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  • Is VAT Something You Might Be Interested In?
    October 14, 2009
    Atlantic Monthly Online, by Derek Thompson
    To answer that question, the Atlantic's Clive Crook tracks down this Washington Post column by Henry Aaron and Isabel Sawhill called Bend the Revenue Curve. Crook is right: This is a really great column
  • Pawlenty wants more troops in Afghanistan; knocks Obama on spending
    October 13, 2009
    Minnesota Public Radio, by Tom Scheck
    MacGuineas and Isabel Sawhill with the Brookings Institution say the deficit can't be fixed by spending cuts alone. Sawhill said spending cuts and tax increases, something Pawlenty has long opposed, are needed to fix the problem. "I would try to get entitlement spending under control but I also see no way that we can get around the need to raise revenues," Sawhill said. "There aren't enough spending cuts that are reasonable to close the gap that we face. The gap is so large." Sawhill said another fast growing part of the deficit is interest. In fiscal year 2008, the federal government paid $451 billion in interest on the federal debt.
  • U.S. Corporate Tax Hikes Likely Delayed
    October 13, 2009
    Reuters
    "The inescapable truth is that deficits will grow unless taxes increase," wrote Brookings Institution economists Henry Aaron and Isabel Sawhill, in a Washington Post editorial on Tuesday. The two economists from the center-left leaning think tank suggest a VAT be enacted only after unemployment falls, or after a certain period of time. They propose that the funds raised be used to get a handle on healthcare spending, which has risen at double the rate of inflation in recent years.
  • Analysts size up health bill in final stretch
    October 12, 2009
    San Francisco Chronicle, by Carolyn Lochhead
    "We're not going to be able to do that, we've never been able to do that," said economist and health care expert Isabel Sawhill of the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. CBO director Douglas Elmendorf warned that his projections hinge on the assumption that "the proposals are enacted and remain unchanged throughout the next two decades, which is often not the case for major legislation."
  • Developing a Progressive Approach to the National Deficit
    October 8, 2009
    Center for American Progress
    The final panel was devoted to discussing options for increasing revenues. William Gale, co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, though in favor of raising taxes, said that tax and spending debates should happen simultaneously so that “the American public [can] understand better what they are getting for their tax dollars.” Raising taxes has often been politically challenging because it has never been linked to spending on programs that people care about such as education and energy. Gale also said the tax system needs to be simplified so that the burden on different types of income taxes is even.
  • Children are at risk in the current health care system
    September 26, 2009
    uExpress.com, by Cynthia Tucker
    “The elderly are not only a powerful but also a growing segment of the population," said Isabel Sawhill, co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution. "Families with children under 18 are not”… "A lot of advocates for children are also advocates for the poor, and Americans, as we know, are less willing to support low-income families than people in other Western countries. Americans believe that everybody in this country has the opportunity to get ahead, and if they don't get ahead, it's probably something they've done," Sawhill said.
  • U.S. sees debt, deficit everywhere one year after economic crisis
    September 24, 2009
    Xinhua News
    Some Americans contend that since the U.S. economy is much larger than that of any other country in the world, it doesn't need to worry a lot about the accumulation of public debt. But William Gale, budget deficit expert at the Brookings Institution, begs to differ. In a paper he wrote earlier this summer, Gale argued that both deficit and debt-to-GDP ratio were projected to be at "unsustainable" levels in the next decade, even if "everything goes the way the Obama administration wants and the economy recovers and grows steadily" for the next 10 years. He forecasts federal deficit to be at 5.5 percent of GDP, an "extremely high figure," and public debt at 82 percent of GDP by 2019.
  • Fiscal Wake-Up Tour
    September 20, 2009
    The Scoop, Heritage Foundation
    Sometime next month the Senate will be forced to raise the federal debt limit beyond a record $12.1 trillion. While the current recession has exacerbated the problem, our rising national deficits are actually a structural problem a long time in the making. In the coming decades, the cost of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits will leap from 8.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) to 18.6% of GDP—an increase of 10.2% of GDP. To educate Americans about our nation’s large and growing fiscal imbalance The Heritage Foundation has, since 2005, teamed up with the The Concord Coalition, The Brookings Institution, and former U. S. Comptroller General David Walker to encourage Americans to demand action through a Fiscal Wake Up Tour.
  • A Voice of Grim Fiscal Reality
    September 19, 2009
    Post and Courier
    Two and a half years ago, David Walker brought his "Fiscal Wake-Up Tour" to Charleston. Then serving in his 10th year as U.S. comptroller general, he was leading a bipartisan chorus warning that our nation was on a path toward fiscal calamity. Though he's no longer comptroller general, he's still sounding that alarm. And due to an ominous -- and ongoing -- acceleration of reckless spending policies in Washington, Mr. Walker has justifiably intensified his pleas for a long-overdue commitment to budgetary responsibility by both elected officials and the U.S. public.
  • Fed's steps to aid banking system raise risks, too
    September 14, 2009
    Associated Press, by Jeannine Aversa
    "They changed forever what the Fed does in a crisis," says Alice Rivlin, who served as the Fed's No. 2 official in the late 1990s. "The next time we have a major, or perhaps a minor, crisis, people will expect the Fed to take much more aggressive action than they expected this time."
  • More Americans use public health insurance plans
    September 14, 2009
    The Tennessean, by Getahn Ward
    "The last decade has been marked by a steady increase in public insurance programs," said Mark McClellan, director of the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution, a research group… The poverty rate probably will keep rising through 2012, even after the recession ends, adding to pressure on the Obama administration to enact a second economic stimulus package, said Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "We will likely have not only a jobless recovery, but also a poverty-ridden recovery," Sawhill said. "The stimulus money is going to go away long before the poverty rate peaks."
  • Interview with Alice Rivlin
    September 11, 2009
    The Daily Gazette, by Joe Emont
    "Yes, that is a commission set up by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and I have been co-chairing it. It’s focused not on healthcare but on health, and on lifestyles and other good things, exercise, better nutrition, early childhood things and so forth…” – Alice Rivlin
  • Alice Rivlin Lectures On "Saving Market Capitalism"
    September 10, 2009
    The Daily Gazette, by Joe Emont
    On Thursday night, Alice Rivlin, former Cabinet official and first Director of the Congressional Budget Office, presented the annual Bernie Saffran Lecture, this year entitled “Saving Market Capitalism.” Rivlin gave solutions to what she identified as the primary flaws of America’s capitalist system, its instability and its inequality, and argued that only by finding a true middle ground would Democrats be able to pass their necessary reforms.
  • Ezra Klein on Pants-Wetting Filibusters, Betsy McCaughey and the Juice Box Mafia
    September 3, 2009
    Washington Post, (Ezra Klein Q&A)
    A number of pundits, columnists, and congresspersons keep talking about a government mandate for individuals to purchase health insurance as if there were no serious Constitutional issues associated with that feature of health-care reform. I read the piece in the Post by Alice Rivlin which seemed to lay out a fairly well documented case against an individual mandate on Constitutional grounds. Can the Post run a column that lays out why this mandate would not be unconstitutional?
  • About the Fed
    September 2, 2009
    Steamboat Pilot (Editorial), by Joe Meglen
    Alice Rivlin, a former vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, packed the house at the Seminars at Steamboat forum Aug. 21 with her topic, “The Future of Capitalism.”… Mrs. Rivlin cited the myth taught in government schools that the Great Depression was caused by stock market speculation. Absent was the part about where the credit explosion came from that fueled the speculation — bad judgment and fraud. Like today’s “Great Recession,” the Fed created the roaring ’20s bubble by increasing credit at below-market interest rates, geometrically expanding the money supply through the Ponzi scheme called fractional banking.
  • Credit Addict: Paying Later for Today’s Choices
    September 1, 2009
    SFO Magazine, by Kira McCaffrey Brecht
    Looking at the overall picture, Isabel Sawhill, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., warns: “The long-term deficits are very dangerous for the economy. They are making us dangerously dependent on the rest of the world, borrowing half of what we need [from foreigners] to cover these deficits.”… “People talk about fraud, waste and abuse in government. But there is no greater waste of your tax dollars than having to have a big chunk earmarked for interest on the debt, because you don’t get anything for that,” Sawhill says.
  • What's $2 Trillion Among Friends?
    August 31, 2009
    Weekly Standard, by Irwin M. Steltzer
    Throw in another trillion-plus for Obamacare, and it is no surprise that senior economist Bill Gale, at the liberal Brookings Institute, says that the deficit will hit over $10 trillion over the next decade, a figure he finds “deeply alarming.”
  • Soaring deficits cast a shadow over the dollar
    August 30, 2009
    The Sunday Times, by Irwin Steltzer
    Throw in another $1 trillion for Obamacare, recognise the irrational exuberance of Obama’s economic and revenue projections, and it is no surprise that senior economist Bill Gale, at the liberal Brookings Institution, says that the deficit will exceed $10 trillion over the next decade, a figure he finds “deeply alarming”.

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