Alice Rivlin

Alice M. Rivlin
Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve
In office June 25, 1996 – July 16, 1999
Nominated by	Bill Clinton
Preceded by	Alan S. Blinder
Succeeded by	Roger W. Ferguson Jr.
30th Director of the Office of Management and Budget
In office October 17, 1994 – April 26, 1996
President	Bill Clinton
Preceded by	Leon Panetta
Succeeded by	Franklin D. Raines
1st Director of the Congressional Budget Office
In office February 24, 1975 – August 31, 1983
President	Jimmy Carter
Succeeded by	Rudolph G. Penner
Personal details
Born	March 4, 1931 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Political party	Democratic
Profession	Economist

Alice Mitchell Rivlin (born March 4, 1931, in Philadelphia) is an economist, a former U.S. Cabinet official, and an expert on the budget. She has served as the Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, and the first Director of the Congressional Budget Office. In early 2010, Rivlin was appointed by President Barack Obama to his National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

Early life and education

Rivlin is a daughter of the physicist Allan C. G. Mitchell and a granddaughter of the astronomer Samuel Alfred Mitchell. She is a member of the Rivlin family.

Rivlin grew up in Bloomington, Indiana where her father was on the faculty of Indiana University. She briefly attended University High School in Bloomington before leaving to attend high school at The Madeira School. She then went on to Bryn Mawr College. Initially, she studied history, but after taking an economics course at Indiana University she decided to major in economics instead. She earned her Bachelor's of Art in 1952, writing her senior thesis on the economic integration of Western Europe.

Upon graduation, Rivlin moved to Europe. In Paris she held a junior position working on the Marshall Plan.

Rivlin applied to the public administration program at Harvard, but was rejected on the grounds that as a woman of marriageable age she was a poor risk. Instead she applied to Harvard's economics program and earned a Ph.D. from Radcliffe College (Harvard's private program for females) in 1958.

Career

Alice Rivlin has been affiliated several times with the Brookings Institution, including stints in 1957–66, 1969–75, 1983–93, and 1999 to the present. She is currently a visiting professor at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute.

From 1968 to 1969, she was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

In 1971 she authored Systematic Thinking for Social Action. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1973.

She was the first director of the newly established Congressional Budget Office during 1975–83, where she was a persistent and vociferous critic of Reaganomics as head of the CBO. In 1983, she won a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award.

Under President Bill Clinton she served as the deputy director of Office of Management and Budget from 1993 to 1994, director of OMB from 1994 to 1996 (becoming the first woman to hold the Cabinet-level position), and a governor of the Federal Reserve from 1996 to 1999, during which time she served as the Fed's vice-chair. She was also chair of the District of Columbia Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority from 1998 to 2001.

Debt reduction/fiscal management panels in 2010

Rivlin and former Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) were named in January, 2010 to chair a Debt Reduction Task Force, sponsored by the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C..

Rivlin soon thereafter was named by President Obama to his 18-member commission, a bipartisan panel chaired by former Senator Alan K. Simpson, (R-WY), and former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles (D). The balance of the panel is three more members appointed by the President, six members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and six members of the U.S. Senate. The commission first met on April 27, 2010 and had a December report deadline. A health-care component of the overall U.S. federal and state fiscal-management challenge was addressed by a panel including Rivlin on the Diane Rehm Show in June.

External links

• Home page at the Brookings Institution
• Interview with the Minneapolis Fed
• Interview with Federal Reserve
• Testimony of Alice Rivlin to Congress, October 5, 1977, on the potential energy savings of urban transportation.

Political offices
Preceded by Leon Panetta	Director of the Office of Management and Budget Served under: Bill Clinton 1994–1996	Succeeded by Franklin Raines
Government offices
Preceded by Alan Blinder	Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve June 25, 1996 – July 16, 1999	Succeeded by Roger W. Ferguson Jr.