Alice Mitchell Rivlin, the founding director of the Congressional Budget Office former vice-chairwoman of the Federal Reserve Board, died of cancer today at age 88.
Rivlin co-chaired the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Debt Reduction Task Force and was a member of BPC’s Future of Health Care Initiative. She was director of the White House Office of Management and Budget in the first Clinton administration and served on the Fed board from 1996 to 1999.
In 2010, Rivlin was named by President Obama to the Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (The Simpson-Bowles Commission). She was also the founding director of the CBO, serving from 1975-83, and director of the Brookings Greater Washington Research Program (2001-2011). She served on the boards of directors of several corporations, and was president of the American Economic Association (1986).
“With vision, wisdom, and determination, she established the agency’s structure and formulated procedures, standards, and goals that have guided it for more than four decades,” CBO Director Keith Hall said in a statement. “Above all, she forged a commitment to providing objective, nonpartisan information to help the Congress make effective budget and economic policy. And her commitment to high-quality analysis, well thought out and clearly presented, continues to be a guiding principle of CBO.”
Rivlin was a pioneer for women over her long and distinguished career of public service. She received a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship in 1983 and the Moynihan Prize in 2008. In 2008, she was named one of the greatest public servants of the last 25 years by the Council for Excellence in Government. She has taught at Harvard University, George Mason University, and The New School. She was a senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program at The Brookings Institution and a visiting professor at the Public Policy Institute of Georgetown University.
Rivlin holds degrees from Bryn Mawr College and Radcliffe College (Harvard University). She authored three books, and contributed to newspapers, television, and radio, and was a regular commentator on the Nightly Business Report.
