Word: rivlin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Bureaucratic Wallflower. Part of the animosity directed at Rivlin stems from the restraints placed on the old-boy network of committee chairmen by the creation of the CBO. In addition, politicians, in or out of Congress, do not take kindly to criticism, no matter how justified...
...Sensitive. Rivlin, who holds a doctorate in economics from Radcliffe. is unflustered. She knows Washington's power game, having served as Assistant Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under Lyndon Johnson. She is also argumentative by training-she wrote editorials for the Washington Post for a while-as well as a veteran budget watcher. At Brookings she wrote (with Charles Schultze, now Carter's chief economic adviser) studies of the 1972, 1973 and 1974 Republican budgets...
...Rivlin denies that she has overstepped the bounds of her job. Says she: "We're operating in an intensely political atmosphere. There's bound to be some hostility to our findings. Before this year, it was Republican programs we were analyzing and it was Republicans who didn't like it. Now it's the Democrats. They're still a bit sensitive...
...costs. The same goes for proposed food-stamp and Social Security reform." In short, the information supplied by the CBO holds down spending because it forces ordinarily open-wallet Congressmen to face up to deficits. Majority Leader James Wright of Texas was particularly incensed a few months ago when Rivlin said her office estimated that the Government could not possibly spend as much on public works projects in the current year as the House leadership estimated. Wright sputtered, but could not refute the CBO conclusions...
...bombast on both sides, few of Rivlin's critics really believe she will ever become the bureaucratic wallflower some would dearly like her to be. This week she is scheduled to appear again before Bob Giaimo's House Budget Committee and give her colleagues' views on the economy's course for the rest of 1977. Her outlook will probably be much less radiant than the official Administration forecast-and thus cause for yet another round of muttering by agitated politicians...