."

• Experts defend Medicare board
  May 25, 2011
  POLITICO - by Sarah Kliff
  One hundred health policy experts and economists sent a letter, obtained by POLITICO, to congressional leaders early this week urging legislators to back off their many attempts to repeal the health reform provision. "We believe that an independent board is essential to promote, monitor and implement reforms that improve Medicare and the nation's health care system," they wrote. The signers include notable centrist health economists, including Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institution, along with many liberal health policy scholars. "There are a lot of unreasonable fears about the IPAB. It's been associated with death panels and stuff like that," Rivlin told POLITICO in an interview. "I view it as a much more benign device to improve the efficiency of delivery systems in a lot of different ways. I don't think it's going to be some technocratic horror."

• Secondary Sources: Dollar, Tax and Small Business, Medicare Premium Support
  May 23, 2011
  Wall Street Journal - by Phil Izzo
  Medicare Premium Support: Alice Rivlin aims to find a formula for Medicare premium support that both Republicans and Democrats could support. "The basic concept of premium support is to provide beneficiaries with a subsidy to select among comprehensive health plans offered on a regulated exchange. The plans can all be private or can include a public option. The plans must accept all eligible beneficiaries-guaranteeing access and preventing cherry picking-but the plans will be fully compensated for taking care of older or sicker people.

• Memo to GOP contenders: Defense cuts not an option
  May 23, 2011
  Washington Post - by Jennifer Rubin
  Robert Kagan in January wrote for the Weekly Standard: "No serious budget analyst or economist believes that cutting the defense budget will aid economic recovery in the near term - federal spending on defense is just as much a job-producing stimulus as federal spending on infrastructure. Nor, more importantly, do they believe that cutting defense spending will have more than the most marginal effect on reducing the runaway deficits projected for the coming years. The simple fact is, as my Brookings colleague and former budget czar Alice Rivlin recently observed, the scary projections of future deficits are not "caused by rising defense spending," and even if one assumes that defense spending continues to increase with the rate of inflation, this is "not what's driving the future spending." The engine of our growing debt is entitlements."

• Biden talks seen last hope for U.S. debt ceiling deal
  May 22, 2011
  Reuters - by Alister Bull
  A deal to lift the U.S. debt limit may hinge on negotiations led by Vice President Joe Biden, which still have a long way to go to close the gap between deeply divided Democrats and Republicans … "I hope that they are successful, because at the moment there is no other game in town," said Bill Frenzel, a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

• Democrats grapple with budget split
  May 20, 2011
  Financial Times - by James Politi
  Isabel Sawhill, a budget analyst at the Brookings Institution, says this may not be entirely satisfying to the liberal base, and one prominent Democrat told her recently: "Our guys are just not willing to go over the cliff and to many people it seems that the Democrats don't care enough to counter [the Republicans] with equally strong medicine."

• Playing with Fire on the Debt
  May 20, 2011
  US News & World Report - by Michael Morella
  The United States has hit the ceiling, but no one is raising the roof. The Treasury Department announced Monday that the country reached its $14.3 trillion debt limit, the maximum amount of money that the federal government is permitted, by law, to borrow … "That's a line we haven't crossed before," says Ron Haskins, senior fellow of economic studies at the Brookings Institution.

• 5 Ugly Truths About the Debt-Ceiling Battle
  May 18, 2011
  The Fiscal Times - by Merrill Goozner
  The bipartisan presidential deficit commission chaired by Erskine Bowles, a Democrat, and Alan Simpson, a Republican, called for one dollar of tax increases for every two dollars of budget cuts to get to its decade-long goal of $4 trillion in savings over current projected budgets. A plan offered by Alice Rivlin, a former chief of the Congressional Budget Office, and Pete Domenici, a former Republican Senator and Budget Committee chairman, put the mix closer to 50-50. Current tax collections are about 14.4 percent of gross domestic product, which is about four percentage points below the annual average since the end of World War II. That will naturally rise as the economy improves, generating more in income tax revenue. But even the president's proposed budget, which assumes expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts for the well-to-do after 2012, would only increase the tax take to 19.3 percent of GDP in 2016. That is still less than the levels reached in 1998 through 2001, the last time the nation had full employment and ran budget surpluses.

• Ryan gives up on his budget
  May 17, 2011
  Washington Post - by Ezra Klein
  Pick your objection to Rep. Paul Ryan's Medicare plan. Maybe, like Michele Bachmann, you're worried it shifts costs onto seniors. Maybe, like Newt Gingrich, you're worried that it's too much, too fast. Maybe, like Josh Barro, you're worried that the caps on Medicare and Medicaid spending are totally unrealistic. Maybe, like Alice Rivlin, you're worried that there's no plan for changing the way health care is actually delivered. Maybe, like Henry Aaron, you're worried that the plan calls itself "premium support" even though it lacks the key features of a premium-support plan.

• Newt Gingrich's Flame-Out Says As Much About Campaigns As About The Former Speaker
  May 17, 2011
  Huffington Post - by Sam Stein
  The irony is that Gingrich's position on the Ryan plan really hasn't changed at all. On April 22, he put up a Facebook post in which he said he preferred proposals offered by former Democratic Congressional Budget Office director Alice Rivlin and former Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), which would make Medicare vouchers voluntary.

• Roundup: White House urges raising borrowing cap to avoid economic disasters
  May 17, 2011
  Xinhua Newswire
  U.S. Congress must increase the debt limit in the next few weeks to avoid a financial crisis, contended Alice Rivlin, founding director of U.S. Congressional Budget Office and Pete Domenici, a former U.S. Senator. "We favor raising the debt ceiling promptly and mandating actions to put the federal budget back on a sustainable path," Rivlin and Domenici said in a jointly written article released Sunday on the Washington Post.

• Gingrich didn't change; his party did
  May 17, 2011
  Washington Post - by Dana Milbank
  Gingrich, for all his petulance and partisanship, ultimately became a dealmaker, building consensus for the 1997 balanced-budget agreement. As a private citizen, he has continued to search for common ground on health-care reform. "I've spent enough of my life fighting," he said during a joint appearance with Hillary Clinton in 2005. "It would be nice to spend some time constructing." Ryan came from a similar mind-set. He worked with Alice Rivlin, who had been Bill Clinton's budget director, to develop a Medicare reform plan that created private alternatives but left fee-for-service Medicare as the default option. Though he was a dissenting vote on the Erskine Bowles-Alan Simpson debt commission, Ryan praised the group's approach of mixing spending cuts and tax increases. Democrats who met privately with him had hopes that the incoming budget committee chairman would forge a consensus. In December, Ryan praised Democrats Bowles and Rivlin as "wonderful human beings" and said: "I hope there are more people like that, that can form a coalition in this country to fix these problems."

• Debt Limit D-Day Spells Tough Choices for Obama
  May 16, 2011
  Reuters
  "The administration and politicians of every stripe would want to give them priority. The public is very concerned about making those payments," said Isabel Sawhill, senior fellow economic studies at the Brookings Institution think tank.

• Federal government hits its debt limit
  May 16, 2011
  CBS Newspath
  Economists say if the debt ceiling isn't raised, the U.S. runs the risk of not being able to pay what it owes, which could be an economic catastrophe. "We're playing with fire. If we don't do this, we can have a financial reaction that makes the last one look mild by comparison," said Isabel Sawhill, an economist with the Brookings Institution.

• Debate begins in earnest as U.S. hits debt limit
  May 15, 2011
  Reuters - by Andy Sullivan
  Budget experts say the debt limit provides an opportunity to address the country's long-term fiscal problems before it courts a Greek-style debt crisis. "Nothing blows up next week, but the clock is ticking now. We need to get on top of this problem," said Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institution.

• Where President Obama and Rep. Ryan intersect on health care
  May 14, 2011
  Washington Post
  The concepts were part of a 1995 proposal by two Democratic economists, Robert Reischauer and Henry Aaron, to transform Medicare from a government-pays-for-service system into one in which seniors would receive government funding to choose from among a variety of private plans. As they described it then, "premium support" would "strengthen participants' incentives to seek services from cost-effective delivery systems and providers' incentives to operate efficiently." Although Mr. Aaron has since rethought his endorsement, the approach ought to be seriously considered as policymakers confront rising Medicare costs … The Bipartisan Policy Center's Debt Reduction Task Force, chaired by Democratic economist Alice Rivlin and former Republican Sen. Pete Domenici, proposed a premium support program with a more reasonable growth rate than Mr. Ryan's and with the option of traditional Medicare alongside (but with higher premiums if costs rise faster than the set limits). As the report noted, this is not radically different from the existing structure in which private Medicare Advantage plans exist alongside traditional Medicare.

• A Collegial (For Me) Quibble On Taxes
  May 12, 2011
  The New Republic - by Jonathan Chait
  As I noted earlier, I would like to see higher tax revenue on Americans earning between $100,000 and $200,000 a year, though many of the arguments about the necessity of doing so are based on incorrect or misleading data. (It is not, in fact, arithmetically impossible to close the budget deficit without reducing domestic spending or raising taxes only on the affluent. The House Progressive Budget does so.) William Galston joins in the argument for lowering the threshold of which households should have to face higher taxes. While I agree with his desire to see higher revenue raised from households in the low six figures, perhaps writing in haste, he makes a very puzzling claim. Galston seems to argue that the top 1 percent has been burdened with higher tax rates…

• Hill hearing on D.C. offers few fireworks, ray of hope on budget autonomy
  May 12, 2011
  Washington Post
  Natwar M. Gandhi, the District's chief financial officer, and Alice M. Rivlin, the former head of the Financial Control Board, responded positively to Issa's proposal. "I think this would be possible and a very good idea," Rivlin said.

• Republican rift widens on Medicare
  May 10, 2011
  The Hill - by Alexander Bolton and Julian Pecquet
  Alice Rivlin, who served as White House budget director under former President Clinton, said that some version of a premium support system, such as Ryan proposed, could extend Medicare's solvency. "I still think premium support could be the basis for a bipartisan reform of Medicare, but it would have to be in a different form than Ryan proposed it," she told The Hill. "I'm not ready to declare premium support dead. But in the form in which Ryan put it out, he turned everybody off," she said.

• Republicans Rule Out Tax Increases in Debate Over Debt Cap
  May 10, 2011
  Bloomberg - by James Rowley
  Republican congressional leaders are ruling out tax increases or a wider revenue base in talks on extending the U.S. government's borrowing authority, creating a conflict with Democrats who would raise more money as well as cut spending… "It's becoming increasingly clear that the political stars aren't in alignment for a large structural deal," said William Galston, an analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington and a former policy adviser to Democratic President Bill Clinton.

• Budget trigger explained
  May 10, 2011
  NPR - by John Dimsdale
  Now, folks in Washington are pinning their hopes on a different kind of horse -- a budget trigger. It works like this: if Congress doesn't start drying up the red ink, a trigger would force automatic spending cuts and tax increases. Alice Rivlin served on three different deficit commissions that recommended triggers, and she's a big fan. "It's a forcing mechanism, it's a sword of Damocles hanging over the head of Congress. If you don't do this, then some quite arbitrary cuts and tax increases will ensue." … But Alice Rivlin says if the trigger needs supermajorities to override it, it could do the trick. "The advantage of a trigger is if you have a very hard decision and you can't resolve it immediately, then something quite drastic will happen. So we better work on something we can actually agree on between now and then."

• Newsmaker: Alice Rivlin, Washington's budget guru
  May 8, 2011
  Reuters - by Andy Sullivan
  If Washington manages to strike a deal to fix the country's finances over the long term, a veteran of previous budget battles named Alice Rivlin will probably have something to do with it. As lawmakers struggle to come up with a plan to tame the ballooning U.S. debt, many of them are inviting the diminutive economist to Capitol Hill to hear her thoughts. Or they are paging through one of the three separate deficit-reduction plans that she helped craft last year. They will almost certainly encounter something that will make them swallow hard.

• Big Medicare overhaul? Don't count on it
  May 7, 2011
  POLITICO - by David Nather
  Whenever the two sides are ready to talk seriously about Medicare and Medicaid, it's not impossible to see how they could bridge even their worst disagreements, like finding a middle ground between Ryan's Medicare "premium support" plan and Obama's strengthening of the payment advisory board. Alice Rivlin, a former Office of Management and Budget director under former President Bill Clinton who worked with Ryan on another deficit plan, said a compromise could find a role for both, since they're different means to the same end - controlling costs. "People keep talking about a choice between premium support and IPAB. I don't see those as necessarily in conflict," Rivlin said. But any agreement to create a premium support program, she said, should keep the traditional Medicare program as an option for people who want it - unlike the House plan. "I don't think it's worth talking about unless you do that," she said.

• Biden optimistic as deficit talks get going
  May 5, 2011
  Reuters - by Alister Bull and Andy Sullivan
  Analysts warn the country cannot afford to postpone curbing the growth in entitlement spending. "I don't think another election is going to help, why should it? If we put this off until 2013 it doesn't get easier, it gets harder," said Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institution who has sat on several deficit-reduction commissions.

• Potential grows for fiscal straitjacket
  May 4, 2011
  Financial Times - by James Politi
  But reaching agreement on a set of budget controls may be easier said than done, since there are still significantly different views on Capitol Hill regarding what such a mechanism should look like. The concern is that in the end, the talks could produce a toothless set of restrictions that will easily be circumvented or undone down the road. "Congress can put a sponge in that looks like it can sop some red ink, but if later the public howls, they can throw the sponge away," says Isabel Sawhill, a fiscal policy analyst at the Brookings Institution.

• Deficits Are the New Iraq
  May 2, 2011
  Huffington Post - by Richard Eskow
  These ideas are the "WMD" of austerity economics. Alice Rivlin and the other handful of Democratic economists pushing these ideas are its Curveballs. And on any given day, half a dozen prominent journalists are its Judith Millers.

• Private Accounts Can Save Social Security
  May 2, 2011
  Wall Street Journal - by Martin Feldstein
  The leading Medicare reform plan is a bipartisan initiative proposed initially by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) and Alice Rivlin, a leading Democrat and former head of the Congressional Budget Office. The Rivlin-Ryan plan would change Medicare to a system in which future seniors would receive a voucher with which to buy private health insurance. The value of the voucher would rise over time more slowly than the currently projected Medicare cost per enrollee, implying that many seniors would want to pay extra to buy more comprehensive insurance than the vouchers would finance.

• Lawmakers face tough choice on debt limit
  May 1, 2011
  Morning Caller - by Colby Itkowitz
  Ron Haskins, a budget expert at the Brookings Institution, a public policy research organization in Washington, D.C., said constituents who are adamant about their members not voting to increase borrowing don't understand the ramifications. He said Social Security payments could stop and interest rates could rise. "The constituents won't listen until they get kicked in the seat of their pants," Haskins said.

• Many seniors wary of GOP Medicare plan
  May 1, 2011
  Associated Press - by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
  A prominent Democrat who co-authored an earlier version of the Medicare plan with Ryan says seniors' reactions are understandable. "Seniors aren't just thinking about themselves," said economist Alice Rivlin, a former vice chair of the Federal Reserve. "They believe in these programs. They are worried about a proposal that radically alters a program they are relying on and others will rely on in the future." Rivlin objects to Ryan's latest version, saying it leaves future retirees too exposed.

• Editorial: Tie Congress down on spending
  April 30, 2011
  Ft Meyers News-Press - by Mark Stevens
  Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, and a rare Republican at that generally liberal think tank, has come to believe that such proposals as the Once Cent Solution or a balanced budget amendment make sense given the size of the debt and the partisan gridlock. "I like the idea. It sets the goal, then if the political people can't find a way to meet it, a huge ax falls across the board. It's a crummy way to cut, but given the enormity of the problem and the fact that the parties just won't work together, I'll take that,"

• Rick Crawford Takes Heat At Town Hall For Opposing Debt Limit Increase
  April 29, 2011
  Huffington Post - by Amanda Terkel
  "We simply stop funding everything," said Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "And then it would depend how long this went before the ceiling was lifted. But let's suppose it went on a whole year. Then we could only spend 60 percent of what we're spending now. And we'd have to pay some interest on the debt, otherwise we'd be in default. Then the question would be, what would we spend on? Would we send out Social Security checks, would we raise taxes suddenly? The hole would be huge. ... Can you imagine cutting $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion in one year's time? It's just ridiculous."

• GOP plan to change Medicare is rooted in bipartisan history
  April 26, 2011
  Washington Post - by Amy Goldstein
  The term "premium support" was coined in 1995 by two respected health policy experts, neither a conservative: Henry Aaron, a Brookings economist, and Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute. "The idea of vouchers was abroad in the land," Aaron recalled. "We thought there was sort of a free-market-will-cure-all mentality." … Eliminating Medicare as it was originally conceived is a major, controversial difference from earlier proposals. James Capretta, a conservative budget expert on health care whom Ryan consulted, said that fee-for-service Medicare "is a big part of why we have fragmentation and inefficiency in health care." But Alice Rivlin says it is important to preserve the original program as the default alternative. … Rivlin, Aaron and the Congressional Budget

• How To Steal From Your Children And Grandchildren With Medicare
  April 28, 2011
  Time - by Michael Scherer
  Ahh, the children and grandchildren. Politicians love to describe how big-bad Washington is robbing them blind. "Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren," then Sen. Barack Obama declared in 2006, when he voted against raising the debt ceiling. "Passing on ever-increasing debt to our children is not just bad policy, it is morally wrong," wrote Mitt Romney in his latest book…The Brookings Institution's Bill Galston takes this fact and runs with it in a new piece for The New Republic called, "Ask Not: Notice to selfish, upper-middle-class boomers: It's time to pay more for Medicare."

• What's behind seniors' fears of GOP Medicare plan?
  April 28, 2011
  Associated Press - by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
  The plan's author, House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, says he thinks that's mainly because Democrats are scaring older people by distorting the details of his proposal. Ryan says cost-cutting is necessary to save Medicare for future generations. He says once seniors understand that they aren't affected by the plan, most don't oppose it. Alice Rivlin disagrees. A Democrat who worked with Ryan on an earlier Medicare plan, she objects to this one. Rivlin says seniors aren't just thinking about themselves but want to preserve Medicare for the next generations.

• Debunking Paul Ryan's Latest Spin
  April 27, 2011
  The New Republic - by Jonathan Chait
  Ryan says his planned changes to Medicare "Use the ideas that have worked before -- bipartisan ideas, premium support, to fix Medicare in the future." In fact, Ryan's plan is not premium support, according to the health care expert who invented premium support. The "bipartisan" label refers to the support of Alice Rivlin to an earlier health care plan she co-sponsored with Ryan. Rivlin says Ryan's current plan won't work. Ryan knows Rivlin does not support this version of his plan but he keeps calling it bipartisan anyway.

• Notice to Upper-Middle-Class Boomers: It's Time to Pay More for Medicare
  April 26, 2011
  Reuters - by Tim Reid and Richard Cowan
  They have met in almost total secrecy for months, holed up in an office on Capitol Hill: three Republican and three Democratic senators trying to hammer out a deal to reduce America's vast deficit. Now, with the "Gang of Six" senators widely anticipated to deliver their proposal in early May, the air of expectation in Washington is acute…William Galston, a former domestic policy adviser to President Bill Clinton, said in the hyper-partisan environment of Washington, the Gang of Six could produce "a transformative moment." The six senators -- Democrats Mark Warner, Dick Durbin and Kent Conrad, and Republicans Tom Coburn, Saxby Chambliss and Mike Crapo -- have met dozens of times since December. Their staff have devoted hundreds of hours to try and reach a deal.

• No on taxes = yes on deficits
  April 26, 2011
  Washington Post - by Ezra Klein
  Lawrence O'Donnell had a good interview last night with Grover Norquist emphasizing the role Norquist's anti-tax pledge - which the vast majority of elected Republicans have signed - plays in keeping the GOP from acting responsibly on taxes. By coincidence, I'd just read William Gale's thorough demolition (pdf) of the fantasy that the pledge does anything to restrict the size of government, and it's worth summarizing a few of his points…

• The Debt Failsafe Trigger Danger
  April 23, 2011
  Heritage Foundation - by Brian Darling
  The Hill reports that the Bipartisan Policy Center is circulating this proposal to the Senate Gang of Six and other key budget members as a plan that could be added to an increase in the debt limit: t is unclear to what extent the center's proposal could be woven into a proposal by the Gang of Six, but Alice Rivlin, former Clinton budget director, and former Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) have discussed the concepts with members in private meetings.

• Introducing SaveGo
  April 22, 2011
  Washington Post - by Ezra Klein
  The debt-ceiling debate increasingly looks as though it will focus on procedural reforms to the budget process, some of them sensible, some of them not so sensible. The Bipartisan Policy Center is pushing one of the sensible ones: SaveGo, which you can read all about here. But on the off chance you don't feel like clicking the link, I asked one of the policy's authors, former Congressional Budget Office director Alice Rivlin, to explain it for me…

• Lawmakers face divisive vote on debt ceiling
  April 21, 2011
  Capitol News Connection - by Ana Radelat
  Alice Rivlin, the first director of the Congressional Budget Office and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said impacts of not raising the ceiling again would include "a huge spike in interest rates, a plummeting of the value of the dollar and a very, very deep recession."

• National Fiscal Commission Member Rivlin on Tax Policy Reform
  April 21, 2011
  C-SPAN
  With the national deficit facing record-breaking figures, the Obama administration and Democratic leaders are embroiled in a debate with Congressional Republicans over their contrasting deficit-reduction and economic plans. This week, the Washington Journal is featuring a special segment looking at the recommendations to reduce the national debt from the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility. Commission member Alice Rivlin joins today's program and discusses their strategies to overhaul tax policies. "Tax reform should lower tax rates, reduce the deficit, simplify the tax code, reduce the tax gap, and make America the best place to start a business and create jobs," wrote the group in its report released on December 2010.

• Gingrich Steps Away From Ryan Budget
  April 21, 2011
  Wall Street Journal - by Jonathan Weisman
  In a post on his Facebook page Wednesday, Mr. Gingrich - a likely presidential candidate - instead embraced a voluntary plan that would give seniors the option to choose private plans without explicitly abolishing Medicare as we know it. That is in line with a Medicare proposal by former Democratic Congressional Budget Office director Alice Rivlin and former Republican Sen. Pete Domenici, once embraced, then rejected by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan.

• Bipartisan Policy Center Releases New 'SAVEGO' Budget Proposal
  April 21, 2011
  Bipartisan Policy Center
  "The 1990 Budget Enforcement Act helped to move the budget from the largest deficit to the largest surplus in history," said Dr. Alice Rivlin. "SAVEGO will give the Congress a tool for achieving the deficit-reducing spending reductions and revenue increases necessary to restrain the looming growth of debt. It builds on the successful experience with discretionary caps and strong PAYGO rules in the 1990s, but adds a tool for dealing with the immediate prospect that an aging population and rising health care costs will drive up federal spending even without new legislation. SAVEGO will help Congress set fiscally responsible goals and stick to them."

• Newt Gingrich rejects Paul Ryan plan to end Medicare
  April 21, 2011
  POLITICO - by Kendra Marr
  Gingrich on his Facebook page inched away from Ryan's plan to end Medicare as we know it and give seniors private insurance plans partially subsidized by the federal government. Instead, Gingrich backed an approach more in line with former Congressional Budget Office director Alice Rivlin and former Sen. Pete Domenici that keeps the current form of Medicare but allows seniors to select a private plan if they wish.

• Rating agency's debt warning rattles investors
  April 20, 2011
  Boston Globe - by Theo Emery and Mark Arsenault
  Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, applauded Brown, saying he's sending the right signal. "I think that position makes sense, especially if in the end it's a bluff. I think there is every possibility that it will be possible to get some concessions on spending as part of the votes for the debt ceiling,'' he said.

• INSIGHT KANSAS: Align spending with taxing
  April 19, 2011
  Pittsburgh Morning Sun - by H. Edward Flentje
  This behemoth has become incomprehensible to the public breeding cynicism, distrust, and outright anger at government-national, state, and local government. One of the clearest and most consistent voices on how to tame this beast is Alice Rivlin, founding director of the Congressional Budget Office, co-author of a recent bi-partisan deficit reduction plan, and long-time advisor to Democrats and Republicans, most recently Paul Ryan, who last week released House Republicans' budget plan. As lawmakers struggle with unsustainable finances, they would be wise to revisit Rivlin's radical suggestions of nearly twenty years ago on dividing more clearly the jobs of national and state governments, in her words…

• No, Ryan's Budget Is Not Like Clinton's Welfare Reform
  April 19, 2011
  The New Republic - by Jonathan Cohn
  Here, for example, are Peter Ferrera and Phil Kerpen defending the Republican budget on the Wall Street Journal editorial page: The reform was wildly successful. The welfare rolls were reduced by two-thirds nationwide, and even more in states that pushed mandatory work most aggressively. As a result, in real dollars total federal and state spending on TANF by 2006 was down 31% from AFDC spending in 1995. At the same time, because former welfare dependents were put to work, child poverty declined every year. Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution reports that by 2000 the poverty rate for black children was "the lowest it had ever been," and because of their renewed work effort, low-income families formerly on welfare saw their total income increase by about 25%.

• Our attention deficit disorders
  April 17, 2011
  Akron Beacon Journal - by Michael Douglas
  Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution, makes the point more sharply. She argued last fall in the journal Democracy: ''Preserving the status quo will erode trust in government. A government that has lost control of its fiscal future . . . cannot garner much respect from its citizens.'' … Sawhill stresses, correctly, that ''unless we free up resources to invest in education and job opportunities, and provide a healthy start for children from less advantaged families, prosperity and opportunity will elude us.'' … Another bipartisan panel, led by Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institution and Pete Domenici, a former U.S. senator from New Mexico, takes a similar approach, although achieving a better 50-50 split of spending cuts and new revenues. Worth emphasis is that all of the major deficit-reduction packages of the past 30 years, from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton, have involved a mix of spending cuts and revenue increases.

• Denver panel looks at ways to reduce nation's debt and deficit
  April 15, 2011
  Colorado Statesman - by Ernest Luning
  Alice Rivlin - who sat on the commission chaired by Simpson and Democrat Erskine Bowles and another recent debt-reduction panel along with former U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico - said forums like the one in Denver are the best hope to tackle the crisis. "It is possible for a group of people with very divergent views to sit around the table and come up with something that is nobody's first choice and that will solve the problem," she said. Rivlin said that the other lesson she's learned is, "You have to do everything." Federal spending, she said, is "on a track to grow faster than the economy, and that's an unsustainable situation," made worse by the pending retirement and geriatric health woes of a "huge tsunami of Baby Boomers."

• One step forward, half-step back on deficit
  April 15, 2011
  Boston Globe - by Scot Lehigh
  Obama began with a reminder about the societal importance of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. He then offered a pointed review of how Washington went from provident to profligate over the last decade: An unfunded prescription drug benefit; the expense of two wars; and his own spending to combat the recession. Oh yes, and two rounds of tax cuts, which cost roughly $4 trillion over 10 years. "That lesson is worth repeating many times because there is a competing message out there that is one-sided,'' said Isabel Sawhill, an associate director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Clinton and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. The competing message, of course, is the Republicans' specious insistence that ours is simply a spending problem - and that most of the overspending has come on Obama's watch.

• Paul Ryan is not pro-competition, and his critics are not anti-competition
  April 15, 2011
  Washington Post - by Ezra Klein
  Henry Aaron and Robert Reischauer, for instance, first developed the idea of "premium support," which is the policy Ryan says he's included in his budget. But they don't think he's got it right, and both mild-mannered deficit hawks have been blistering in their criticisms. Alice Rivlin worked with Ryan on a plan to bring consumer responsibility and market-based incentives to Medicare, and even went so far as to send it to the Congressional Budget Office. But she's abandoned the play Ryan includes in his budget, as she thinks it's ultimately doomed to failure. If you ask Aaron, Reischauer or Rivlin why they don't support Ryan, they'll tell you the same thing: He's not bringing competition to Medicare. He's bringing cost-shifting. … It's about opposing cost shifting as the fix to Medicare - or, for that matter, Medicaid. That's why market-loving budget hawks like Aaron, Reischauer and Rivlin - people who've been proposing ways to bring competition to Medicare for more than a decade - oppose Ryan's plan.

• Good Poetry, Blah Prose
  April 14, 2011
  The American Prospect - by Harold Meyerson
  But when it comes to the prose -- the hard numbers of Obama's proposal and the hard bargaining (or hard posturing) that lies ahead -- things look distinctly less grand. Begin with his vow to cut roughly $2 in spending for every $1 he raises in revenues. That's not only not equitable (last fall, the bipartisan deficit-reduction panel chaired by former Republican Sen. Pete Dominici and former Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin called for a 50-50 split) but will, if enacted, lead to cuts in the very programs Obama's poetry extols. According to Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Obama's proposal to cut $360 billion from mandatory programs other than Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid would likely imperil a range of programs that the very people Obama pledged to defend in fact depend upon.

• Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney and Director of the Office of Management and Budget Jacob Lew, 4/14/2011
  April 14, 2011
  The White House
  "I will just say that the people who designed the idea of premium support have said they don't think it's premium support. So this is not something that we've said. I mean, if you talk to Henry Aaron or Alice Rivlin, both of whom have embraced the idea of premium support at various points, they haven't -- they've said that this is not what it means."

• Obama Puts Deficit Ball Back in Pentagon's Court
  April 14, 2011
  New York Times - by Thom Shanker and Christopher Drew
  Mr. Adams worked last year with a bipartisan group - led by former Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, and Alice M. Rivlin, a former budget director in the Clinton administration - that recommended reducing the Pentagon's projected spending by $900 billion over 10 years. President Obama's deficit-reduction commission called for saving $1 trillion over that period.

• National experts examine U.S. deficit at UI
  April 14, 2011
  The Daily Iowan - by Sarah Bulmer
  "Our debt has risen in relation to the size of the economy because of the recession and because of the need to cope with the recession," said Alice Rivlin, former director of the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office during the Clinton administration. … As the baby boomers continue to age, retire, and thus cash Social Security checks, national alarm is growing, said Rivlin. "Not only is there no easy solution, there's no single solution," Rivlin said…

• Where do your taxes go? Receipt could show you
  April 13, 2011
  Seattle Times - by Kyung M. Song
  "Americans are basically greedy. They think they can have all the Social Security and Medicare they want and still have low taxes," said Ron Haskins, an expert on budget and welfare issues at the Brookings Institution, a center-left policy research center in Washington, D.C.

• How Does The 2012 House GOP Budget Measure Up?
  April 13, 2011
  NPR
  In Ryan's plan, the government subsidies for insurance would rise only as fast as inflation. So if insurance premiums keep going up faster, seniors would end up shouldering more and more of the costs themselves. Tax policy expert Bill Gale of the Brookings Institution says Ryan needs to keep a tight lid on the government's healthcare bills, because he's also calling for big tax cuts. "Basically what Ryan's doing is saying we're going to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. And because of that, we're going to have much steeper cuts in Medicare and Medicaid than we otherwise would need to."

• Obama: Ready for 'tough cuts'
  April 13, 2011
  CNN Money - by Charles Riley
  According to Isabel Sawhill, an economist who studies fiscal issues at the Brookings Institution, funding reductions of the size proposed by Obama will start cutting into bone. "There is no way we can cut this deeply and not hurt both the investments and low-income families," Sawhill said.

• Why Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan is so flawed
  April 11, 2011
  Washington Post - by Ezra Klein
  Health-care costs don't grow at the rate of inflation. Ever. Previously, Ryan acknowledged that. His Roadmap capped federal contributions between inflation and the actual cost of medical care. He then developed a more bipartisan version of the idea with Alice Rivlin, who founded the Congressional Budget Office and directed the Office of Management and Budget under Bill Clinton. That one was capped at the growth of GDP plus 1 percentage point. Both targets were far more plausible than the fantasy target Ryan is now using. So why the switch? He has not said. I suspect he couldn't make the numbers add up without tax increases. The problem now, however, is that his numbers don't add up at all. Rivlin - a budget hawk's budget hawk - has abandoned the proposal that Ryan says she helped write.

• Creator of premium support says Ryan has 'vouchers, not premium support'
  April 11, 2011
  Washington Post - by Ezra Klein
  Brookings' Henry Aaron is one of Washington's most respected social policy experts. He's served as a Social Security trustee, vice president of the American Economic Association and much more. It was Aaron, alongside the Urban Institute's Bob Reischauer, who coined the term "premium support" to describe a model in which you'd open Medicare to competition but install certain safeguards to protect beneficiaries from cost shifting. Now, Paul Ryan has adopted that model and included it in his budget. There's only one problem, according to Aaron. Ryan may be calling his reforms "premium support," but that's not what they are.

• Analysis: GOP gets its turn on Medicare hot seat
  April 11, 2011
  Associated Press - by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldviar
  "If everybody who bought health care was paying more when they get a more expensive plan, that would create a lot more pressure to bring costs down," said Mark McClellan, who ran Medicare for President George W. Bush. "There's reason to think that reforms that engage beneficiaries in getting less costly care will make a difference." … Ryan had developed an earlier form of his proposal jointly with a prominent Democratic economist, Alice Rivlin, a former vice chair of the Federal Reserve. Although Ryan publicly cited her in unveiling his plan, Rivlin said she doesn't support this version. The government health care payment in the GOP budget would quickly fall behind medical inflation, Rivlin said. "Ryan has lowered the growth rate so that it's really punitive," she added. Rivlin also says seniors should be given a choice between staying in traditional Medicare and a voucher system. She also differs with Ryan on raising taxes. "You can't do it all on the spending side, because the cuts required are Draconian," Rivlin said.

• Debt reduction: The voters are ready. Is Washington?
  April 11, 2011
  CNN Money - by Maya MacGuineas
  Meanwhile, I spent Friday safely well outside the Beltway at a budget forum in Colorado that featured a group of concerned citizens and a long list of impressive budget experts such as Alice Rivlin, Alan Simpson and Gary Hart.

• Real budget issues front and center
  April 11, 2011
  Boston Globe - by John E. Sununu
  There are many missing specifics from Ryan's budget and the early fire has been more than partisan demagoguery. Alice Rivlin, the Democratic economist who co-wrote an earlier Medicare- overhaul plan with Ryan, opposes his current proposal as draconian. … Every serious bipartisan proposal to tackle the long-term budget deficit -- Bowles-Simpson, the commission led by Rivlin and former Republican Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico, the National Academy of Sciences -- calls for a combination of cutbacks in the growth of entitlement spending, curbing discretionary spending, including defense, and some tax increases.

• War on the Weak: How the GOP came to view the poor as parasites-and the rich as our rightful rulers
  April 10, 2011
  Newsweek - by J. Scott Applewhite
  But Ryan proposes identical cuts in his own plan. What's more, he saves trillions of dollars from Medicare by imposing huge cuts on anybody who retires starting in 2022. So not only has he adopted the cuts he claimed would never come to pass because they're too harsh and too distant, he imposes far harsher and more distant cuts of his own. Indeed, Alice Rivlin, the fiscally conservative Democratic economist who endorsed an earlier version of his Medicare plan, called his new plan unrealistic. (Ryan nonetheless continues to imply that she supports it.)

• The Democrats have a plan for controlling health-care costs. Paul Ryan doesn't.
  April 8, 2011
  Washington Post - by Ezra Klein
  Ryan's numbers are so fantastic that Alice Rivlin, who originally had her name on this proposal, now opposes it. … The Affordable Care Act holds Medicare's cost growth to GDP plus one percentage point, which makes a lot more sense. It's the target Ryan's Medicare plan originally used, back when it was called Ryan-Rivlin. But the target is not really the important part.

• Can we stop calling Paul Ryan's plan `brave' yet?
  April 7, 2011
  Washington Post - by Adam Serwer
  Ryan's plan included a laughably implausible unemployment analysis from Heritage predicting it would bring unemployment down to 4 percent by 2015 and 2.8 percent by 2012 - an analysis Heritage then quitely retracted by attempting to disappear it from the internet. Ryan's plan claims to save money while repealing the Affordable Care Act, even though the CBO has said repealing the ACA will increase the deficit. Ryan implied that his plan was supported by President Bill Clinton's former OMB Director Alice Rivlin, even though it isn't. It cuts taxes on top earners, when the easiest way to reduce the deficit is to let the Bush tax cuts expire.

• 10 concluding thoughts on Ryan's budget
  April 6, 2011
  Washington Post - by Ezra Klein
  Ryan's suggestion that Medicare and Medicaid can or should be held to the rate of inflation is absurd. His budget has no way of making that happen, save for draconian cuts in both (this goes far, far beyond "means-testing"). And you don't have to take it from me. Alice Rivlin, an eminent budget expert and co-author of Ryan's original Medicare proposal, will tell you the same thing. … Speaking of Alice Rivlin, Ryan has been suggesting she supports his plan when she doesn't. He also said they had consequential disagreements about the Medicare exchanges that, as far as Rivlin knows, didn't exist . That matters because it has implications for whether Ryan has been honest in his assessment of the Affordable Care Act. This is misdirection at best and dishonesty at worst.

• Rivlin's Rebuke and Why It Matters
  April 6, 2011
  The New Republic by Jonathan Cohn
  When Paul Ryan introduced his proposal for converting Medicare into a system of "premium support," he reminded everybody that it closely resembled another Medicare proposal-one he'd developed with Alice Rivlin, the Brooking scholar and former Clinton Administration advisor. "Alice Rivlin is a great, proud Democrat," Ryan said. "This path to prosperity builds upon those Ryan-Rivlin plans that we put in here." It's true that Rivlin is a Democrat, albeit a fairly conservative one on fiscal issues. And it's true she worked with Ryan on a premium support proposal for Medicare. But Rivlin says she cannot support the new Ryan plan for two key reasons-and she has spent the last 24 hours telling anybody who would listen about them.

• Economic impact of shutdown: Damage would increase with duration
  April 6, 2011
  Washington Post - by Peter Whoriskey and Howard Schneider
  Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the shutdown would likely be "small potatoes" for the U.S. economy, at least at first. Federal spending accounts for about 20 percent of U.S. economic activity, but most of that comes from Social Security, other benefit payments and defense spending that would continue. "D.C. might take a hit or other communities where there are big concentrations of federal employees," she said. "I would not expect it to make much of an economic impact unless it goes on a long time."

• The impossible assumption at the heart of Ryan's budget
  April 6, 2011
  Washington Post - by Ezra Klein
  Alice Rivlin, whose surname accounts for the "Rivlin" in "Ryan-Rivlin," told me the same thing: "There is no way we can control medical spending at the inflation level. It's going to rise faster than that." This, she said, is one of the reasons she's not able to support the version of the idea in Ryan's budget (tune in later for our whole interview). When I asked her what would happen if Ryan's budget was implemented, she said it would mean "a massive cost-shift over time" as seniors and Medicaid beneficiaries had to pay the difference between what their insurance premiums and the support Ryan's budget was giving them.

• Isabel Sawhill is Not a Fan of Rep. Ryan's Budget
  april 6, 2011
  National Review - by Reiham Salam
  Isabel Sawhill is a well-regarded moderate Democrat and a leading light at the Brookings Institution. She's long stressed the need for bipartisan solutions to looming fiscal imbalances. And she definitely doesn't like Rep. Ryan's budget… Sawhill goes on to elaborate on these themes, and she lands some blows. On the first point, some of the claims regarding what Rep. Ryan's approach would do for employment levels are outlandish. On the second, I think it's fair to point out that Rep. Ryan is offering a starting point, and that a final tax reform proposal could draw on Bowles-Simpson and President Bush's tax reform panel, among many other sources.

• Six Fiscal Issues That Could Shut Down The Government
  April 5, 2011
  The Fiscal Times - by Eric Pianin and Jennifer DePaul
  William Gale, a senior fellow in economics at the Brookings Institution, says that the fixation on whether politicians can avert a government shutdown late this week or prevent the Treasury from defaulting on bonds later this summer are distractions from more fundamental challenges - including the long-term debt, reining in defense spending and raising tax revenue. "As usual, politicians aren't discussing the right issues," he said. "The big issues are fundamental, but they are not these crises everyone is running around about." The two plans that have gotten the most attention were issued late last year by the president's fiscal commission, co-chaired by Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson, and a Bipartisan Policy Center taskforce, chaired by Democrat Alice Rivlin and Republican Pete V. Domenici. Both draw on a full arsenal of tax and spending measures - including cuts in defense and entitlement programs and tax increases - to sharply reduce budget deficits and stabilize the national debt by 2014.

• Alice Rivlin: I don't back 'Ryan-Rivlin' plan
  April 5, 2011
  POLITICO - by Meredith Shiner
  Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) touted the help of former Clinton advisor Alice Rivlin - "a great, proud Democrat" - in promoting a key Medicare provision in his budget proposal Tuesday. The only problem? Rivlin said she told the Republican she doesn't support the final version of the measure he wrote into his budget - a provision Ryan referred to generally as the "Ryan-Rivlin" plan when rolling out his sweeping economic blueprint. "We talked fairly recently and I said, 'You know, I can't support the version that you have in the budget," Rivlin said in an interview with POLITICO. "I don't actually support the form in which he put it in the budget." "That's not quite fair," Rivlin added when informed that Ryan had used her name to advocate his plan. "We had worked together but the version that's in the budget resolution is not one that I would subscribe to."

• A Conservative Vision, With Bipartisan Risks
  April 5, 2011
  New York Times - by Jackie Calmes
  His plan would go beyond the bold packages recommended in December by bipartisan majorities of two separate debt-reduction panels - Mr. Obama's 2010 fiscal commission, which was headed by Erskine Bowles, a Democrat and former White House chief of staff, and former Senator Alan K. Simpson, Republican of Wyoming, and the commission headed by the former longtime Republican chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Pete V. Domenici, and Alice Rivlin, former director of the Congressional and White House budget offices.

• Medicare and Medicaid Get Squeezed in Ryan Plan
  April 4, 2011
  The Fiscal Times - by Merrill Goozner
  Capping expenditures is central to cost-control in the Ryan plan, which is essentially the same plan that he co-authored with former Congressional Budget Office director Alice Rivlin during the fiscal commission deliberations. The plan limits the annual growth in the amount earmarked for either premium support or block grants to one percentage point more than gross domestic product (call it GDP+1).
  
  
• What Happens To The Social Safety Net If The Government Shuts Down?
  March 30, 2011
  Huffington Post - by Arthur Delaney
  Ron Haskins, a former White House and congressional adviser on welfare issues and current co-director of the Brookings Institution's Center on Children and Families, speculated that wide swaths of the safety net would remain intact. "I would think the agencies would determine many of these programs, especially safety net programs, are essential," Haskins said. Many experts agree with Haskins, citing what happened during the most recent government shutdown.
• In Republicans' 2012 budget plan, Social Security gets a pass
  March 30, 2011
  The Hill - by Erik Wasson
  On Medicare, the budget will propose a modified version of what has become known as the Ryan-Rivlin voucher proposal, named after Ryan and former Office of Management and Budget Director Alice Rivlin. Under the Ryan-Rivlin plan, citizens who turn 65 in 2021 or later would not enroll in the current Medicare program but instead would receive a voucher to buy private health insurance. The budget resolution will propose something more like "Medicare Advantage for everyone," members said. Under such a plan, future retirees would have a range of private plans to choose from and a federal payment would go to the plan, rather than to the individual retiree. The idea is to inject competition into the system to lower costs. The Congressional Budget Office in November said the Ryan-Rivlin plan and block granting of Medicaid would save $280 billion, but has the potential for much greater savings in future years.
• Why Rhode Island's Medicaid Waiver Does Not Prove That Block Grants Work
  March 30, 2011
  Think Progress - Wonk Room - by Igor Volsky
  A recent block grant proposal introduced by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Alice Rivlin would reduce federal Medicaid spending by $180 billion and establish caps below what the government would otherwise spend. States would receive an annual federal appropriation that would be less than current projected growth of the program and would be forced to, as the CBO put it in examining the Ryan/Rivlin Medicaid proposal, "provide less extensive coverage, or to pay a larger share of the program's total costs, than would be the case under current law." The proposal, in other words, shifts a greater burden of funding Medicaid to the states, which would either have to spend more on their Medicaid programs or cut services and eligibility.
• Balanced budget amendment: 'Irresponsible'
  March 29, 2011
  CNN Money - by Jeanne Sahadi
  Alice Rivlin, a federal budget expert who sat on President Obama's debt commission, said an amendment to balance the budget is not a "useful goal." And the proposal's spending cap of 18% of gross domestic product is too low, Rivlin said. "Keeping spending at 18 percent of GDP is not feasible when we have a huge generation of baby boomers moving into retirement, longevity is increasing, and medical costs are high and rising."
• Power Breakfast: A Conversation With Economist Alice Rivlin
  March 28, 2011
  WAMU Radio - by Elizabeth Wynne Johnson
  Congress returns this week. Time to pick up where it left off on the budget. What does a former Federal Reserve vice chair, and founding director of the Office of Management and Budget, look for at this point in the process? "I will be paying attention to two things. First, can they settle this squabble over the immediate budget," says Alice Rivlin. Rivlin, senior fellow in economics at Brookings Institution, is referring to the Continuing Resolution still needed to finalize funding for the current fiscal year, which is half-over already. "They should resolve it quickly. Any compromise will do I think... Get it over with and move on, because this is a distraction," she says.
• House GOP to propose welfare cuts
  March 27, 2011
  Washington Examiner - by Susan Ferrechio
  But backers of the food stamp proposal point to the success of the 1996 welfare reform law signed by President Clinton that put time limits and work requirements on federal cash assistance for the poor, helping shrink the rolls by 2.8 million. The program is still considered a success and some believe it should be expanded to other welfare programs, starting with food stamps. "It's just not a good idea to run welfare programs in which people are not required to do anything for the benefits," said Ron Haskins, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who is a former senior adviser to President Bush and who helped craft the 1996 welfare reform bill.
• Rivlin: U.S. debt crisis 'definitely' possible
  March 27, 2011
  POLITICO - by Byron Tau
  Former President Bill Clinton's budget chief, Alice Rivlin, said Sunday that if Congress does not act to reign in spending or raise revenues, she could easily foresee the possibility of a wider economic crisis. "We could definitely have what's called a sovereign debt crisis," Rivlin told CNN's "State of the Union." ""We used to think that only happened to small countries on other continents, but it could happen to us as well" "That means that we would not be perceived as able to get our act together and pay our debts and our creditors would lose confidence in us," she said. According to Rivlin, a sovereign debt crisis would result in a large interest rate spike, a fall in the global value of the dollar and a period of economic decline much worse than the recession that began in 2008. "When that happens, things go south very fast," she said.
• Can balanced budget amendment put to an end to U.S. deficit?
  March 26, 2011
  Deseret News
  Economist and budget expert Isabel Sawhill from the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., doesn't want to take as "significant" a step as Lee and Caliendo would recommend. "I think a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution would be a mistake. Calling for an amendment to the Constitution instead of simply getting on with the job of cutting spending or raising revenues is the equivalent of announcing one is going to lose weight and then eating a chocolate sundae the next day," Sawhill said. "It may be politically popular but it doesn't solve the problem." She said that the federal budget doesn't always need to be balanced, especially not on a yearly basis.
• Sorry, GOP: Tax revenue needs to go up
  March 26, 2011
  CNN Money.com - by Jeanne Sahadi
  "Since retirement program reforms can only be made slowly, we must also cap defense and non-defense discretionary spending, restrain other mandatory programs, and restructure the tax code to raise more revenue," said federal budget expert Alice Rivlin at a Senate Budget Committee hearing last week.
• Head Start parents urge lawmakers to preserve funding
  March 25, 2011
  Billings Gazette - by Ed Kemmick
  However, Ron Haskins, co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution and formerly a senior adviser on welfare policy to President George W. Bush, said budget cuts, if they are made, wouldn't necessarily affect Head Start programs in Montana. A private study of Head Start, completed last year at the behest of the Department of Health and Human Services, showed that "a substantial number of Head Start programs are so ineffective that they do little or nothing to boost child development and learning," Haskins wrote in a guest editorial in the Washington Post. As a result of that study, Haskins said in an interview Thursday, President Barack Obama has ordered a review of all Head Start programs over the next three years, and underperforming programs would have to compete for funding with other early-childhood programs.
• Ryan-Rivlin Plan Would End Guaranteed Medicare, Shift Medicaid Costs To States And Beneficiaries
  March 22, 2011
  Center on Budget and Policy Priorities - by Paul Van de Water
  Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), chair of the House Budget Committee, and Alice Rivlin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget, issued a proposal in November that would make deep reductions in Medicare and Medicaid benefits and fundamentally alter the nature of those programs.[1] The proposal differs in some respects but is similar in others both to Rep. Ryan's Roadmap for America's Future and the health care recommendations of the Rivlin-Domenici Bipartisan Policy Center Task Force.
• The conservative case for the Affordable Care Act, part III
  March 22, 2011
  Washington Post - by Ezra Klein
  The policy Reihan is trying to defend - the Ryan-Rivlin bill (pdf) - appears to mimic the Affordable Care Act. One of its two namesakes, Alice Rivlin, believes that it mimics the Affordable Care Act and has said so on-the-record. Its other sponsor, Paul Ryan, says he disagrees, but he can't explain why. When asked, he said, "how I would do exchanges are very different than how Alice wants to do exchanges." He didn't go into further detail. I subsequently asked Ryan's staff if Ryan would like to do an interview explaining how his exchanges would differ. The request was declined. I then asked his staff if they could explain to me how Ryan's exchanges differ. They didn't respond. So right now, what we know is that Ryan-Rivlin appears to work like the Affordable Care Act. Alice Rivlin believes that.
• Despite Plenty US Fiscal Storm Clouds, Some See Rays of Hope
  March 21, 2011
  Market News International - by John Shaw
  "There are growing rumblings that people understand the scope of budget challenge. This is encouraging," says Bill Frenzel, a former Republican congressman who is a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution. "But translating these rumblings into concrete action will be very very hard. And I just don't see it happening yet," he added. … Also late last year, a panel headed by former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici and former Federal Reserve Board Vice Chairman Alice Rivlin called for nearly $6 trillion in budget savings over a decade. The plan by Domenici and Rivlin would restructure major spending programs such as Social Security and Medicare, place a multiyear freeze on many domestic and defense programs and fundamentally overhaul the U.S. tax system.
• The conservative case for the Affordable Care Act, Part II
  March 18, 2011
  Washington Post - by Ezra Klein
  Back in December, I wrote that the Ryan-Rivlin plan - which has become the great conservative hope for Medicare reform - mimicked the Affordable Care Act's structure almost exactly. The Tax Policy Center noticed the same thing. And Alice Rivlin - who has lent her name and support to the Ryan-Rivlin plan - agrees. Paul Ryan hasn't been too eager to talk about this. My requests for interviews on the topic have been politely rebuffed. But Pat Garofalo managed to ask him the question at Thursday's Playbook breakfast. "How I would do exchanges are very different than how Alice wants to do exchanges," Ryan replied. "So Rivlin-Ryan didn't get to the level of specificity of how these exchanges must be designed, because I have a different opinion with Alice on how they ought to be designed."
• Former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici and Former White House Budget Director Alice Rivlin Commend Senators for Urging Action to Address the Debt
  March 18, 2011
  Bipartisan Policy Center
  The following is a statement by former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici and former White House Budget Director Alice Rivlin, co-chairs of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Debt Reduction Task Force, on the letter Senators Michael Bennet (D-CO), Mike Johanns (R-NE) and 62 others sent to President Barack Obama today on the need for immediate action to solve the nation's long-term fiscal challenges…
• GOP Governors Revive Historic Call For Medicaid Block Grants
  March 8, 2011
  NPR - by Mary Agnes Carey and Marilyn Werber Serafini
  They haven't unveiled any proposal yet, but one idea getting serious consideration is one developed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Alice Rivlin, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget under Clinton. Under their plan, the federal share of Medicaid would be converted to a block grant in 2013, and be indexed to increase with the size of the Medicaid population as well as the growth in the gross domestic product per capita plus 1 percentage point.
• Should the Disadvantaged Be Spared from the Budget Axe?
  March 8, 2011
  Heritage Foundation - by Stuart Butler
  Ask whether programs boost economic mobility. We've also got to think not just about issues involved in addressing the immediate needs of the poor, but also about making sure we have a society where the poor can move up the economic ladder. I've worked with Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution, and others at institutes on the left and the right, on a project of the Pew Foundation. That project is about economic mobility and how to foster it. We've looked at what programs and approaches are effective in enabling people to escape poverty and to move up the economic ladder and which are not. … Look also at our welfare system. We made some important progress in 1996 in redesigning the system so that its incentives encouraged independence and not dependence. Ron Haskins of Brookings and Robert Rector of Heritage, among others, were heavily involved in creating a welfare system that at last made some sense and began to help people to escape poverty more effectively at less cost. We've got to continue and expand our reforms of the welfare system. There is still a great deal to be done.
• What happens if Congress doesn't rein in national debt?
  March 8, 2011
  Christian Science Monitor - by Gail Russell Chaddock
  "The cataclysmic event," says senior fellow Alice Rivlin at the Brookings Institution in Washington, "is the perception that we're not a creditworthy partner.... At some point - and it seems likely to be very soon - our creditors will begin to worry that we're not credit-worthy, they will demand a higher price, and interest rates will go up."
• Medicare criticism may haunt GOP
  March 8, 2011
  POLITICO - by Carrie Budoff Brown
  The bipartisan Senate deficit-reduction group is working from reports issued by two key groups, according to sources: the White House fiscal commission and a Bipartisan Policy Center task force led by Democratic economist Alice Rivlin and former Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.). Between the groups, there were recommendations to increase cost-sharing, reduce payments to hospitals and transition to a system that charges higher premiums if costs rise faster than established limits.
• America Still Needs Jobs
  March 7, 2011
  Huffington Post - by Dan Froomkin
  The same goes with perhaps my favorite idea, forcing the fat cat bankers to spend the mounds of money they're sitting on by slapping a tax on their grotesquely swollen excess cash reserves. (The idea of doing something -- anything -- to pry cash from the super-wealthy and put it where it could do some good was at the heart of the one new job-creating proposal I've written about since I abandoned the series: Budget expert Isabel Sawhill's proposal to temporarily double the tax deduction for charitable giving. Ideally, that would serve as a powerful incentive for the rich to significantly increase -- or at least accelerate -- their contributions to nonprofit organizations. But in his FY 2012 budget, Obama is actually proposing to cap those deductions, not double them.)
• David Walker, the prophet of deficit doom, and his sermon to save America
  March 7, 2011
  Washington Post - by Manuel Roig-Franzia
  A few years back, Walker and his friends skittered around the nation on something they called a Fiscal Wake-Up Tour; now they're back with the Fiscal Solutions Tour, sort of a number-nerd's version of a rock-and-roll reunion road show - without the groupies, sex or drugs, that is. The cast rotates, but on this day in Atlanta, most of the core group is on hand. There's Joe Antos, the impish American Enterprise Institute scholar who tells one of their audiences that "not everybody's going to love numbers like we do." By his side is Robert Bixby, the sallow-cheeked executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nocturnal being who seems to subsist primarily on cigars, bananas and oceanic quantities of the soft drink Tab. And then there's Alice Rivlin, the 80-year-old Brookings Institution fixture who recently served on President Obama's debt commission and has held so many government posts that she sometimes asks to have the word "former" removed from a few of them when she's being introduced. "It annoys me," Rivlin grumbles.
• Winning the Real Budget Fight
  March 6, 2011
  The Weekly Standard - by Matthew Continetti
  The good news is that there's a consensus about which reforms are necessary. Begin by focusing on the expensive health care programs: Block-grant Medicaid to the states while suspending the Maintenance of Effort regulations that tell governors how to spend the money they receive from Washington. Allow the governors to use the block-grant money to set up private exchanges where Medicaid recipients use benefits to shop for private insurance plans. Cut the red tape in Medicare that prevents doctors and hospitals from finding new ways to treat patients at a lower price. For Americans 55 years old or younger, gradually move to a system where patients use a fixed Medicare payment to choose the approved plan that's best for them. This is the bipartisan approach proposed by Chairman Ryan and economist Alice Rivlin, a Democrat.
• Atlanta, Washington singing from same hymnal on tax reform
  March 4, 2011
  Atlanta Journal-Constitution - by Kyle Wingfield
  "Fiscal Solutions" member Alice Rivlin, a former White House and congressional budget chief, said the right is more accepting of the idea."The shift that I've seen recently," she told me, "is among Republicans who have come to realize…that there are a lot of subsidies in the tax code. And they used to resist that idea, and [said] anything that lowered your taxes was good. "But I think a lot of Republicans have come to realize, we subsidize a lot of activities. And we do some of it with direct spending, and we do a lot of it in the tax code. And doing it in the tax code isn't better."
• The federal deficit and Saxby Chambliss' new best friends
  March 2, 2011
  Atlanta Journal-Constitution - by Jim Galloway
  However harmless she may look, diminutive Alice Rivlin, an economist and member of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, was an absolute terror. "We could tank the economy, go into a recession much worse than the one we're coming out of now, and we'd be a much less prosperous or influential nation for a long time," she said for the cameras in Georgia Public Broadcasting's basement studios. "We've made all these promises to older people, under Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, and we don't have the revenues to pay for it. That's the big structural problem going forward, and it gets worse," she said. Rivlin and her three friends - former U.S. comptroller David Walker; Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition; and Joseph Antos, a health care expert with the American Enterprise Institute - are essential to Georgia's senior senator. … Rivlin had another conversation starter for conservatives. "You do it in terms of tax reform. We are going to need more revenue. But we have a terrible tax system," she said. "It's much too complicated, and has so many loopholes in it, that it has quite high rates. If you get rid of the loopholes, you can lower the rates and still raise more money. Many Republicans, I think, find that attractive."
• As clock ticks, tension rises over a federal shutdown
  February 27, 2011
  USA Today - by Fredreka Schouten and Richard Wolf
  Unofficially, department and agency heads have dusted off contingency plans; they just won't talk about them. Those plans could spell out such details as who would work and who would be sent home. "You can close down (the National Institutes of Health) and send the scientists home; that's easy," says Alice Rivlin, White House budget director for the last shutdowns. "But somebody's got to feed the laboratory animals." … At the White House, Clinton's forces weren't so sure they would come out on top. "We didn't want it to happen, either," Rivlin says. "We were afraid the administration might get blamed." In the end, says Elaine Kamarck, a top policy adviser for Clinton, "I think it won him the '96 election. I think the political impact was enormous."
• How a Federal Shutdown Could Affect Americans
  February 27, 2011
  MSN Money - by Ben Steverman
  A decision to shut down most of the Social Security Administration again would have huge political implications, says Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who served as a Republican staff member at the House Ways and Means Committee during the mid-1990s. "If Social Security checks didn't go out, that would be a huge problem," Haskins says. With millions depending on those checks to live, "all hell would break loose."
• Jacob Lew returns to work on fixing nation's finances, again
  February 26, 2011
  Washington Post - by Lori Montgomery
  Former Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin called Lew a "really good behind-the-scenes negotiator," who played an outsize role in the Clinton administration's dealings in Congress even before he took over as OMB director in 1998. "A lot of the heavy lifting on the Hill fell to Jack."
• The Feds Are Prepared For A Shutdown, Are You?
  February 25, 2011
  NPR - Morning Edition - by Audie Cornish
  During the shutdowns in 1995 and 1996, more than 360 national parks from Yosemite to the Washington monument - and dozens of museums - closed their doors. Alice Rivlin, head of the Office of Management and Budget under President Clinton, remembers it well, and recalls how those shutdowns affected more than just vacationers. "Things that people need to get approved when they are doing ordinary business like buying a house or processing a loan - those things come to a screeching halt," she says.
• Government shutdown? Clinton budget official warns: "Don't do it again"
  February 23, 2011
  CBS News.com - by Brian Montopoli and Robert Hendin
  Alice Rivlin, who served as President Clinton's budget director during the 1995 government shutdown, has a simple message for lawmakers as a possible new shutdown looms: "Don't do it again." Rivlin said in an interview with CBS News that it is "unlikely" there will be a shutdown, "because I think nobody wants one with the possible exception of some of the freshmen members of the House." The people who lived through the December 1995 shutdown, including members of the Republican leadership, "do not remember it pleasantly," she said. "It was public relations disaster for the Gingrich team, and I think Mr. Boehner knows that," said Rivlin, who predicted a "major effort to work out some sort of compromise." The government will shut down at 11:59 p.m. on March 4th without action by lawmakers to provide new funding…
• The Budget: Battling "Business As Usual"
  February 23, 2011
  The New American - by Charles Scaliger
  CNN, in one of the establishment media's kinder assessments of Senator Paul's plan, called his relatively modest cuts both "staggering" and "eye-popping." Others were less charitable; an economist from the Brookings Institute, Isabel Sawhill, termed the cuts "wacko," although she declined to give particulars as to why she found Senator Paul's plan so objectionable.
• Working for the Shutdown
  February 22, 2011
  Slate Magazine by Annie Lowrey
  Alice Rivlin, who was the head of the OMB at the time and recently served on the White House's deficit commission, recalls that scientists at the National Institutes of Health "were ruled inessential and went home," she says. "But they needed someone to keep on feeding the test animals. So the technicians were allowed to stay, so that the animals did not die." … An OMB analysis at the time estimated that the 1995-1996 shutdown cost the economy about $1.4 billion. But Rivlin says the true costs were paid by citizens-"people who lost out on services they had paid for in their taxes."
• Dancing on the debt ceiling
  February 17, 2011
  Canadian Business - by Matthew McClearn
  This might seem a historic moment, until one recognizes that many of his predecessors regularly wrote similar missives. The debt ceiling was introduced in 1917, at a time when America was issuing copious amounts of debt to finance its entrance into the First World War. The convention was to rack up debt only in times of war or serious economic crises, and to pay it down afterward. But after Second World War, repayment became exceedingly rare, necessitating frequent ceiling increases. By the 1980s, votes were sometimes just months apart. As Geithner wrote in his letter, "Never in our history has Congress failed to increase the debt limit when necessary." Indeed, Congress raised the ceiling well over 70 times in the past half century. Nobody seems particularly worried about the votes - bond markets barely react. But Alice Rivlin, a former Congressional Budget Office director who now works at the non-profit Brookings Institution in Washington, perceives a genuine risk that Geithner won't get more credit this time. "We have new people in Congress who are very adamant about deficit reduction," she says, "and not very sophisticated about the consequences of defaulting on the debt." And even if Congress does raise the ceiling once again, these disputes will arrive more frequently - and likely prove harder fought - as America's fiscal train accelerates out of control.
• In Case You Missed It: Senator Pete Domenici and Dr. Alice Rivlin, Co-Chairs of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Debt Reduction Task Force, in The Hill "Obama should lead on tough spending cuts to entitlements, tax reform"
  February 17, 2011
  Bipartisan Policy Center (originally in The Hill) - By Pete V. Domenici and Alice M. Rivlin
  In an op-ed published by The Hill today, former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici and former White House Budget Director Alice Rivlin, co-chairs of the Bipartisan Policy Center's (BPC) Debt Reduction Task Force, called on the president to lead the nation in finding solutions to our growing debt problem. "[The president] must make clear, to both Congress and the public, that the United States faces a problem that could turn our great nation into a second-rate power. No one else can lead the charge."
• The Emerging Senate Deficit Deal
  February 17, 2011
  The American Spectator - by Joseph Lawler
  Just as with the Bowles-Simpson recommendations, the political prospects and policy worth of this possible plan would depend on the particulars. The most important, of course, would be the changes to Medicare and Medicaid. Not only are those the most important programs for fiscal reform by a wide margin, they also leave little room for agreement between Republicans and Democrats. Rep. Paul Ryan was able to join with liberal policy expert Alice Rivlin to propose one plan for containing the costs of Medicare by introducing consumer choice into the market for health care for seniors. But Rivlin doesn't have the same priorities and constituencies that, for instance, Dick Durbin does. It's hard to imagine what would have to be bargained away to get the final vote of a senator like Durbin.
• Obama banks on bipartisan talks to solve budget crisis
  February 16, 2011
  USA Today - by Richard Wolf
  Two of Obama's major efforts in his first two years in office - the $814 billion economic stimulus law of 2009 and the health care law approved last March - were opposed by nearly all Republicans. "Because he proposed it, they had to vote against it," said Alice Rivlin, former director of both the White House and congressional budget offices. "There is actually quite a long history of this. He's right to be wary," Rivlin said. "If he really wants to get a solution, at least a partial solution to the rising debt problem and the increase in entitlements, he's got to be very careful not to get out front."
• Obama's punt on the budget
  February 16, 2011
  Boston Globe - by Scot Lehigh
  "It is not a bold plan,'' said Isabel Sawhill, an associate director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Clinton and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "This is so important that he should have spent more political capital on putting forward some bigger ideas.''
• The White House's 'two big theories of action'
  February 15, 2011
  Washington Post - by Ezra Klein
  Saying that new programs -- and a lot of the money feeding old programs -- will be weaned off of so-called "formula" funding, where money is given out according to preset rules, and moved to various forms of competitive funding, where the money is given out based on how much high-quality evidence you can provide that your intervention works, seems like damning with faint praise. Isn't most policymaking based on evidence? Well, no, says Ron Haskins, former senior adviser for welfare policy in the George W. Bush administration. "Research generally plays a very modest role," he sighs.
• Obama vows deeper deficit cut than budget shows
  February 15, 2011
  Washington Examiner - by Brian Hughes
  "From a technical point of view, he's doing the right thing," Alice Rivlin, former President Clinton's budget director, told The Washington Examiner. "It would not have been smart [to propose extensive entitlement reform]. He would have been put in a box and Republicans would have been against anything he sent over."
• Editorial: Slinking away from U.S. budget reality
  February 14, 2011
  Minneapolis Star-Tribune
  "Both the Congress and the president are ... ignoring the entitlements and mostly ignoring the defense cuts that have to be part of a final compromise. What they're doing is dancing a little war dance, but they're doing it with toy weapons.'' - Bill Frenzel
• GOP blasts Obama's proposed budget plan
  February 14, 2011
  Boston Globe - by Lori Montgomery
  "I would have preferred to see the administration get out front on addressing the entitlements and the tax reform that we need to reduce long-run deficits,'' said Alice Rivlin, a commission member who served as budget director in the Clinton White House. "But they clearly made a tactical decision that this is not the best way to get to a positive result.''
• Obama's Budget: Small Cuts, Big $1.6 Trillion Deficit
  February 14, 2011
  Fiscal Times (also appeared on NPR.org) - by Eric Pianin and Merrill Goozner
  Alice Rivlin, a member of the fiscal commission and a former Clinton administration budget director who had hoped for major proposals on entitlements and tax reform, said that Obama's decision to skirt those issues for now was a smart tactical move. "The history of the last two years is that everything the president is for, the Republicans immediately attack and say they're against - the clearest example being health care reform," she said. "So if you're working in that atmosphere, I think you have to figure out how am I going to get bipartisan cover."
• Obama's health care budget: ER visit but no cure
  February 14, 2011
  Associated Press - by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
  "I don't think this represents his bottom line at all," said economist Alice Rivlin, a former Federal Reserve vice chair who served on Obama's debt commission. "I believe that the president, probably as a tactical move, did not propose changes in the big entitlement programs. He wants to work that out on a bipartisan basis with the Congress. With respect to entitlements and taxes, nothing is going to happen unless both sides are in sync."
• Obama spending plan criticized for avoiding deficit commission's major proposals
  February 14, 2011
  Washington Post - by Lori Montgomery
  "I would have preferred to see the administration get out front on addressing the entitlements and the tax reform that we need to reduce long-run deficits," said Alice Rivlin, a commission member who served as budget director in the Clinton White House. "But they clearly made a tactical decision that this is not the best way to get to a positive result."
• Administration Calls for Cutting Aid to Home Buyers
  February 11, 2011
  New York Times - by Binyamin Appelbaum
  The Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, said Friday at the Brookings Institution that the health of the housing market would dictate the rate of the agencies' closing. He estimated the process could take five to seven years. … "I think we ought to be shifting the emphasis away from housing and other forms of consumption and be laser-focused on two overriding objectives of economic policy: increasing productivity growth and broader sharing of the fruits of that growth across income groups," said Alice M. Rivlin, a former vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve. "And housing may not be the best set of policies to accomplish either goal."
• Fiscal Solutions Tour comes to San Antonio
  February 11, 2011
  San Antonio Business Journal
  When it comes to finding ways to reduce the nation's debt, Alice Rivlin is an "all of the above" kind of person. Spending cuts? Tax increases? Health care reform? Yes, yes and yes. Rivlin, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Bill Clinton, recently co-chaired a bi-partisan Debt Reduction Task Force with former Republican Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico. Their recommendations, released late last year, include a mix of spending cuts, tax increases and changes to entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid. "I am an apostle of all-of-the-above," Rivlin says. "There is really no way to do it all on the spending side. We need drastic reform of our tax system and entitlements." Rivlin was in San Antonio on Thursday, Feb. 10, as part of a Fiscal Solutions Tour
• Why Ryan-Rivlin Would Work (and Obamacare Won't)
  February 10, 2011
  National Review Online - by Jeffrey H. Anderson
  At National Review, Jim Capretta explains why the Ryan-Rivlin plan would reform entitlements and bend the health care cost-curve down, while Obamacare would do neither. Actually, Obamacare would do far worse than "neither." It would add an unsustainable new entitlement while also bending the nationwide cost-curve up. The Ryan-Rivlin plan has been advanced by Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), the articulate and likable House Budget Committee chairman who consistently manages to sell conservative principles to a congressional district that looks a lot like a microcosm of the United States (the district voted for President Obama), and Alice Rivlin, director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) during parts of the Ford, Carter, and Reagan presidencies and director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Clinton. Unlike Obamacare, Ryan-Rivlin represents a bipartisan approach, advanced by two fiscal conservatives…
• President Obama Announces More Key Administration Posts
  February 10, 2011
  WhiteHouse.gov
  Henry J. Aaron Named Chair of President Obama's Social Security Advisory Board
• Obama, Ryan, and Medicare Costs
  February 10, 2011
  National Review Online – by James C. Capretta
  To answer the question, it’s useful to start with a recent post from the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein, who himself approached the issue in the form of a question. He asks what makes Congressman Paul Ryan so confident that the Ryan plan for Medicare reform (offered with former Clinton administration budget director Alice Rivlin, and so now called the Ryan-Rivlin plan) will work to control cost growth while Obamacare won’t.
• Obama, Ryan, and Medicare Costs
  February 10, 2011
  National Review Online – by James C. Capretta
  To answer the question, it’s useful to start with a recent post from the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein, who himself approached the issue in the form of a question. He asks what makes Congressman Paul Ryan so confident that the Ryan plan for Medicare reform (offered with former Clinton administration budget director Alice Rivlin, and so now called the Ryan-Rivlin plan) will work to control cost growth while Obamacare won’t.
• Improving Ryan’s Medicare Reform Plan
  February 10, 2011
  Forbes – by Merrill Matthews
  Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has been getting a lot of attention for his Medicare reform plan, jointly proposed with well-respected, Democrat-leaning economist and federal-budget expert Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institution. It’s a good proposal, though a bit radical for some. But I want to propose taking Ryan-Rivlin even a step further — toward a private Medicare system.
• Fed's Bernanke says economy is healing
  February 9, 2011
  NPR - Marketplace
  Bill Frenzel sat in the 'fiscal conservative' section in the '80s and '90s as top-ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee. “Any good Fed chairman often talks in Delphic tones, and they are understood differently by different people.” … Then, Bernanke turns to the fiscal hawks, and sings them a tune. “The federal budget will remain on an unsustainable path unless the Congress enacts significant changes in fiscal programs.” That's a callout to all those new Republicans in the audience, says Frenzel. “You guys gotta start pulling your share of the burden too in the Congress, to inflict some fiscal sobriety.” Here, Bernanke's message is to focus on long-term fiscal problems like health care and Social Security.
• US Fiscal Debate To Be Shaped Hugely By Obama's Feb 14 Budget
  February 8, 2011
  Market News International – by John Shaw
  Bill Frenzel, a former Republican congressman who is a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, agrees that Obama is not likely to offer concrete plans for entitlement reform next week. "I think this is going to be a normal, even a tactical budget. I'm not expecting big things from it. About the only thing he can say that would offer much hope is a call for some kind of bipartisan budget negotiation," he said. "I wish I could say that I see momentum building for serious bipartisan budget work. But I don't. I see a lot more political posturing and war dances ahead before we finally get down to serious work," Frenzel said.
• Restructuring Medicare and the Rivlin-Ryan Plan
  February 4, 2011
  New York Times – Economix – by Uwe E. Reinhardt
  Making that call for restructuring on the campaign trail or in television interviews makes for good political copy. Unfortunately, few politicians have had the temerity to be specific on the proposal, because doing so would identify winners and losers, a clarity that is not helpful in political campaigns. The notable exception has been Representative Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, who, with Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institution, has proposed a radical departure from the current Medicare. Under the Rivlin-Ryan Plan, as it has come to be known, Medicare would be changed from the defined-benefit plan it has been since its inception to a defined contribution plan. … A fine synopsis of the Rivlin-Ryan plan can be found in the Congressional Budget Office’s “Preliminary Analysis of the Rivlin-Ryan Health Care Proposal.”
• The Politics of Saving 'Granny'
  February 3, 2011
  Wall Street Journal (Rove op-ed) – by Karl Rove
  The most promising model for Medicare comes from Clinton Budget Director Alice Rivlin and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.). Under their plan, starting in 2021 those turning 65 and going on Medicare would get a fixed contribution to use to purchase insurance, allowing them in many instances to keep their existing coverage. Consumers will be in charge. Annual support would grow at the same yearly rate as the economy plus 1%. Medicare payments would be adjusted by income, geography and health risk. Poor seniors would get extra help for out-of-pocket expenses. This bipartisan model builds on the success of the Medicare prescription drug benefit passed in 2003. This market- and competition-oriented experiment gave seniors a fixed sum they could use to purchase drug insurance coverage. In response, drug companies and insurance providers flooded the market with options that drove prices for consumers down.
• A New Big Idea: Create Jobs And Reduce Poverty By Doubling The Charitable Deduction
  February 1, 2011
  Huffington Post – by Dan Froomkin
  Isabel Sawhill, a budget expert at the Brookings Institution, is pushing to temporarily double the tax deduction for charitable giving, a move that would serve as a powerful incentive for the rich to significantly increase -- or at least accelerate -- their contributions to nonprofit organizations. "We need to get them to spend that money instead of socking it away, and we need to get them to spend it on socially beneficial things," Sawhill told The Huffington Post. "This is simply a device to pry that money out of them." … "The problem with the rich is they're not spending their money. And when they are spending it, they're spending it on baubles, and luxury vacations," Sawhill said.
• What Caused the Financial Crisis?
  January 28, 2011
  Global Times (China)
  Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow of the Washington-based Brookings Institution, holds a different view. "The longer-term picture, driven primarily by rising healthcare costs, is frightening and could spark a serious economic crisis at any time and threaten continued economic growth over the coming decades," Sawhill told the Xinhua News Agency.
• Washington Journal for Friday, Jan. 28
  January 28, 2011
  C-SPAN - Washington Journal
  Matthew Mitchell, George Mason University's Mercatus Center, Research Fellow and Isabel Sawhill, Brookings Institution, Economic Studies Senior Fellow, offer two philosophies of thought when it comes to improving the economy. One suggests that cutting government spending leads to increased funds to assist in debt reduction, the other contends that using government funds to invest in specific programs will lead to job creation, which in turn will lead to a stronger fiscal condition.
• House GOP Considers Privatizing Medicare
  January 27, 2011
  Associated Press (also appeared on Huffington Post) by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
  The idea of a Medicare voucher recently received bipartisan support from a debt reduction panel led by former Republican Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico and prominent Democratic economist Alice Rivlin, a former Federal Reserve vice chairman. Obama's own debt commission said the idea should be considered as an option if other strategies fail to get health care costs under control. Under Ryan's plan, current Medicare recipients would get to stay in the program.
• Republican Response: "We must act now"
  January 26, 2011
  CNN Money by Charles Riley
  Isabel Sawhill, an economist who studies fiscal issues at the Brookings Institution, said she agrees with Ryan that the country needs to reduce the deficit, but found the speech was not powerful enough. "There were zero specifics here, and you don't expect a lot in this kind of speech," Sawhill said. "But you would have hoped there would be a little more than just the rhetoric that was there."
• What a Tea Party Budget Looks Like
  January 26, 2011
  CNN Money by Charles Riley
  The legislation also lists programs for elimination. How about ... the Affordable Housing Program, the Commission on Fine Arts, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the State Justice Institute. "Oh my god. That's just crazy," said Isabel Sawhill, an economist who studies fiscal issues at the Brookings Institution. "Really that is wacko." … Last week, the conservative House Republican Study Committee proposed a bill that would shave $2.5 trillion off of spending over the next decade. "Conservatives have a free ride right now because they can propose these things and know they are not going to go anywhere," Sawhill said, adding that Obama wields the veto pen.
• Innovate or Be Left Behind, Obama Warns
  January 26, 2011
  Globe & Mail (Canada) by Barrie McKenna
  Alice Rivlin, a former vice-chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, applauded Mr. Obama's focus on innovation. But she pointed out that paying for it all could prove challenging as the country struggles to pay down mounds of "Old Economy" debt. "He's trying to do that at the worst possible moment," Ms. Rivlin said. "I wish he had explained more clearly how this vision can be carried out with the deficits and debt."
• Obama to Rally Nation Against Another 'Sputnik Moment'
  January 25, 2011
  The Fiscal Times by Kirk Victor and Eric Pianin
  "I didn't expect a ringing endorsement of the commission," said Alice Rivlin, the former Congressional Budget Office director who served on both the president's deficit commission and the Bipartisan Policy Center taskforce. "I do think he will talk about the deficit and his earnestness about dealing with it … I think he's got to have a balance, and we'll see how he structures it. He's certainly talking more now as though he's giving a lot of emphasis to [spending in] the short run, but that doesn't necessarily mean he won't get serious about the long run as the debt ceiling approaches." "If we are going to have jobs and growth over the next few years we have to get the deficit and the debt under control," Rivlin said.
• Obama and GOP Clash on Spending
  January 24, 2011
  Washington Post by Shailagh Murray and Lori Montgomery
  "I think the chances of this being like 1990, where we all sit down and make an agreement, are small," said Alice Rivlin, a Clinton administration budget director who recently served with lawmakers from both parties on Obama's deficit-reduction commission. "This is likely to be much more like '95 and '96, which was very unpleasant. We did close down the government twice. And this may be worse."
• Some GOP Legislators Contend U.S. Not at Risk for Default if Debt Ceiling Not Raised
  January 21, 2011
  Daily Caller by John Rossomando
  Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Ron Haskins disputes their contentions. "This is the first time I have ever heard about this," Haskins said. "With the way the debt has been increasing in recent years at about $1 trillion per year … there is no way to manipulate our way out of this. "There is no way we are going to cut $1 trillion from the budget." The nation needs to borrow money when taxes do not cover all of its fiscal obligations, and he believes that raising the debt limit is the only way to meet America's financial obligations. "Defaulting on the debt isn't any different than paying a bank from the kitchen table," Haskins said. "If you can't pay your bills, you default."
• Bipartisan Debt Control? Yes, It's Possible.
  January 20, 2011
  CNN Money by Nina Easton
  On the House side, Republican Budget Chair Paul Ryan voted against the debt commission proposals. Nevertheless, he has partnered with former Clinton budget director (and fellow debt commission member) Alice Rivlin on a Medicare savings plan. Under that plan, seniors who turn 65 in 2021 or later would not enroll in existing Medicare but instead would receive vouchers to purchase healthcare in the private market -- an effort to inject price competition into the system. The Ryan-Rivlin plan is certain to draw plenty of incoming fire. But the partnering of these two brilliant minds -- one a free-market Republican "young gun," the other a Clinton era veteran and critic of Reaganomics -- on a such a revolutionary reform shows how much the political ground has shifted.
• Alice Rivlin: Leading Deficit Charge
  January 20, 2011
  AARP Bulletin by Tamara Lytle
  Alice Rivlin raises her arms to draw a wedge-shaped graph in the air. Diminutive and intense, Rivlin is discussing the soaring federal debt with one arm pointed up - government spending - and one pointed down - revenue. Her position, at the point in the aerial graph where the spending line and revenue line intersect, puts her in a familiar place, as she says, "in the center of the action." As an economist, a policymaker and an academic, Rivlin has been in the center of budget debates for six presidents in five decades. "There is literally no one in the country who knows more about fiscal policy," says Chuck Konigsberg, the staff director of the Bipartisan Policy Center debt reduction task force that Rivlin led with former GOP Sen. Pete Domenici.
• Hoyer, GOP Have Some Differences on Tax Reform
  January 20, 2011
  The Hill by Bernie Becker
  In his op-ed, Hoyer embraced the bipartisan center's plan, drafted by a panel led by former Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and Alice Rivlin, a budget director under President Clinton. He also wrote that tax revenues last year accounted for their lowest share of the economy since 1950.
• Holding the Line on Government Spending
  January 18, 2011
  FOXBusiness.com By David Asman
  New Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and Democratic economist Alice Rivlin already have put together a plan to reform Medicaid and Medicare. It moves government out of health care by giving seniors money toward the purchase of their own private insurance. And to pay for Medicaid, states would get block grants by the government with which they could direct their own payments. The problem with this and every other sensible plan to reform health care is that it's incompatible with Obamacare. The Ryan/Rivlin plan takes power away from the federal government.
• The Price of Power
  January 18, 2011
  Weekly Standard by Robert Kagan
  The simple fact is, as my Brookings colleague and former budget czar Alice Rivlin recently observed, the scary projections of future deficits are not "caused by rising defense spending," and even if one assumes that defense spending continues to increase with the rate of inflation, this is "not what's driving the future spending." The engine of our growing debt is entitlements. So why are the various commissions, including the Rivlin-Domenici commission, as well as members of Congress, calling for defense cuts at all? The answer boils down to one of fairness, and politics. It is not that cutting defense is necessary to save the economy. But if the American people are going to be asked to accept cuts in their domestic entitlements, the assumption runs, they're going to want to see the pain shared across the board, including by defense. … In theory, the United States could refrain from intervening abroad.
• GOP Lawmaker: I Can Cut $153 Billion
  January 14, 2011
  CNN Money by Charles Riley
  Putting portions of the fiscal commission's plan into legislative form is a step in the right direction, according to Isabel Sawhill, an economist who studies fiscal issues at the Brookings Institution. "I think the commission did a wonderful job of being specific and putting together a bold plan," Sawhill said. "This is how many of us hoped the commission's work would be used." Sawhill gives Brady credit for making specific proposals. But the legislation shies away from the overhaul of the tax code and changes to Social Security favored by the president's commission. "Congressman Brady has cherry-picked a bunch of spending issues and hasn't balanced that off with any revenues or work on entitlements," Sawhill said.
• Government Debt and the Economy
  January 12, 2011
  C-SPAN
  Panelists talked about ways that the federal government and states and local communities can continue to invest in needed infrastructure and other projects while simultaneously balancing budgets. This program was part of a day-long Brookings Institution program on innovative economic growth strategies for government and business sectors. Alice Rivlin and Ron Haskins appear on the panel.
• It's Time To Dump The Current Tax Code And Start Over
  January 11, 2011
  Fiscal Times by Eric Schurenberg
  The Erskine-Bowles and Domenici-Rivlin deficit-busting proposals each called for radical tax reform, with signoff from both Republican and Democratic contributors. Isabel Sawhill, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told a Brookings panel on fiscal responsibility that the inclusion of tax reform "helped break open the stalemate here in Washington in a really significant way."
• U.S. Experts: Debt Hike Fight Won't Be As Brutal As 1995 Brawl
  January 11, 2011
  Market News International by John Shaw
  "So far, I think Boehner and McConnell have taken a pretty measured approach to this. They know they have to raise the debt limit, but they want to exact some price from the president for doing it. And they want to make very sure that there will be plenty of Democratic votes to help them pass the bill," says Bill Frenzel, a former Republican congressman and now a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution. "I feel confident that we'll get this debt ceiling thing resolved. I hope it doesn't take too long because we got to get work pretty soon to the main event--trying to see if we can get some kind of compromise to get our deficit under control. The longer we waste time on the debt limit, the longer we take getting to the really important stuff," he added.
• Changing Corporate Tax Is a Tricky Balancing Act
  January 9, 2011
  New York Times - The Caucus Blog by John Harwood
  The possibility of reforming the entire tax system has drawn increasing attention lately. Last month, a presidential deficit-reduction commission recommended cutting deductions and credits enough to reduce corporate and individual income tax rates to no more than 29 percent, from the current maximum of 35 percent. A former budget director, Alice Rivlin, and a former Senator, Pete Domenici, leading another bipartisan panel, went further. They suggested a top rate of 27 percent for individuals and corporations, with a new 6.5 percent national sales tax to reduce the deficit and bolster the economy by discouraging consumption and encouraging investment.
• Full Transcript of e21/MI Conversation with Rep. Paul Ryan
  January 8, 2011
  Economic Policies for the 21st Century
  "Alice Rivlin and I co-authored some reforms that are innovative that put Medicare on the way toward solvency. She and Pete Domenici and other -- I forgot what they called that thing, the Domenici-Rivlin commission. They advocated Medicare reforms to put it on the list of solvency." - Rep. Paul Ryan
• Obama in Political, Economic Quandary as He Considers Tax Overhaul in U.S.
  January 7, 2011
  Bloomberg by Ryan J. Donmoyer and Rich Miller
  Alice Rivlin, who was President Bill Clinton's budget director, said the White House and Congress must be open to raising additional taxes from an overhaul. "Revenue-neutral isn't what we need at the moment," Rivlin said. "We need to find a way of raising more revenue, but with a more efficient and more growth-friendly tax system."
• A Looming Debt Limit Crisis
  January 4, 2011
  Council on Foreign Relations by Roya Wolverson
  Whether debate will lead to serious action remains to be seen. The Brookings Institution's Alice Rivlin, part of the Obama administration's bipartisan deficit commission, says the burden lies with President Obama, who must be specific but open in his upcoming State of the Union budget proposals and the 2012 budget, as well as a cooperative incoming House Speaker John Boehner. Ultimately, says Rivlin, avoiding a debt crisis will require that "the president and the leadership of both parties are sufficiently scared of the consequences of gridlock on the budget that they work together to produce a sustainable multi-year budget plan."
• Guests: DNC Chairman Kaine, Reps. Issa, Altmire, Cummings & Israel
  January 2, 2011
  CNN - State of the Union by Ed Henry
  "You know what? Well, Ed I doubt that. I don't think the debt panel said the best thing for the American economy is let all the tax cuts expire. The tax cuts, if they expired were going to hit low income working people the hardest in a way that would have hurt the economy, hurt revenues and likely exacerbated the deficit by slowing down economic growth. But now we have to deal with the deficit panel's recommendations and there have been other groups as well, Alice Rivlin and former Senator Domenici have come up with a strong plan for dealing with the deficit, other members have weighed in. And you're going to see the president put that out for congress to deal with and we'll see if they'll take it seriously in the House." - Tim Kaine
• Focus on Budget and Debt
  December 30, 2010
  Fiscal Times, by Bruce Bartlett
  In a December 28 commentary, Brookings Institution economist Alice Rivlin expressed optimism that Republican control of the House will encourage both parties to work together on long-term deficit reduction.
• As Boomers Wrinkle: The Most Troublesome Age Group Ever Still Has Some Last Fireworks Up its Sleeve
  December 29, 2010
  The Economist
  Last year Mr Obama's bipartisan deficit commission recommended expanding the powers of Medicare's cost-control panel and scrapping or reforming the CLASS Act, which creates a new entitlement for long-term care of the old and frail. Paul Ryan and Alice Rivlin, Republican and Democratic commission members, have separately proposed replacing traditional Medicare with vouchers for private care. All those proposals are complete anathema to the elderly.
• Federal Programs on Hold Along with Spending Bill
  December 29, 2010
  Los Angeles Times, by Kathleen Hennessey
  House Republicans, spurred on by the small government "tea party" movement, have promised to bring nondefense discretionary spending back to 2008 levels, an estimated $100-billion cut from the president's budget. That will probably spark a budget battle that some experts expect may only result in more uncertainty. Isabel Sawhill, a budget expert at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington, said she expected more extensions of the temporary funding measure, which she described as "just a minor symptom of the difficulties we face in getting our longer-term fiscal situation under control."
• Federal Programs in Limbo Amid Budget Battles
  December 28, 2010
  McClatchy Newspapers, by Kathleen Hennessey
  House Republicans, spurred on by the small government "tea party" movement, have promised to bring non-defense discretionary spending back to 2008 levels, an estimated $100 billion cut from the president's budget. That will likely spark a budget battle that some experts expect may only result in more uncertainty. "My guess is that there will be more CRs - extensions of the current one - in light of these battles," said Isabel Sawhill, a budget expert at the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank in Washington. "The CR is just a minor symptom of the difficulties we face in getting our longer-term fiscal situation under control."
• Week in Politics
  December 24, 2010
  NPR - All Things Considered
  "You had Alice Rivlin, President Clinton's former budget director, working hand-in-hand with Paul Ryan, a conservative darling and also the forthcoming chairman of the House Budget Committee, on a plan to really revamp the way that Medicare works, to make that program more sustainable over the long term. So while it's certainly true that not all conservatives see eye-to-eye on the deficit question, I think that there are a lot of people who are saying, wait a second, you have to go beyond just talking about tax cuts to thinking about to make government work better, more efficiently, more effectively. And also, how to make these fiscal programs that a lot of vulnerable Americans depend on more sustainable, so that they dont have to be slashed and burned at some point in the medium term future." - Reihan Salam
• Fees, Volume and Spending at Medicare
  December 24, 2010
  New York Times, by Uwe Reinhardt
  An alternative is to sweep the entire problem under the rug by privatizing all of Medicare. This could be accomplished through the defined-contribution plan recently advocated by the economist Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institution and Representative Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin. Under the Rivlin-Ryan plan, the problem of paying the providers of health care would no longer be visible and for government to solve. Instead, it would be the product of private and presumably secret deals between private health plans and the providers - and, indirectly, the elderly, who would be made to bear the risk of rising payments to providers. Provided, of course, that elderly voters accept such a new deal.
• Brookings Scholar Floats 10 Percent Cut to Defense Budget
  December 22, 2010
  The Hill, by Erik Wasson
  The 10 percent budget plan was unveiled at a Brookings panel discussion in which he and two other Brookings scholars argued that the burgeoning national debt poses a threat to national security. Scholar Alice Rivlin, former budget director for President Clinton, said that a sovereign debt crisis, brought on once the U.S. is forced to sell Treasury bonds at sky-high interest rates, would deeply impair the nation's ability to pay for its military down the road. "The greatest national security threat we face is an economic catastrophe … and we are facing an economic catastrophe," Rivlin said of the rising national debt. She said that for a deficit-cutting plan to be adopted soon, the defense budget must be on the table along with reductions to social spending and entitlements like Medicare.
• Spanning the Local / National Divide in Washington (transcript)
  December 21, 2010
  The Kojo Nnamdi Show (WAMU)
  Today, we're exploring why that is and how that disconnect affects the way the city debates issues like education reform, taxes and economic development. We're talking with public figures who continue to engage with policy debates at a local and national level. Later in the broadcast, we'll talk with Alice Rivlin a leading voice on national and local budget issues and public policy. And we'll be joined by former congressman, Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican who took up the mantle of D.C. autonomy and voting rights.
• Fed's Mysterious Policy: How Will We Know if it's Working?
  December 21, 2010
  McClatchy Newspapers, by Kevin G. Hall
  Few economists expect the jobless rate to fall below 9 percent in 2011; the Fed itself projects a range between 8.9 percent and 9.1 percent. That's why Alice Rivlin, a former Fed vice chairman, expects little from QE2. "I think it was conceived as insurance for the recovery," she said. "I never thought this was going to help a lot; I thought fiscal action was probably more useful. Now that we've gotten some fiscal action (with the tax-cut extension package signed by President Barack Obama), it can be regarded as double insurance." Rivlin doesn't buy the idea that rising inflation expectations means that QE2 has already worked. "Is it inflation expectations? Is it worries about budget deficits? Is it expectations that the economy is actually improving? I don't know," she said. "I think the big problem is aggregate demand. I think small changes in the interest rate can't hurt, and I don't share the view that it is a dangerous thing to do. I don't think it's going to be terribly effective in revitalizing the economy."
• Tax Deduction for Mortgage Interest Could Be on the Chopping Block
  December 20, 2010
  Los Angeles Times, by Don Lee
  Alice Rivlin, a former top budget official in the Clinton administration and a member of Obama's deficit commission, said any big change in the mortgage deduction wouldn't happen by itself. It'll be part of a broader makeover of a tax system that she and leaders in both parties agree is too complicated and riddled with special deductions and exclusions. "It's got to be a wholesale reform," she said. Though reluctant to assess its chances, Rivlin said the time might finally be coming because of the magnitude and urgency of the nation's budget deficits. "It's certainly possible," she said.
• Giving the Lie to Fiscal Horror Stories
  December 20, 2010
  Boston Globe, by John E. Sununu
  If President Obama ultimately signs meaningful deficit reduction legislation into law before the 2012 elections - a distinct possibility, but a long-shot nonetheless - special credit may be due for two unexpected heavyweights: Alice Rivlin and Erskine Bowles. In their own way, they have put the lie to the conventional wisdom of the left that bringing the federal budget under control will require unimaginable entitlement cuts and across the board tax increases. As members of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, they have acted like intelligent, plain speaking adults - in Washington, this is high praise indeed…
• Negotiating Against America: Why Obama Shouldn't Listen to David Brooks
  December 17, 2010
  Huffington Post, by Richard Eskow
  But it's bipartisan, says Brooks. It's endorsed by "Paul Ryan, a Republican, and Alice Rivlin, a Democrat." That's like saying the British attack on New York during the Revolutionary War was supported by "King George III, a Briton, and Benedict Arnold, a American." Besides, as the poll figures show, this isn't about what Alice Rivlin or any other Beltway Democrat wants. It's about what the public wants ... and what's in their best interests.
• Tax Deal May Be Less Healthy than What We Would Like to Think
  December 17, 2010
  San Antonio City Buzz Examiner, by Todd M. Schoenberger
  Brookings Institution fellow Isabel Sawhill wins the quote of the night when describing the tax package: "as usual, all candy and no spinach." She's absolutely right and what happens when you eat too much candy? Your teeth fall out and you look like a boxcar hobo, which could very well be the end result for many Americans in years to come.
• What Are Taxes For? : Should the Primary Purpose of Taxation be to Support the Government or Maximize Economic Growth?
  December 16, 2010
  Wall Street Journal, by Daniel Henninger
  Barack Obama told National Public Radio last week that he's for tax reform. This followed calls for tax reform from the Bowles-Simpson commission, another group led by former Clinton OMB director Alice Rivlin and, not least, from the next chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, Dave Camp of Michigan.
• Rivlin: Critical for U.S. to Simplify Tax Code
  December 15, 2010
  Fox Business News
  Debt commission member Dr. Alice Rivlin on the government's attempt to reduce the nation's growing debt.
• The Economic Debate We Should be Having
  December 14, 2010
  Washington Post (also appeared on MySanAntonio.com), by Mike Gerson -
  Cites Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill
• Democrats' Existential Debt Dilemma
  December 13, 2010
  Real Clear Politics, by David Paul Kuhn
  "Debt gives government a bad name," said Isabel Sawhill, the Brookings institution budget studies director. "And when you give government a bad name it's progressives who lose."
• House Rule
  December 13, 2010
  New Yorker, by Peter J. Boyer
  Last month, Ryan and Alice Rivlin, the former Clinton budget director-both are members of Obama's deficit commission-introduced a plan, based on Ryan's Roadmap, that would fundamentally transform Medicare. Their proposal would end the government's open-ended payment of seniors' medical bills, instead providing beneficiaries with an annual payment, in the form of a voucher, to be used to buy private insurance. Current Medicare recipients, and people who are now fifty-five and older, would not be affected by the changes, which would begin in 2021. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Rivlin-Ryan plan would cut deficit spending by two hundred and eighty billion dollars over the first decade. Last week, when the deficit commission declined to accept the Rivlin-Ryan plan-or to address health-care costs in more than a glancing manner-Ryan declared that he would vote against the commission's final report. "My point is, either get it done now, or it's hard-core, Greek-like austerity later," Ryan says. "And I think we can make the case to the public that, if we do it now, we do it on our own terms, we do it in a gradual, intelligent way." … It is likely that the Rivlin-Ryan plan, rejected by the Obama deficit commission, will find its way into Ryan's budget next year.
• Health Care and the Deficit
  December 11, 2010
  New York Times
  The second commission, an independent panel headed by Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin, seeks to save $137 billion from Medicare cost-sharing. … The Domenici-Rivlin panel, the more aggressive on health care, would also phase out the exclusion that exempts workers from paying taxes for employer-subsidized insurance, a benefit that also encourages excessive use of medical care. The long-term gain in tax revenue could be huge - more than $3 trillion between 2012 and 2030 and almost $10 trillion by 2040. … The Domenici-Rivlin panel has a far-reaching proposal to give Medicare enrollees vouchers to buy coverage from Medicare or a competing private plan offered on a Medicare exchange. The voucher would increase in value at roughly half the likely rate of medical inflation. If the cost of coverage rose faster than that, the beneficiary would have to pay an extra premium to cover the difference or seek a cheaper plan.
• Erskine Bowles is Wrong, the Era of Deficit Denial Is Doing Just Fine
  December 10, 2010
  Huffington Post, by David Paul
  Over the past few weeks, in short order, Congress swept aside the recommendations of the President's debt commission, ignored the parallel recommendations of the study committee led by Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin, and moved to prevent the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of this month.
• Debt Panel Punted on Health Care Cost Plan
  December 9, 2010
  Roll Call, by Morton Kondracke
  Maybe the most compelling product of President Barack Obama's deficit commission isn't even in its groundbreaking final report. It's the bipartisan proposal by the panel's health care subcommittee, former White House budget director Alice Rivlin and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), to keep Medicare and Medicaid from overwhelming the federal budget. … Even though Rivlin - President Bill Clinton's budget director - has impeccable Democratic credentials, Democrats on the Obama debt commission opposed the plan and it was dropped. Rivlin included a version of it in the report of another bipartisan debt commission she headed along with former Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.). … Rivlin and Ryan did not come up with a plan to reform Obamacare, but to control costs for the two biggest government health programs, Medicare and Medicaid, to 1 percent above the growth rate for gross national product. Currently, the programs are growing at double that rate. … Because it wasn't part of the Obama commission's final report, the Rivlin-Ryan plan has received much less attention than it deserves. It represents a bipartisan convergence that is the only path out of America's debt crisis.
• Tax Reform and Deficit Reduction: Proposals of Recent Budget Commissions
  December 7, 2010
  C-SPAN
  Panelists at the Urban Institute talked about plans to reduce the federal debt and reform the U.S. tax code. They also talked about the compromise between President Obama and congressional Republican leaders reached the previous day on the extension of George W. Bush administration tax cuts and unemployment benefits. They also responded to questions from the audience. Alice Rivlin appears on the panel.
• Health Care is Eating a Hole in Pentagon Budget
  December 7, 2010
  CNN Money, by Charles Riley
  And a private sector group led by Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin offered a similar solution that would increase co-pays and enrollment fees for retired veterans not yet eligible for Medicare from 11% to 27%, and introduce nominal fees for retired veterans who use Tricare as a supplemental insurance plan.
• Reversing the Trend to Spend
  December 6, 2010
  Washington Times, by Ed Feulner
  Another serious misstep by the commission: not demanding stronger reform of the entitlement programs driving so much of the rising spending tsunami: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Nearly all new long-term debt comes as a result of the cost of those three programs and net interest on the debt. The plan advanced by Rep. Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, and Alice Rivlin, the liberal former CBO director, offers a better model for lawmakers to follow on Medicare and Medicaid.
• Politics and the Economy
  December 6, 2010
  NPR / WAMU - The Diane Rehm Show
  Diane and her guests discuss what congressional votes on extending Bush tax cuts may signal about battles ahead over government spending, deficits and efforts to reduce the nation's unemployment rate. How politics is affecting the sluggish economy. Alice Rivlin appears on a panel with David Walker, Major Garrett & Dan Mitchell.
• Dealing with the Deficit
  December 6, 2010
  New Hampshire Public Radio, by Elaine Grant
  A bipartisan deficit commission released its tough plan to get the nation back into the black. It would raise taxes, increase the retirement age, and cut to military spending and agricultural subsidies. The package was voted down, but many still see its release as a victory for bipartisanship, hoping that Republicans, Democrats and the President will be able to work together to battle the economy. We'll look at what options are on the table to lower the deficit and how it may play out politically. Isabel Sawhill appears on a panel with John Maggs and Chris Edwards.
• U.S. Deficit Looms, Cuts Face Uphill Climb
  December 5, 2010
  Xinhua Newswire, by Matthew Rusling
  "I think the probability that Congress is going to take significant action on the deficit is almost zero, at least in the immediate future," said Isabel V. Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
• A Few Things The Deficit Commission Agreed On
  December 4, 2010
  NPR - Morning Edition Saturday, by NPR staff
  "There were negatives and positives. And most people thought that it was a very credible plan. Some people said they would support it, although they would have wished one thing or another - I was one of those. And some people said they can't support it but they thought the effort was very much worth it and they supported many things in it. So it came out with 11 votes out of the 18 for the plan. But I read most of the others as somewhat supportive or at least not in denial that we have a huge debt problem and that we have to have a bipartisan solution…" - Alice Rivlin
• U.S. Plan to Cut Deficits Stirs Emotions
  December 3, 2010
  America.gov, by Andrzej Zwaniecki
  With interest payments on the debt exceeding $1 trillion annually, or 20 percent of federal revenue, the cost of borrowing may go up and credit rating agencies may downgrade U.S. debt, according to William Gale of the Brookings Institution, a policy research group. Higher interest rates would hurt economic growth and further swell the federal deficit.
• A Fun Fiscal Commission While it Lasted
  December 3, 2010
  The Economist - Free Exchange, by G.I.
  Alice Rivlin, a former Clinton budget director and commission member, scolded the media for dwelling on the low odds of the report's passage. "Give democracy a chance," she pleaded, to applause. She certainly has a point, but for now, the media's scepticism seems warranted. The commission has contributed to the stock of ideas for getting the deficit down, but the stock was pretty copious to begin with. The real question has always been, how to get the political system to agree to them? The answer appears as elusive as ever.
• The Success of Simpson-Bowles
  December 3, 2010
  New York Times Blog, by Ross Douthat
  We know what Nancy Pelosi won't stand for, and where Tom Coburn and Dick Durbin will consider compromising. We know where Paul Ryan and Alice Rivlin can find common ground. And we know that it's possible for prominent right-wingers, Coburn now included, to stand up to Grover "better to risk a debt crisis than end a tax subsidy" Norquist, which is inherently good news for both conservatism and the country.
• Deficit Panel's Painful Budget Draws Challenges
  December 3, 2010
  Associated Press
  They were joined in supporting the package by panel members Alice Rivlin, White House budget director in the Clinton administration, David Cote, CEO of Honeywell International, and Ann Fudge, a former chief executive of Young & Rubicam.
• Alice Rivlin on Compromise for Deficit Reduction
  December 2, 2010
  WNYC Radio - The Takeaway
  Alice Rivlin is on The President's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. Rivlin was the first director of the Congressional Budget office, director of the Office of Management and Budget, as well as a former Federal Reserve Vice Chair. Rivlin is also a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute. She says she will vote for the plan and that we should see it less as a painful experience and more as an opportunity for our country.
• Andy Stern Takes on America's Second Deficit
  December 2, 2010
  Washington Post, by Ezra Klein
  Stern, the former president of the Service Employees International Union, is a member of the Simpson-Bowles Commission. He's not the only participant to bring out his own plan (pdf) -- both Rep. Jan Schakowsky and Alice Rivlin have already released separate proposals -- but his plan is more clearly distinguished from the others. This is, in part, because where they reduce one deficit, he reduces two.
• Ryan Says 'No' to Deficit Plan
  December 2, 2010
  WSJ - Washington Wire, by Neil King Jr.
  Mr. Ryan singled out two Democrats on the panel-former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles and former Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin-as "my two favorite Democrats." He said he hopes to keep working with Ms. Rivlin to tackle the growing federal debt.
• Uphill Climb for Obama's Debt Panel
  December 1, 2010
  FOX News.com
  The commission, calling for Congress to fully fund the Transportation Trust Fund, recommends bumping up the federal gas tax by 15 cents per gallon between 2013 and 2015. Ron Haskins, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, gave the idea a precisely "zero percent" chance of passing. "Anything that's a new tax or a big expansion of an old tax ... I think has a very low probability," he said. … Under the plan, the retirement age would gradually increase to 68 by 2050 and 69 by 2075. The benefit formula would change, cost-of-living adjustments would not be as large and the cap on income taxed for the program would rise. Haskins called the proposals "totally reasonable" and said lawmakers could very well introduce some of the elements in the form of a bill. But as for an actual floor vote on sweeping changes to Social Security, he gave it about a 30 percent chance.
• Deficit "Moment of Truth"
  December 1, 2010
  FOX Business News
  Deficit Commission member Alice Rivlin argues the group's plan will help create a simpler and more fair tax system.
• As Final Debt Plan Is Released, Signs That the Fight Is Just Beginning
  December 1, 2010
  New York Times, by Jackie Calmes
  Two members of the 18-member deficit commission who do not hold elective office - David Cote, chief executive of Honeywell International, and Alice Rivlin, a former budget director for Congress and later for President Clinton - also announced their support for the plan on Wednesday…
• Deficit Panel Chiefs Urge Tax, Spending Changes
  December 1, 2010
  Wall Street Journal, by Damian Paletta
  Their endorsement was followed by Honeywell International Inc. Chairman and CEO David Cote, Anne Fudge, the former CEO of communications firm Young & Rubicam Brands, and Alice Rivlin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, a think tank -- all three of whom said they too would vote in favor of the plan.
• Deficit Plan Gains Support on Panel
  December 1, 2010
  Wall Street Journal, by Corey Boles
  For the commission to officially take up the final report and trigger congressional votes, 14 of the panel's 18 members would need to support it. Other commission members who have endorsed the plan are Honeywell International Inc. Chairman David Cote; Anne Fudge, the former chief executive of communications firm Young & Rubicom Brands, and Alice Rivlin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, a think tank.
• Revised Deficit Plan Presented to Reluctant Panel
  December 1, 2010
  Bloomberg Businessweek, by Heidi Przybyla and Brian Faler
  Senator Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat who heads the Chamber's Budget Committee, said he will vote yes, as did commission member David Cote, chairman of Honeywell International Inc.; Ann Fudge, former chief executive officer of Young & Rubicam Inc., and former Congressional Budget Office Director Alice Rivlin.
• The Deficit's Moment of Truth
  December 1, 2010
  Wall Street Journal, by Jeffrey Sparshott and Corey Boles
  Alice Rivlin was President Clinton's budget director. And she's a member of the deficit commission. She says President Obama knows the pay freeze is just an appetizer on the deficit-cutting menu. "The only question is, do we wait or do we act like grown-ups and pull up our socks and do it right now?" Washington isn't known for grown-up behavior. But Rivlin says, if we don't cut the deficit a lot, we'll be in a deep debt crisis that forces us to grow up fast.
• US Deficit Commission Heads Will Present Final Plan Wednesday
  December 1, 2010
  Washington Post
  The plan is not perfect, but it is, as commission member Alice Rivlin said, a "very serious plan for dealing with a imminent catastrophe."
• Deficit Panel Split; Painful Package In Doubt
  December 1, 2010
  FOX 5 News WTTG (Washington DC)
  Alice Rivlin appears at 02:44.
• Commission Delays Vote On Debt-Cutting Plan
  December 1, 2010
  NPR - Morning Edition, John Ydstie and Renee Montagne
  "I was talking yesterday to commission member Alice Rivlin, a former Clinton administration budget director. She said if they get a few Democrats and a few Republicans to go along, maybe nine or 10 votes, it could still have a real impact in Congress." - John Ydstie
• Revised Debt-Cutting Plan Gets First Nods Of Support
  December 1, 2010
  NPR / AP
  Bowles was White House chief of staff when former President Bill Clinton negotiated a balanced budget plan in 1997; Simpson is a former GOP senator. They could pick up support from nonelected deficit hawks like Democrat Alice Rivlin and Honeywell International's chief executive, David Cote, a Republican, who won't have to defend themselves to voters. Republican senators seem more likely to vote for the plan than their rigidly anti-tax-increase House counterparts.
• Attention-Getters: 40 Who Shaped 2010
  December 2010
  Washingtonian magazine
  Alice Rivlin.The Brookings urban-policy expert, who helped rescue DC from bankruptcy in the 1990s, is helping lead a panel that aims to tackle the spiraling federal budget.
• Debt Reduction Plan Helps Childless Workers
  December 1, 2010
  TPC - Tax Vox (appeared on CSM), by Elaine Maag
  The debt reduction and tax reform plan proposed this week by the Bipartisan Policy Center does more than cut the deficit. The task force, chaired by former GOP Senate Budget Committee Chair Pete Domenici and former top congressional and White House budget official Alice Rivlin, also deals workers who have no kids at home a better hand by extending the EITC to more of them. The EITC is the nation's largest cash-transfer program targeted at low-income working families, rivaling the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP - or Food Stamps) in total benefits. EITC payments rise with income, plateau, and then decline as earnings surpass a set amount. In 2010, the maximum credit ranges from $457 for families without children living at home to $5,666 for families with three or more kids. … This dramatic proposed change largely explains why the bottom fifth of earners would face almost no tax increase under the BPC's deficit- reduction plan. By Tax Policy Center estimates, members of this group would pay an average of $5 more in 2022-relative to current policy assuming the Making Work Pay credit and lower refundability thresholds for the CTC had already ended.
• Jobs First -- Any Other 'Deficit Plan' Sells America Short
  November 30, 2010
  Huffington Post, by Richard Eskow
  The Bowles/Simpson and Rivlin/Domenici school of thought -- a well-funded school supported by an interlocking cast of characters -- wants to balance the budget before the economy is ready. Any deficit plan, even the Citizens' Commission plan, should be kept in check until employment returns to acceptable levels. Their arbitrary spending ceilings would prevent us from creating new jobs, and their proposed cuts would destroy current jobs. There's no need to impose a grim, spartan future of diminished expectations on a nation that can recover from its current wounds and emerge stronger than ever.
• Rivlin-Domenici Deficit Reduction Plan Is Superior to Bowles-Simpson in Most Areas But Health Proposal Is Very Troubling
  November 30, 2010
  Center on Budget & Policy Priorities, by James Horney, Paul N. Van de Water, and Robert Greenstein
  The Rivlin-Domenici deficit reduction plan, which a commission of the Bipartisan Policy Center unveiled last week, marks a significant improvement over a plan from the co-chairs of President Obama's fiscal commission - with the exception of health care, in which the Rivlin-Domenici plan actually is more problematic…
• Panel Postpones Vote On U.S. Debt-Cutting Plan
  November 30, 2010
  Southern California Public Radio, by Marilyn Geewax
  One member, economist Alice Rivlin, told NPR she believes taking more time to build support is a good idea. "I'm quite optimistic," she said.
• US Deficit Commission Heads Will Present Final Plan Wednesday
  November 30, 2010
  Wall Street Journal, by Jeffrey Sparshott and Corey Boles
  Alice Rivlin was President Clinton's budget director. And she's a member of the deficit commission. She says President Obama knows the pay freeze is just an appetizer on the deficit-cutting menu. "The only question is, do we wait or do we act like grown-ups and pull up our socks and do it right now?" Washington isn't known for grown-up behavior. But Rivlin says, if we don't cut the deficit a lot, we'll be in a deep debt crisis that forces us to grow up fast.
• New Deficit Plan Still Eyes Social Security Trims
  November 30, 2010
  Associated Press, by Andrew Taylor and Jim Kuhnhenn
  Only Bowles and Simpson are guaranteed to support the plan when the panel votes. None of the 12 House members and senators named by Obama have committed to the proposals, though Bowles and Simpson could pick up support from nonelected deficit hawks - like Democrat Alice Rivlin - who won't have to defend themselves to voters.
• Can Politicians Cut the $1.3 Trillion Deficit?
  November 29, 2010
  ABC News
  "I think they (lawmakers) are taking away with one hand what they're talking about doing with the other. In fact, they aren't doing anything at the moment to reduce the deficit," said Isabel V. Sawhill, a budget expert at the Brookings Institute. "They're just talking about it and what they're actually doing is stuff that's going to make matters worse and dig the hole deeper." … Programs such as freezing pay, cutting earmarks and waste are a "a drop in the bucket," Sawhill said. "You need leadership, especially from the president, and then you need the public to have sufficient understanding of where their tax dollars go and what the government spends money on so that we can find the political will to do these tough things." "It's going to take a lot of sacrifice and it's going to take not having tax cuts and it's going to take not promising seniors benefits out in the future that we can't afford," she added.
• Sharp Fiscal Split Looms Over Obama and GOP
  November 30, 2010
  AOL News, by Joseph Schuman
  But William Gale, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, suggests the commission's work, even if not welcomed, won't be in vain. And his reasoning could apply to the politicians as well. "No solution to this problem is going to be politically popular. But even if Congress disregards the current proposals, dismissing them as politically unfeasible, that will not mean the commission's efforts will have failed," Gale said. "By publicly proposing deficit solutions, these commissions already have fulfilled their main function: to start a serious national conversation."
• Tax Cuts in Black and White
  November 30, 2010
  POLITICO, by Carrie Budoff Brown and John Maggs
  As the Brookings Institution's Bill Gale has pointed out, the budget deficit stood at 1.2 percent of annual gross domestic product as recently as 2007, long after the Bush tax cuts had taken effect, and have ballooned to 10 percent of GDP now.
• Deficit Reduction Plans Would Squeeze Medicare
  November 29, 2010
  Kaiser Health News, by Mary Agnes Carey
  "America faces a quiet killer that is eating away at the foundation of America - the growing deficit," said Republican former Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico, a past chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. He and Alice Rivlin, President Bill Clinton's budget director, head another bipartisan task force on the deficit. One of the most controversial ideas, included in the task force report and the proposals of Obama's commission chairmen, is called "premium support." Seniors would get a set amount of money and use it to buy coverage from the traditional fee-for-service program or from a menu of private plans. Separately, two members of the president's panel, Rivlin and Rep. Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who is expected to head the House Budget Committee, would go a step further, and replace the current Medicare fee-for-service program with one that would give seniors vouchers to purchase coverage on their own in the private market.
• The Importance of Ryan-Rivlin
  November 29, 2010
  Heritage Foundation, by Jim Capretta
  The political ground has been shifting rapidly ever since the American people delivered a vote of no confidence on the current direction of public policy when they went to the polls earlier this month. Nowhere is that shift more evident than in the recent release of a bipartisan plan to dramatically reform the nation's health entitlement programs. Sponsored by incoming House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and former Clinton administration budget director Alice Rivlin, the "Ryan-Rivlin" plan represents a real breakthrough in the long standoff between the parties over how to address the most pressing problem in the federal budget, which is the relentless, long-term rise in costs of Medicare and Medicaid. Ryan and Rivlin both serve on the presidential commission looking at ways to reduce the nation's short- and long-term budget deficits, and they offered their health-entitlement reform plan to their fellow commission members for consideration.
• Outlook: Five Myths About Cutting the Deficit
  November 29, 2010
  Washington Post web chat
  William G. Gale, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, will be online Monday, Nov. 29 at 11 a.m. ET to discuss his Outlook article titled 'Five myths about cutting the deficit.'
• Politics and Deficit Reduction
  November 29, 2010
  St. Louis Beacon, by Robert A. Kropf
  One indication of whether both sides are seriously willing to find consensus will be Congress' reaction to the final report of Obama's commission on deficit reduction, which is due Dec. 1. At the same time that this commission, chaired by former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson and Clinton chief-of-staff Erskine Bowles, was working on their recommendations, another group headed by another former Republican senator, Pete Domenici, and Clinton budget director, Alice Rivlin, was preparing its own alternatives to solving the deficit riddle.
• Federal Workers May Not See Pay Raises for Two Years
  November 29, 2010
  NPR - Marketplace
  Alice Rivlin was President Clinton's budget director. And she's a member of the deficit commission. She says President Obama knows the pay freeze is just an appetizer on the deficit-cutting menu. "The only question is, do we wait or do we act like grown-ups and pull up our socks and do it right now?" Washington isn't known for grown-up behavior. But Rivlin says, if we don't cut the deficit a lot, we'll be in a deep debt crisis that forces us to grow up fast.
• Tax Break for Employer Health Plans a Target Again
  November 29, 2010
  Associated Press, by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
  A separate group, the Bipartisan Policy Center, is proposing to cap the health care tax break in 2018 and eliminate it over the next 10 years. That's part of a deficit reduction strategy from Democrat Alice Rivlin, a former Federal Reserve vice chairman, and former Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N-M., who once led the Senate Budget Committee. "The problem of rising debt is so serious that Republicans and Democrats are going to have go back and look at almost everything to see how we solve this," said Rivlin.
• Deficit Reduction From the Left
  November 29, 2010
  Wall Street Journal, by David Wessel
  Suddenly, it seems, the conversation inside the Beltway has shifted from whether to attack the deficit to how to conquer it. On the heels of bipartisan budget blueprints from the co-chairman of presidentially appointed panel, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, and another from a task force led by Alice Rivlin and Pete Domenici, comes another alternative from the left.
• Job-Based Health Care Threatened
  November 28, 2010
  Associated Press, by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
  A separate group, the Bipartisan Policy Center, is proposing to cap the health care tax break in 2018 and eliminate it over the next 10 years. That's part of a deficit reduction strategy from Democrat Alice Rivlin, a former Federal Reserve vice chairman, and former Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N-M., who once led the Senate Budget Committee. "The problem of rising debt is so serious that Republicans and Democrats are going to have go back and look at almost everything to see how we solve this," said Rivlin. … "Before health reform, a declining role for employers would have raised concerns," Rivlin and Domenici said in their proposal. But well-run exchanges "will provide a viable - perhaps even superior - alternative."
• Isabel Sawhill on Entitlement Reform
  November 27, 2010
  C-SPAN - Washington Journal
  Isabel Sawhill, Brookings Institution, Senior Fellow, discusses possible ways to reform entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to tackle the growing U.S. deficit.
• Two Plans to Address the Federal Budget Deficit
  November 26, 2010
  Understanding Fiscal Responsibility (Columbia Teachers College)
  The second deficit reduction plan came in a report titled, "Restoring America's Future," from the Bipartisan Policy Center. Chaired by former senator Pete Domenici (R) of New Mexico and former White House and congressional budget director Alice Rivlin (D), this commission is even more aggressive as it seeks to save $5.9 trillion by the year 2020. Writing for USA Today, Richard Wolf noted, "The near-unanimous opposition [to the Domenici-Rivlin plan] from right and left was a further sign of how difficult it will be - economically and politically - to get the nation's fiscal house in order amid $1.4 trillion annual deficits and a debt that will top $14 trillion early next year." Teachers should help students understand the similarities and differences between these two plans. While it is unlikely that either plan will be adopted in its entirety, these competing approaches to reducing the deficit will certainly shape the national debate concerning fiscal policy.
• Balanced-Budget Dream Will Take Decades Even for Deficit Hawks
  November 26, 2010
  Bloomberg, by Brian Faler
  While the calls may be urgent, even Washington's leading deficit foes say it will take decades to balance the books. A proposal by the heads of President Barack Obama's debt commission to cut the budget by $4 trillion wouldn't wipe out the deficit for more than 25 years. Representative Paul Ryan, who's in line to become chairman of the House Budget Committee, predicts it will take a half-century. A panel led by former Congressional Budget Office chief Alice Rivlin that offered its own plan last week wouldn't even project a date.
• Deficit Plans Would Not Be Tax Cuts For The Rich
  November 24, 2010
  Forbes, by Howard Gleckman
  Here is Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman writing in The New York Times about the plan offered by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the co-chairs of President Obama's fiscal commission: "So how, exactly, did a deficit-cutting commission become a commission whose first priority is cutting tax rates, with deficit reduction literally at the bottom of the list?" First, you need to know the code. Krugman is talking about marginal tax rates-the rate you pay on the last dollar of income you earn. And it is true that both Bowles and Simpson and a second deficit panel chaired by Alice Rivlin and Pete Domenici would cut marginal tax rates for the rich (and, as many critics never quite mention, for most everyone else as well). But both plans raise average tax rates for high-earners, and by quite a bit.
• Bipartisan Deficit Panels Worked in the Past, But Now?
  November 24, 2010
  McClatchy Newspapers, by David Lightman
  "There was a good reason the 1983 Social Security commission was successful. We were about to run out of money to pay annuitants," recalled former Rep. Bill Frenzel, a Minnesota Republican. The 1990 budget talks were prompted by rising deficits that appeared likely to strangle economic growth.
• Guide to Plans for Deficit Reduction
  November 24, 2010
  AmericaSpeaks blog, by Mary Lauran Hall
  A bipartisan task force chaired by former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici and former White House Budget Director Alice Rivlin released the Bipartisan Policy Center's debt reduction plan on November 17, 2010. Both Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin have expressed ongoing dedication to finding bipartisan solutions for our growing debt problem. Several members of this task force were involved in Our Budget, Our Economy. Domenici and Rivlin are both featured in the Federal Budget 101 video that served as background information for participants at the national discussion, and Rivlin attended the event in Philadelphia.
• MILITARY UPDATE: Second plan to cut benefits surfaces
  November 23, 2010
  Colorado Springs Gazette, by Tom Philpott
  Military members and retirees have more financial darts to dodge after a second bipartisan task force on reducing the nation's debt unveiled a different set of cost-cutting recommendations last week. The Debt Reduction Task Force, co-chaired by former Republican Sen. Pete Domenici and economist Alice Rivlin, takes sharper aim at the military community including active duty forces at war in Afghanistan. In the unlikely event Congress approves the Domenici-Rivlin plan for cutting military retirement, members who haven't served more than 15 years would find themselves under a cheaper, "more flexible" and complex plan. …. Both this and last week's report recommend adoption of a modified Consumer Price Index to dampen annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for federal entitlements including military and federal civilian retired pay, social security, veterans' compensation and survivor benefits. Both reports also call for cutting military retirement and having TRICARE beneficiaries pay more out of pocket for coverage. But the Domenici-Rivlin panel would wield a shaper knife on both major benefits.
• To Solve the Deficit, the Numbers Add Up - but Not the Votes
  November 23, 2010
  Washington Post, by Ezra Klein
  Meanwhile, the Bipartisan Policy Center has had its own panel working on the deficit. That effort, led by former Democratic Office of Management and Budget director Alice Rivlin and former GOP senator Pete V. Domenici (N.M.), was on track to produce a report shortly before the Simpson-Bowles commission - on which Rivlin also serves - was slated to offer its release. Then Simpson and Bowles jumped ahead, leaving the Rivlin and Domenici report behind. But the Bipartisan Policy Center quickly carved out its own niche among the capital's center-left wonks, who were drawn to its specificity, and its embrace of stimulus spending. "This plan," said the New Republic's Jonathan Chait, "looks a lot more solid."
• A Democrat Suggests Privatizing Medicare
  November 23, 2010
  Atlanta Journal-Constitution, by Kyle Wingfield
  The Democrat is Alice Rivlin, the former Clinton budget director who teamed up with Republican Pete Domenici to present a plan last week for tackling the budget deficit. Now, Rivlin is working with Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) to introduce a voucher system to privatize Medicare.
• A Perverse Austerity Plan
  November 23, 2010
  Boston Globe, by Robert Kuttner
  Just for good measure, a private deficit commission chaired by former GOP Senator Pete Domenici and Democratic deficit hawk Alice Rivlin is going the official panel one better, proposing $5.9 trillion in tax hikes and spending cuts over eight years, compared to the $3.8 trillion proposed by the president's panel.
• Want a Vacation from Paying Taxes? BPC Takes on the Deficit
  November 23, 2010
  Tax Vox / Christian Science Monitor, by Howard Gleckman
  Today, the privately-funded Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) released its own far-reaching fiscal proposal. Like the plan offered last week by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the co-chairs of President Obama's Deficit Commission, this heavyweight task force aims to both slash the deficit and dramatically reform the Tax Code. The 19-member BPC group was chaired by former Republican Senate Budget Committee Chair Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin, who has served as vice-chair of the Federal Reserve, founding director of the Congressional Budget Office, and director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton Administration. … The Tax Policy Center has modeled the distributional effects of the plan, just as we did for the Bowles-Simpson proposal. However, while TPC looked at the effects of Bowles-Simpson for 2015, we looked at this one in 2022 (to get past its many phase-ins and outs).
• Bipartisan Policy Center Debt Plan Shifts Benefits to Childless Workers
  November 22, 2010
  Forbes, by Elaine Magg
  The debt reduction and tax reform plan proposed by the Bipartisan Policy Center does more than cut the deficit. The task force, chaired by former GOP Senate Budget Committee Chair Pete Domenici and former top congressional and White House budget official Alice Rivlin, also deals workers who have no kids at home a better hand by extending the EITC to more of them. The EITC is the nation's largest cash-transfer program targeted at low-income working families, rivaling the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP - or Food Stamps) in total benefits. EITC payments rise with income, plateau, and then decline as earnings surpass a set amount. In 2010, the maximum credit ranges from $457 for families without children living at home to $5,666 for families with three or more kids.
• No To Further Cuts In The Defense Budget
  November 22, 2010
  Heritage Foundation, by Matthew Foulger
  The U.S. defense budget is currently inadequate to meet the nation's security needs. Yet, a panel led by retired U.S. Senator Pete Domenici, the former Republican chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, and Alice Rivlin, budget director under President Clinton, has proposed to reduce the federal debt by making drastic cuts to the Pentagon's budget. Defense spending, however, is not the cause of America's fiscal woes. Rather, mandatory spending on entitlements and interest on our debt currently accounts for over 50 percent of the federal budget, while defense spending accounts for less than one-fifth.
• The Roadmap Lives
  November 22, 2010
  Kaiser Health News, by James Capretta
  On Nov. 17, just a week later, another bipartisan commission looking at the nation's deteriorating budget situation took its turn. This one is headed by former Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and former Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin, and is sponsored by the Bipartisan Policy Center. They and their commission colleagues -- many of whom are Democrats -- released their own version of a deficit- reduction plan, which received unanimous support from the 19 commission members. Among other recommendations, the Domenici-Rivlin plan would cap the tax preference for employer-paid health insurance and then phase it out entirely over a number of years. It would also convert the Medicare program for future enrollees into a "premium support" program in which the beneficiaries get a fixed level of financial support from the government for the purchase of insurance. Enrollees selecting options more expensive than the average plan would have to pay the difference out of their own pockets. Rivlin -- who is also serving on the Bowles-Simpson presidential commission -- followed up her work with Senator Domenici by announcing her public support for a "Ryan-Rivlin" health entitlement reform program, which the two then proceeded to offer to the presidential commission for its consideration.
• Ways to Come to Grips With American's Fiscal Mess
  November 22, 2010
  RealClearPolitics.com, by Michael Barone
  Another came from an initiative from Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin and former longtime Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici that would similarly stabilize the national debt and would cut the budget deficit to 1 percent. … Still, Bowles-Simpson and Rivlin-Domenici have done the public a service by showing how the current fiscal and long-term entitlement crises can actually be addressed. They have shown that it is hard -- voters can't get everything they want -- but that's not impossible.
• Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin Tackle the Budget
  November 22, 2010
  Daily Beast, by Benjamin Sarlin
  Days after the co-chairs of the president's deficit commission dropped a politically explosive budget plan, another blue-ribbon, bipartisan panel led by former Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin and former Republican Senator Pete Domenici released a comprehensive plan of their own promising even greater budget savings if implemented. And once again, its legislative future looks dim at best.
• Rivlin Throws Grenade into Medicare Debate
  November 22, 2010
  National Journal, by Peter Cohn
  One of the Democratic Party's prominent voices on fiscal issues has thrown a hand grenade into the debate over the long-run sustainability of Medicare, the signature Great Society health program for the elderly. Alice Rivlin, the 79-year-old former budget director under President Clinton, has teamed up with 40-year-old Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the incoming chairman of the House Budget Committee, on a plan to essentially privatize Medicare for those turning 65 a decade from now.
• Deficit Reduction: When and How?
  November 22, 2010
  Wall Street Journal (transcript)
  "Actually, we are in two emergencies. We have to get out of this recession, which is very deep and it's going to be a while before we get back to anything we'd like to think of as normal. But we've got this other emergency looming. If we go on borrowing as much as we are on track to borrow over the next several years, something really bad will happen. And it could be a debt crisis that would throw us into a much worse recession. We can't take that risk. So we've got to simultaneously stimulate the economy and put in place the things that will gradually bring this rising debt under control." - Alice Rivlin
• Higher Taxes Won't Reduce the Deficit
  November 21, 2010
  Wall Street Journal, by Stephen Moore and Richard Vedder
  The draft recommendations of the president's commission on deficit reduction call for closing popular tax deductions, higher gas taxes and other revenue raisers to drive tax collections up to 21% of GDP from the historical norm of about 18.5%. Another plan, proposed last week by commission member and former Congressional Budget Office director Alice Rivlin, would impose a 6.5% national sales tax on consumers.
• Another Angle on Deficit Reduction
  November 21, 2010
  Washington Post (editorial)
  We wrote this month about the deficit reduction blueprint issued by the co-chairs of President Obama's fiscal responsibility commission. Now comes a second plan, released last Wednesday, that differs in key respects and also merits close study. The Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) proposal, overseen by Democrat Alice Rivlin and Republican Pete Domenici, demonstrates that reasonable people in both political parties, if not elected officials, can agree on a deficit reduction plan: The 19-member bipartisan task force included not only Ms. Rivlin, who served as President Clinton's budget director, and Mr. Domenici, a former Republican senator from New Mexico, but also Republicans such as former Oklahoma governor Frank Keating and former commerce secretary Carlos Gutierrez and Democrats such as former Michigan governor Jim Blanchard and Clinton housing secretary Henry Cisneros.
• Ways to Come to Grips with America's Fiscal Mess
  November 21, 2010
  Washington Examiner, by Michael Barone
  Another came from an initiative from Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin and longtime Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici that would similarly stabilize the national debt and would cut the budget deficit to 1 percent.
• 'Journal Editorial Report': Deficit Commission Defense
  November 21, 2010
  FOX News - Journal Editorial Report (also appeared on WSJ) (transcript)
  "Alice Rivlin, Erskine Bowles, they're in favor of this lowering the tax rate, but I think the president really does believe more in economic redistribution, he's clearly a class warfare guy, and so I don't think he likes the idea of lowering top tax rates" … "I don't think they touch it because the administration really didn't want them to touch it. I don't think the president's commissioners were going to go after his health care law. Alice Rivlin and I are offering a premium support plan and a block running (ph) of Medicaid. So we think one of the glaring problems in this plan is it doesn't touch health care, it doesn't do health care entitlement reform, so that's why Alice, a Democrat from the Brookings Institution, former Clinton OMB director, vice chair of the Federal Reserve, she and I are offering a plan that block grants Medicaid to the states and goes to a premium support system, which is not unlike the federal employee health benefit plan, for future Medicare retirees. And we're going to be offering that …" - Rep Paul Ryan
• Change We Can Believe In
  November 20, 2010
  The Weekly Standard¸ by Yuval Levin
  Even more significant, however, was a proposal released last week by Alice Rivlin, a Democrat and former budget director under Bill Clinton, and Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the next chairman of the House Budget Committee. Rivlin and Ryan took up the subject on which the chairmen punted-our exploding health care entitlements. Their proposal is extraordinarily bold and well-crafted. Rivlin and Ryan would leave the benefits of today's retirees and near-retirees alone. But for people who are now 55 and younger, Rivlin and Ryan would transform Medicare from a program that directly pays for care in an open-ended way to one that provides retirees with money to buy private health insurance on their own. The amount provided would be based on "average annual per capita expenditures in 2021."
• How Readers Chose to Fix the Deficit
  November 20, 2010
  New York Times, by David Leonhardt
  In the last week, readers and bloggers have also suggested dozens of cuts that did not appear among the puzzle's options. Anthony Tedesco, in an e-mail, argued for a tax on sodas and a higher federal tax on alcohol. On Wednesday, a bipartisan group led by Pete Domenici, a former Republican senator from New Mexico, and Alice Rivlin, a Democratic budget expert, released a deficit plan that included a soda tax. It would raise about $15 billion a year in today's dollars, roughly as much as eliminating farm subsidies or cutting foreign aid in half.
• On the Table for the Holidays, Countless Unwelcome Ways to Tighten our Belts
  November 19, 2010
  Politics Daily, by Jill Lawrence
  The chairmen of President Obama's bipartisan deficit commission, former Republican senator Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration, have made a big splash with a dramatic plan for the commission to consider in advance of a Dec. 1 deadline for its recommendations. An equally big splash came from a Bipartisan Policy Center panel headed by former senator Pete Domenici (a Republican) and former budget director Alice Rivlin (a Democrat).
• Erskine, Simpson Defend Budget Plan
  November 19, 2010
  The Hill, by Vicki Needham
  Since Bowles and Erskine released their report, a slew of other new proposals have been released, including two from panel members - Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and the Brookings Institution's Alice Rivlin, who authored a plan with Pete Domenici.
• Paul Ryan's Pro-Market Healthcare Reform
  November 19, 2010
  Reuters, by James Pethokoukis
  Rep. Paul Ryan, along with fellow Obama deficit panel member Alice Rivlin, has put together a plan to cut the growth of government healthcare spending. This is the heart of it.
• Will the Deficit Cutting Proposals Work?
  November 19, 2010
  NPR - Marketplace (transcript)
  Rep. Paul Ryan, along with fellow Obama deficit panel member Alice Rivlin, has put together a plan to cut the growth of government healthcare spending. This is the heart of it.
• Pete and Alice's Commission
  November 19, 2010
  American Spectator, by Ross Kaminsky
  Putting out debt-reduction plans are all the rage these days. Following the proposal put out by the co-chairmen of President Obama's Fiscal Responsibility Commission, we've seen plans from far-left Congresswoman Jan "I hate private health insurance" Schakowsky (D-IL) and now from former Fed vice-chair Alice Rivlin and former New Mexico Republican Senator Pete Domenici. While I give Rivlin and former Domenici credit for trying to come up with a sound deficit- and debt-reduction plan, what they've proposed has a many important problems and one fatal flaw…
• US Think Tank Touts Federal Sales Tax
  November 19, 2010
  Tax-News.com, by Mike Godfrey
  It was said that the plan, entitled "Restoring America's Future", from the Task Force, which is co-chaired by former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici and former White House Budget Director Alice Rivlin, would reduce the federal debt to below 60% of the economy, reduce annual deficits to manageable levels, and balance the primary budget (except for interest payments) by 2014.
• Two Tests of a Gridlock Mentality
  November 18, 2010
  Wall Street Journal, by David Wessel
  Suddenly, the talk inside the Beltway is about whether this is the best way to reduce the deficit. Specifics are being debated, and alternatives drafted. "Our recent political debates have been marked by a great deal of silly and irresponsible rhetoric," says Isabel Sawhill, a deficit hawk at the Brookings Institution who has doubts about some of the plan's specifics but admires the effort. "In this steamy environment, the commission draft is a blast of cold but refreshing air."
• Panel Calls For Medicare Thrift To Reduce Debt
  November 18, 2010
  Georgia Public Broadcasting (also appeared on NPR.org), by Phil Galewitz and Jordan Rau
  The panel -- led by former Republican Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Alice Rivlin, budget director under President Bill Clinton -- also calls for a national debt-reduction sales tax of 6.5 percent, as well as changes in Social Security and income tax rates. … But this approach has never drawn much political support over the years. "Its hard to see either party embracing a full-blown premium support plan," said Henry Aaron, a Brookings Institution expert who helped develop the idea in the mid-1990s. "The Democrats would be largely against it because of cuts in benefits, and not enough Republicans would have a stomach for it. It would mean big benefit cuts and a substantial increase in out-of-pocket costs."
• America's Deficit: Confronting the Monster
  November 18, 2010
  Economist
  So when Mr Obama appointed his bipartisan commission on deficit-cutting, it seemed a token gesture. The commission has yet to issue its final report, due on December 1st. But its chairmen-Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator, and Erskine Bowles, a former chief of staff to Bill Clinton-have put out a surprisingly bold draft proposal of their own. On November 17th a separate group of 19 experts headed by Mr Domenici, now retired, and Alice Rivlin, a former budget director for Mr Clinton, produced its own proposal. The two groups share one aim: to get the federal debt down to 60% of GDP. The steps by which they get there, too, are remarkably similar (see table). Round the rich world a consensus has emerged that austerity should mean spending cuts rather than tax increases. Britain's coalition government gets about 75% of its deficit reduction from spending cuts. The Simpson-Bowles proposal aims for 70%, while the Domenici-Rivlin commission targets slightly more than half.
• Glenn Hubbard & Alice Rivlin on Economic Solutions
  November 18, 2010
  NPR - On Point, by Tom Ashbrook
  Big conservative economist Glenn Hubbard is reaching out on tax policy, homeowners in trouble, bipartisanship. We speak with him - and former Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin.
• Can Deficit Reduction Panels Get Congress' Attention
  November 18, 2010
  NPR - Morning Edition, by Mara Liasson
  "This is our effort to say how we can reduce the debt in the future, keep the recovery going, and put the budget on a sustainable track. Everybody knows that you have to do both sides of the budget. We can't solve this problem unless we both restrain the growth of spending and raise revenues in the future." - Alice Rivlin
• Rival Deficit Plan Raises Taxes, Angers All
  November 18, 2010
  USA Today, by Richard Wolf
  The plan presented by former Republican senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico and former White House and congressional budget director Alice Rivlin, a Democrat, is important because it could guide the deliberations of a more powerful presidential commission that's due to report its findings Dec. 1.
• What if Wonks Ruled the World
  November 18, 2010
  The Atlantic Online, by Derek Thompson
  The chairmen's report was criticized not only by liberal writers, but by moderate scholars like Henry Aaron at the Brookings Institution. If Rep. Jan Schakowsky's plan to close the deficit by raising taxes exclusively on companies and rich people has any advocates in the conservative policy community, I would be pretty shocked. The Bipartisan Policy Center proposal yesterday (which might be my favorite) was panned by some at National Review and other conservatives who accurately noted that it would raise taxes on 80 percent of Americans, and reduces income for the richest by more than 10 percent. Paul Ryan's Roadmap, hailed by the right, takes the opposite approach, handing those same folks a $1 million tax cut.
• Hawks of a Feather
  November 18, 2010
  Yglesias Blog
  This has been implicit in a lot of what I've written recently, but to say it clearly I think climate hawks are making a dangerous mistake by not engaging more deeply with deficit hawks. One thing that both the Simpson-Bowles and Domenici-Rivlin proposals make clear is that some conservatives now are prepared to concede the need for higher taxes. But they want a hefty chunk of that revenue to come from regressive sources, and they want at least some progressive votes for it. Now, as Paul Krugman argues regressive taxes aren't as bad as many people think. But the fact of the matter is that a VAT as proposed by Domenici-Rivlin is always going to be a very hard sell for the left. This, tough, is where climate hawks can come to the rescue of the cherished ambitions of the center-right. Swap out a VAT and swap in a tax on climate pollution, and we become a constituency that's not just "willing" to swallow the tax but eager to do so.
• Forget Tax Simplification
  November 18, 2010
  Slate Magazine, by Timothy Noah
  This has been implicit in a lot of what I've written recently, but to say it clearly I think climate hawks are making a dangerous mistake by not engaging more deeply with deficit hawks. One thing that both the Simpson-Bowles and Domenici-Rivlin proposals make clear is that some conservatives now are prepared to concede the need for higher taxes. But they want a hefty chunk of that revenue to come from regressive sources, and they want at least some progressive votes for it. Now, as Paul Krugman argues regressive taxes aren't as bad as many people think. But the fact of the matter is that a VAT as proposed by Domenici-Rivlin is always going to be a very hard sell for the left. This, tough, is where climate hawks can come to the rescue of the cherished ambitions of the center-right. Swap out a VAT and swap in a tax on climate pollution, and we become a constituency that's not just "willing" to swallow the tax but eager to do so.
• The Failure of Simpson-Bowles
  November 18, 2010
  Washington Post, by Ezra Klein
  What's odd about the sudden rash of deficit-reduction plans is that they're all being released by members of the Simpson-Bowles commission. Rep. Jan Schakowsky is on the commission, and so too is Alice Rivlin, who co-chaired the group that led to the Bipartisan Policy Group's effort (which, I believe, started its work before the Simpson-Bowles commission).
• Better To Have Loved A Debt Commission And Lost Than Never To Have Loved One At All
  November 18, 2010
  The New Republic Blog, by Jonathan Chait
  This plan, by Alice Rivlin and Pete Domenici of the Bipartisan Policy Center, looks a lot more solid. None of the crazy unenforceable caps and wild plans to slash the federal workforce without reducing its responsibilities. It's actually a balanced proposal to distribute pain. It also sensibly includes a short-term payroll tax holiday to address the economic crisis. And the tax reform, while lowering the corporate and top income tax rates to 27%, which is below the lowest point Ronald Reagan cut them to, also makes the overall burden more progressive.
• Debt Panel Members Propose Medicare Becoming a Voucher Program
  November 17, 2010
  Bloomberg, by Brian Faler
  The plan, by Wisconsin Republican Representative Paul Ryan and former Congressional Budget Office Director Alice Rivlin, would create a program in which those turning 65 after Jan. 1, 2021, would receive a fixed payment from the government to purchase health insurance instead of enrolling in Medicare. Those currently aged 55 and older would continue to participate in traditional Medicare.
• Dueling Deficit Plans Ignore That We Need Federal Spending
  November 17, 2010
  MarketWatch, by Robert Schroeder
  Lots to digest in the 138-page report, which was spearheaded by former New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici and ex-White House budget director Alice Rivlin. But my initial impression is that it adds up to too much austerity for working- and middle-class Americans to handle right now and too little compensatory stimulus to rouse the economy.
• New Deficit Reduction Proposal Includes a VAT
  November 17, 2010
  Tax Foundation, by Nick Kasprak
  Hot on the heels of the Bowles-Simpson deficit plan released last week, a group at the Bipartisan Policy Center released its own proposal today to address the United States' growing national debt. The plan from the BPC Debt Reduction task force, headed by former CBO director Alice Rivlin and former Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) would cut federal spending in many areas, and would dramatically simplify the federal income tax by lowering rates, eliminating most itemized deductions and replacing others with simplified tax credits, and reducing the number of income tax brackets. In what is sure to be a controversial proposal, the plan calls for making up some of this lost revenue by imposing what it calls a "Deficit Reduction Sales Tax" - in other words, a national sales tax imposed on top of existing state and local sales taxes. To combat tax evasion, it is likely that the tax would take the form of a Value-Added Tax, or VAT- a system where a portion of the sales tax is collected at each stage of production, rather than all at the final sale.
• Another Tax-Hike Scheme from Another 'Bipartisan' Group of Washington Insiders
  November 17, 2010
  Cato Institute, by Daniel J. Mitchell
  I've already commented on the proposal from the Chairmen of President Obama's Fiscal Commission (including a very clever cartoon, if it's okay to pat myself on the back). Now we have a similar proposal from the so-called Debt Reduction Task Force. Chaired by former Senator Pete Domenici and Clinton Administration Budget Director Alice Rivlin, the Task Force proposed a series of big tax increases to finance bigger government. I have five observations.
• The 6.5 Percent Solution
  November 17, 2010
  Portfolio.com, by Steven Rosenbush
  Here's an idea that's bound to irk the formidable small-business lobby. Democrat Alice Rivlin, a member of President Barack Obama's deficit reduction commission, has proposed that the nation fill the widening chasm of its budget gap by raising revenue with a first-ever national sales tax. And the number she has in mind is pretty big: 6.5 percent.
• Domenici-Rivlin Panel Targets Missile Defense, Satellite Imagery for Cuts
  November 17, 2010
  Space News, by Turner Brinton
  Led by retired U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici - the former Republican chairman of the Senate Budget Committee - and Alice Rivlin, who ran the White House Office of Management and Budget under then-President Bill Clinton, the panel warns that the United States risks harming its national security unless it overhauls its spending and taxation practices. The Domenici-Rivlin panel, which was organized by a think tank here called the Bipartisan Policy Center recommended capping defense spending at 2011 levels for five years and linking defense budget growth to growth in the U.S. gross domestic product thereafter, which would result in a savings of $1.1 trillion through 2020.
• The Best Plan Yet? A Summary of the New Bipartisan Deficit Reduction Scheme
  November 17, 2010
  The Atlantic, by Derek Thompson
  Stimulus now and austerity later might be an appropriate five-word summation of the latest deficit reduction plan to hit the press. And it's good. Sponsored by the Bipartisan Policy Center and led by former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici and former White House Budget Director and Federal Reserve Vice Chair Alice Rivlin, it might be my favorite plan released yet. Let's take a quick look at the plan, comparing it to the liberal proposal from deficit commission member Rep. Jan Schakowsky (my review here) and the bipartisan chairmen's plan from Erskin Bowles and Alan Simpson (my defense here).
• Bipartisan Debt Plan Proposes Payroll Tax Holiday
  November 17, 2010
  Reuters - Pethokoukis Blog, by James Pethokoukis
  Alice Rivlin (who is on the Obama deficit commission) and former Senator Peter Domenici have cooked up their own plan to restore America's long-term fiscal solvency. But first, a chart from the plan itself that says a lot…
• Reconnecting Job Growth to Deficit Reduction - Part 1
  November 17, 2010
  Huffington Post, by Stephen Kent
  The center's recommendations have been eagerly anticipated in Washington. Its members are budget watchdogs with vast experience. Among them is Alice Rivlin, also a member of the presidential commission, who used to run the White House budget office and the Congressional Budget Office. The report also will offer a road map for the more powerful commission to follow.
• Best-Laid Plans
  November 17, 2010
  Slate.com, by Christopher Beam
  While there may be a growing deficit, there's certainly no deficit of deficit commissions. The co-chairs of president's commission unveiled a preliminary plan last week, as did the Pew-Peterson Commission on Budget Reform. Rep. Jan Schakowsky announced her own plan Tuesday. And on Wednesday, the Bipartisan Policy Center's deficit reduction "task force," led by former Sen. Pete Domenici and former White House budget director Alice Rivlin, added its plan to the pile. What all these plans have in common is that none of them brings deficit reduction any closer to reality.
• The Rivlin-Domenici Alternative to the Deficit Commission Report
  November 17, 2010
  National Review Online, by Veronique de Rugy
  A week after the deficit commission released its preliminary report, economist Alice Rivlin and former New Mexico senator Pete Domenici have released their own shadow report and have taken to the pages of the Washington Post to make their case for it.
• Budget Watchdogs Warn of Worsening Deficit, Explore Strategies to Cut (video)
  November 17, 2010
  PBS - NewsHour
  Alice Rivlin, you're a member of that commission. It's already created waves. It's dramatic. Why not leave it up to them? "Well, we're not taking over for them. We're just offering our ideas. We got a group together. And this started before there was a presidential commission -- that the senator and I agreed to co-chair this group. We got 19 people from across the country, former governors and senators and mayors and some budget experts, and created this plan. So, we think it's a very good answer, not only to how do we get out of the recession, but how do we solve this big debt problem. And we're offering it in hopes that it will be taken seriously." …
• Sweet Drinks, Sales Tax Targeted to Cut US Deficit
  November 17, 2010
  Reuters, by Kevin Drawbaugh
  Former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alice Rivlin and former Republican Senator Pete Domenici -- both veterans of Washington's long-running deficit wars -- headed the 19-member group organized by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank. One of their proposals is "an excise tax on the manufacture and importation of beverages sweetened with sugar or high-fructose corn syrup." Others are cutting farm payments and tinkering with the Social Security retirement program.
• New Deficit Report Recommends Seniors Pay More For Medicare
  November 17, 2010
  Kaiser Health News / McClatchy, by Phil Galewitz and Jordan Rau
  The panel, led by former Republican Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Alice Rivlin, a budget director under President Bill Clinton, also calls for a national debt-reduction sales tax of 6.5 percent, as well as changes in Social Security and income tax rates, according to a draft executive summary. … "It's hard to see either party embracing a full-blown premium support plan," said Henry Aaron, a health care economist at the Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank. "The Democrats would be largely against it because of cuts in benefits, and not enough Republicans would have a stomach for it. It would mean big benefit cuts and a substantial increase in out of pocket costs."
• New Deficit Plan Would Cut $6 Trillion
  November 17, 2010
  CNN Money, by Jeanne Sahadi
  The Bipartisan Policy Center's Debt Reduction Task Force is led by Republican Pete Domenici, a former senator from New Mexico, and Democrat Alice Rivlin, the founding director of the Congressional Budget Office and a member of the president's debt commission.
• Another Deficit Plan Targets Taxes
  November 17, 2010
  Wall Street Journal, by Damian Paletta
  The report, co-authored by Democratic budget veteran Alice Rivlin and former Sen. Pete Domenici (R., N.M.), follows a separate proposal last week by the two chairmen of President Barack Obama's deficit commission. The many similarities between the two offer a window into the types of proposals that might win backing as Washington launches into what is likely to be a protracted debate on deficit cutting.
• Bipartisan Debt Plan Proposes Payroll Tax Holiday
  November 17, 2010
  MarketWatch, by Robert Schroeder
  The U.S. would save almost $5.9 trillion from 2012 through 2020 under a bipartisan deficit-reduction plan released on Wednesday. Released by the Bipartisan Policy Center, the plan saves about $2 trillion more than a similar plan from the co-chairs of President Barack Obama's deficit panel. The bipartisan plan would suspend Social Security payroll taxes for 2011 and aims to reduce the federal debt to below 60% of GDP by 2020. It also cuts the corporate tax rate to 27%, slightly more than Obama's co-chairs' proposal. The Bipartisan Policy Center task force is headed by former Republican Sen. Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin, who was President Bill Clinton's budget director.
• Another US Deficit Panel Calls For Soc Sec, Medicare, Tax Reform
  November 17, 2010
  Market News International, by John Shaw
  In another attempt to get American policymakers focused on fixing the ballooning federal budget deficit and soaring debt, former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici and former White House budget director Alice Rivlin said Wednesday that a sweeping plan of spending and tax reform is critical to fixing the nation's fiscal mess. In an essay in the Washington Post, Domenici and Rivlin say "the status quo is not an option and everyone must sacrifice a little in the common interest."
• Second Bipartisan Commission In A Week Warns of Deficit Disaster
  November 17, 2010
  FOX News.com, by Jim Angle
  In a sign of how much danger the nation's finances could be in, yet another bipartisan group is calling for sweeping changes to federal spending as well as the tax system. Alice Rivlin, a former Clinton Administration official and co-chair of the group says, "We've gotten ourselves into a very deep hole and it will take awhile to climb out. The basic problem is that federal spending as we look ahead on anybody's projections, grows faster than the economy and revenues don't."
• Rivlin Stirs U.S. Sales Tax Debate Ahead of Debt Panel Report
  November 17, 2010
  Bloomberg, by Heidi Przybyla
  Alice Rivlin, a member of President Barack Obama's deficit-reduction commission, is trying to stir a debate over imposing a national sales tax to reduce the deficit. Rivlin, as part of a separate 19-member group sponsored by the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, offered a plan for a 6.5 percent national debt-reduction sales tax. Her recommendation comes as the president's panel prepares a Dec. 1 report of options for Congress to trim the national debt. Rivlin, a former Federal Reserve vice chairwoman and Democrat, and the co-chairman of the policy center group, former New Mexico Republican Senator Pete Domenici, are offering a more aggressive approach to tax increases and cuts to Medicare.
• Fasten your Seat Belts! An Even Tougher Deficit Plan
  November 17, 2010
  Fiscal Times, by Andrew L. Yarrow
  Former Congressional Budget Director Alice Rivlin and former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici, R-N.M., have been combating public debt for decades, and have few peers as federal budget mavens. Today, the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) Debt Reduction Task Force they co-chair is releasing some of the most far-reaching proposals yet for sharply reducing the federal debt, beginning in 2020. The task force report outlines measures to "blow up the income tax and start over," slash projected Medicare and Medicaid costs by $756 billion over the coming decade, impose a medium-term freeze on defense and domestic discretionary spending, introduce a host of solvency-creating Social Security reforms, and impose a national "debt reduction sales tax," Rivlin told The Fiscal Times during a recent interview in her Brookings Institution office.
• Independent Commission Proposes New Plan for Budget Deficit
  November 17, 2010
  NPR - Marketplace (transcript)
  Today's plan balances the budget by 2014. It lowers and simplifies income taxes and suspends the 6 percent payroll tax for a year. Co-chair Alice Rivlin says that puts a lot of money in a lot of pockets. "That's good from a spending point of view. We also are proposing that the employer part be suspended for a year. That gives employers an incentive to hire people, or hire them sooner."
• Task Force Examines Debt, Slow Pace Of Recovery
  November 17, 2010
  NPR - All Things Considered, by Scott Horsley
  Alice Rivlin, who used to run the White House and Congressional Budget Offices, suggests the government could encourage hiring by suspending for a year the payroll tax that workers and employers pay for Social Security. "It would put money in paychecks of all wager earners in America and it would be a significant boost to the economy."
• Rivlin Interview on Federal Budget Deficit (video)
  November 18, 2010
  Bloomberg TV- Surveillance Midday
  CRFB co-chair Bill Frenzel says "three cheers for Bowles and Simpson" as he and fellow Brookings experts talk about reducing the federal budget deficit. See the discussion here
• Deficit Commission Debates Overhaul Of Medicare
  November 17, 2010
  Associated Press
  President Barack Obama's deficit commission on Wednesday debated a dramatic plan to gradually turn Medicare from a system in which the government pays most beneficiaries' medical bills into a program in which seniors would purchase health insurance with government-issued vouchers. Current Medicare beneficiaries wouldn't be affected, nor would future enrollees age 55 or over. The plan by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Democratic economist Alice Rivlin of the panel would seem to face steep odds with most other panel Democrats. … Panel Democrat Alice Rivlin - a deficit hawk - endorsed the plan, which would not change the Medicare programs for current enrollees or for those 55 and older. The new system would start in 2021. The eligibility age for Medicare would gradually increase from 65 to 67.
• Alice Rivlin and Pete Domenici Present Deficit Plan
  November 17, 2010
  POLITICO, by John Maggs
  A distinguished bipartisan group of budget experts unveiled a bold plan to curb the deficit and overhaul the tax code Wednesday, but it was hard to miss how many times the word "former" was used to describe its members. The effort is headed up by former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and former White House budget director Alice Rivlin, and included former governors, mayors, senators, congressional staff directors and labor union leaders.
• Pentagon's Budget On The Chopping Block
  November 17, 2010
  NPR.org, by Alan Greenblatt
  The proposal to save $1.1 trillion by freezing military spending after 2012 is part of a broader deficit reduction strategy released Wednesday by a panel headed by Alice Rivlin, who served as budget director under President Bill Clinton, and former Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM).
• US Fiscal Panel at Odds Over Deficit Cut Plans
  November 17, 2010
  Financial Times, by James Politi
  On Wednesday, Alice Rivlin, former budget director under Bill Clinton and a commission member, unveiled her own detailed recommendations for ways to curb America's mounting debt burden, alongside Pete Domenici, the former Republican senator. The plan by Ms Rivlin and Mr Domenici, which includes the imposition of a 6.5 per cent consumption tax on the US economy, calls for even more aggressive measures than the $3,800bn in cuts through 2020 proposed by the fiscal commission's co-chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson last week.
• Bipartisan Agreement on Balancing Budget May be Harder than Thought
  November 17, 2010
  New York Times - The Caucus Blog, by Jackie Calmes
  Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the Republican who will chair the House Budget Committee in the next Congress, and Alice M. Rivlin, a former budget director to President Bill Clinton, proposed the sweeping overhaul of both health care programs as the 18-member commission continued meeting privately to try to agree by Mr. Obama's Dec. 1 deadline on a blueprint for reining in the growth of the federal debt. The commission will debate the Ryan-Rivlin proposal on Thursday, two members said.
• Wonkbook: Tax Cut Negotiations off to Bad Start; Two More Deficit Plans (Now with Added Stimulus!)
  November 17, 2010
  Washington Post, by Ezra Klein
  Tis the season for plans...to cut the deficit? Apparently so. The group headed by Alice Rivlin and former senator Pete Domenici are throwing their effort into the ring today, and Rep. Jan Schakowsky added her progressive alternative to the pile yesterday. So that's three big deficit reports in about two weeks. And if you're paying close attention, you'll notice that both Rivlin and Schakowsky are members of the commission Simpson and Bowles are chairing, which perhaps says something about their confidence in that process.
• Domenici-Rivlin Plan Proposes Sales Tax
  November 17, 2010
  National Journal, by Katy O'Donnell
  In the latest, but surely not last, entry into the Washington contest to solve the nation's debt crisis, the Bipartisan Policy Center's Debt Reduction Task Force released a plan today that would stabilize the debt at below 60 percent of gross domestic product by 2020 by relying more on spending cuts than on increased revenues -- but not by much. The group of 19, led by former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and former Clinton-era White House Budget Director Alice Rivlin, suggests comprehensive tax reform in its bid to balance the budget (minus debt payments) by 2014.
• Deficit Panelist Says Consumption Tax Needed
  November 17, 2010
  Reuters
  "We need a broad-based consumption tax. That is not politically popular, but at some point we are going to have to do it," said Alice Rivlin, a former Congressional Budget Office director. Rivlin is part of a 18-member presidentially appointed panel that is charged with finding ways to tackle the huge U.S. deficit. The idea of a consumption tax or "value-added tax" has rankled key lawmakers and the Obama administration has said this is not under consideration. But Rivlin said: "It does appeal to some conservatives, who say it is better to tax consumption than to tax income and savings."
• One Way to Trim Deficit: Cultivate Growth
  November 16, 2010
  New York Times, by David Leonhardt
  If the economy grew one half of a percentage point faster than forecast each year over the next two decades - no easy feat, to be fair - the country would have to do roughly 40 to 50 percent less deficit-cutting than it now appears, based on my reading of budget data from the economists Alan Auerbach and William Gale. … In the short term, we should actually spend more. "Some politicians and economists present a false choice: reduce unemployment or stabilize the debt," argues a new bipartisan deficit plan that will be released Wednesday, the second such plan to come out in the last week. As Alice Rivlin, a Democrat who oversaw the writing of the plan with Pete Domenici, a Republican, put it: "We can do both. We can put money in people's pockets in the short run and trim government spending in the long run." … The two bipartisan deficit proposals that have come out over the last week each do a pretty good job, but not quite good enough, of focusing on economic growth. The most pro-growth part of both proposals - the Domenici-Rivlin plan and the one from Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson - is their emphasis on tax reform.
• Rivlin Budget Proposal to Cut Tax Rates, Include 'Consumption Tax'
  November 16, 2010
  Wall Street Journal - Real Time Economics, by Damian Paletta
  Alice Rivlin, a Democrat and top budget expert, gave concrete clues on Tuesday what a deficit-reduction proposal she is co-authoring with former Sen. Pete Domenici (R., N.M.) will look like when it is released tomorrow. Speaking at the Wall Street Journal's CEO Council in Washington, Ms. Rivlin said the proposal would have a "much simpler, lower [tax] rate, broader base income-tax and corporate income tax with a considerably lower corporate tax rate that will bring us back into the range that other countries are in." She also said the proposal would "phase in a broad-based consumption tax." She said the consumption tax is "not politically popular, but at some point we're going to have to do it." "We're not going to get a deal here unless everybody is willing to give something," she said.
• Debt Commission Members Author Separate Plans, Casting Doubt on Deal
  November 16, 2010
  The Hill, by Vicki Needham
  At least two members of President Obama's fiscal commission will release their own versions of how the federal government can tackle debt and balance the budget, casting doubt on whether an agreement can be reached on a single plan within the next two weeks. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Alice Rivlin, a former director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Clinton, are releasing their own plans that rival the report released last week by the chairmen of National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.
• Taxing Soda to Close the Deficit
  November 16, 2010
  New York Times - Economix, by David Leonhardt
  The panel - chaired by former Senator Pete Domenici, a Republican, and Alice Rivlin, a Democrat and former White House budget director - said a soda tax would "help reduce long-term health care spending to treat obesity-related illnesses - including diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and stroke." The tax would be "an excise tax on the manufacture and importation of beverages sweetened with sugar or high-fructose corn syrup."
• Bipartisan Agreement on Balancing Budget May be Harder than Thought
  November 16, 2010
  Washington Post, by Lori Montgomery
  The push to deal with the nation's budget problems could be further complicated Wednesday when another commission member - Clinton administration budget director Alice Rivlin - is due to present a different strategy that includes ideas that are likely to be even less palatable politically, such as a big new jolt of economic stimulus and a new national sales tax. "I don't think we know how this is going to play out," Rivlin said of the proliferation of ideas. "But I think a consensus is building that debt is a huge problem and that we've got to take major action."
• Rivlin Sees Tax Increase, Reform As Part Of Deficit Solution
  November 16, 2010
  Forbes.com, by Brian Wingfield
  Alice Rivlin, another CBO director, says that the U.S. faces "two emergencies": pulling itself out of recession and avoiding a debt crisis. "We don't know when something bad will happen, but we do know something really bad will happen" if the U.S. continues borrowing at its current rate, she says. "It could be a debt crisis that throws us into a much worse recession."
• What Would a Non-Partisan Budget Plan Look Like?
  November 16, 2010
  The Atlantic Online, by Derek Thompson
  We might find out tomorrow, because we're getting a fresh batch of ideas from a group of non-electeds sponsored by the Bipartisan Policy Center. Headlined by former CBO Chief Alice Rivlin and former Senator Pete Domenici, the panel includes no current elected officials. It'll be interesting to see how that sort of intellectual freedom manifests itself in tax rates and spending levels.
• Debt Debate Offers Something For Everyone To Hate
  November 16, 2010
  NPR - All Things Considered, by Mara Liasson
  But there's no agreement on how to solve the problem, says former Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin - the only person who's serving on all three of the deficit panels presenting reports over the next few weeks. "I think the public doesn't understand the choices very well yet," Rivlin says, "and that's because in the election, there were a lot of people saying, 'It's really easy - just do this one simple thing.' Just cut the spending or just raise the taxes or just cut out waste, fraud and abuse. But if you sit down with the numbers and look at what the government actually does and how it pays for it, it's obvious that there is no simple solution." The proposal Rivlin's bipartisan task force will unveil Wednesday, like the one the chairmen of the president's deficit commission released last week, has something for everyone to hate: spending cuts and tax hikes. And it will probably be attacked the same way that first proposal was - by advocates on the left and right.
• The Small-Government Vision of Bowles-Simpson
  November 15, 2010
  Washington Post, by Ezra Klein
  Brookings's Hank Aaron is fair as they come, and he's really not impressed by Simpson-Bowles.
• Why Anyone Claiming to be a Fiscal Conservative is Probably Wrong
  November 16, 2010
  Salon.com, by Michael Lind
  Other Democrats claim that they are both progressive and fiscally conservative because they seek to shrink entitlements for the elderly in order to free resources for investing in children and young people or public goods like infrastructure. For example, in a recent debate with Greg Anrig of the Century Foundation in the journal Democracy, Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution proposed cuts "in the big social-insurance programs, both to reduce the red ink in our future and to finance education, infrastructure, and other priorities that can improve productivity and standards of living." The devil is in the details. To free up enough resources to invest in universal pre-kindergarten, expanded Head Start and massive new infrastructure projects and to steeply reduce the deficit in the near future, as Sawhill suggests, would require major cuts in Social Security and Medicare for the middle class, not just the rich.
• Commentary-Lame Ducks & Federal Debt (video)
  November 15, 2010
  PBS - Nightly Business Report
  As we reported earlier, Congress is back in session. But with just weeks to go before its holiday recess, no one expects muc