Word: rivlin
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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When she got the job in 1975, Economist Rivlin, 48, an Indiana-bred Bryn Mawr magna who had labored 22 years at the left-listing Brookings Institution and in the bureaucracy, faced two hurdles. Many in Capitol Hill's chauvinist bastion gossiped that the Judy Garland look-alike would be, well, too feminist, too liberal. But she has proved that sex does not count in political economics, and her balanced judgments have made her popular even with conservatives...
...much as anybody hi Washington, Rivlin has her fingers on the future. That is because they grasp the federal budget, which is the nation's road map and hope chest, the one document that brings together the Government's plans and priorities. And what she sees makes her fairly optimistic...
...regulation is waning. "We have had this orgy of regulation over the past few years," she says. "We have regulated the hell out of everything-the environment, health and safety. We have gone to absurd lengths." The Government's inflation-terrified economists are passionately battling the regulators, who Rivlin feels are a bit hysterical in defending their turf. "But," she notes, "nobody says that we want to deregulate everything. Gradually, the regulatory excesses are being sorted...
Also, Congress is gaming much better control over rabbit-hole spending by moving toward longer planning. Says Rivlin: "The most important thing that happened with the fiscal 1980 budget is that Congress for the first time went beyond a single year's spending and voted at least tentative budget targets for three years. Now we have been pushing for five-year goals." These goals will help legislators make cuts in spending on an orderly basis with plenty of advance notice. As she says, "You really wouldn't want to live in a country where many programs are changed...
...Rivlin argues that spending cannot be substantially brought down until Congress is willing to tackle the legislated pensions, subsidies and other transfer payments to retired civil servants, veterans, farmers and other politically vindictive constituencies. To call these payments "uncontrollables" is, she contends, a copout. Congress enacted them, and Congress can change them...