Word: rivlin
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ALICE MITCHELL RIVLIN, 47, since 1975 has been director of the Congressional Budget Office, which was created that year to give objective advice to Congressmen on the cost and effectiveness of various Government programs. Under Rivlin the CBO has annoyed Republicans by reporting that President Ford's spending budget was inadequate for the needs of the economy and nettled Democrats by branding the Carter Administration's estimates of what the energy program would accomplish "overly optimistic...
...Rivlin was graduated from Bryn Mawr and earned a doctorate in economics at Radcliffe. She is widely regarded as one of the nation's most effective economic technicians, and knows Washington's power game well. A nominal liberal, she was an Assistant Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under Lyndon Johnson and, in the early '70s, specialized in budget watching at the Washington-based Brookings Institution. Says Rivlin, who is a divorced mother of three: "Things are better now for women economists, but history is difficult to break. The ranks are very thin in my age group...
Women have had a harder, slower climb in universities than in Government. Rivlin points to the reason: "It's harder to discriminate in Government." In 1977 only 3.3% of all full professors of economics were women; in the leading universities, the figure was only 1%. Still, a growing number of female stars are today rising over the campuses. One of them, Marina Whitman, 43, economics professor at the University of Pittsburgh, broke new ground by becoming the first female member of the three-person CEA in the Nixon Administration. A specialist in global economics, Whitman says wryly...
...federal pensions account for nearly two-thirds of the budget, and in HEW they claim 89c of every dollar. Social Security alone costs $104 billion. Unless the growth of benefits is slowed, the whole Social Security system?as well as the budget?will be in deep trouble. Says Alice Rivlin, director of the Congressional Budget Office: "If you're really concerned about the growth in Government, then you have to go after the uncontrollables." Adds Rudolph Penner, a former economist at OMB under Gerald Ford: "Cutting $30 million here or $100 million there is the approach one is forced...
...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...