On June 21, the family and friends of Alice Rivlin will join with much of Washington’s public policy community to celebrate her life and extraordinary public service. This note represents only a small addition to the outpouring of tributes made to her.
Alice Rivlin, who passed away on May 14, was among the greatest public servants of the modern era. I admired her so much that I once told her I’d quit my job and join her campaign if she would run for president. Even in a likely loss, it would be a winning proposition, I asserted, to finally have someone honest and forthright in a presidential debate.
A few years ago, George Kopits, now at the Wilson Center, asked Alice and me to write chapters on the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for a book he edited on independent fiscal institutions. Alice was as famous among budget experts abroad as she was in the US for her role as founding director of CBO--widely regarded as the best and most independent fiscal institution in the world.
Along with her immediate successors, Rudy Penner and Robert Reischauer, Alice created two crucial roles for CBO. First, of course, it assessed the macroeconomic and budgetary consequences of existing and new policies. But despite a fair amount of Congressional opposition, CBO did more than cost estimates. It also assessed the efficiency and distributional effects of programs.
Her chapter, “Politics and Independent Analysis,” (Restoring Public Debt Sustainability: the Role of Independent Fiscal Institutions, Oxford, 2013) described how an institution could tell politicians what they didn’t want to hear and still thrive. Few other countries, even the most democratic, have succeeded in creating a fiscal institution with the same degree of independence as CBO. And in today’s political environment, it is risky to take such institutions for granted.
Increasingly, these non-partisan technocratic organizations are threatened by those who want to control the policy narrative. An effort to create an independent fiscal institution in Hungary, first headed up by George Kopits, became one of the first casualties of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government. In the US, CBO is increasingly important as executive branch agencies become more politicized by presidents who want to control the public narrative. In her 2017 keynote speech at an OECD conference, Alice reaffirmed her lifetime devotion to principles of good governance at a time when they are being challenged by governments at home and abroad.
Alice always was being asked to take on new tasks. Fortunately, her commitment to good citizenship often overcame her reluctance. A few years ago, already in her eighties, she agreed to temporarily lead the health policy group at the Brookings Institution-- not because she wanted to, but because she thought it was important.
In the late 1990s, Alice reluctantly took on the thankless role of chairing the District of Columbia’s Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority (known as the Control Board). Carol Thompson Cole, now the president and CEO of Venture Philanthropy Partners (an organization that invests in children and youth throughout the Greater Washington area) helped convince Alice to take on the difficult task. Carol told her the board needed her prestige and trustworthiness to establish the stability and stature it needed to get the District’s finances under control. Once she accepted the role, Alice used her skills and good will to help set the District on a solid fiscal path.
One of my fondest Alice stories comes from Bo Cutter. In the early days of Bill Clinton’s presidency, Bo, now at the Roosevelt Institute, was a senior White House economic adviser and Alice was deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Like candidates before him, Clinton had promised more in his campaign than he could deliver. In his case, he pledged more spending and tax cuts even as he pled for fiscal sanity. At an early meeting of budget advisers, Clinton was furious that by laying out the fiscal facts, his staff was forcing him to backtrack on his promises. Alice responded, “But Mr. President, you are president and now we have to decide.” As they were leaving, Alice explained to Bo that “the most relevant training [for her job] is being a mother.”
Of course, these are only a few of the many great stories about Alice, one of the most brilliant, modest, resourceful, and effective policy makers and analysts I have had the privilege of knowing.
Thanks to Carol Thompson Cole, Bo Cutter, and George Kopits for sharing these anecdotes.
