Alice Rivlin: How to Fix US Deficit and Create Jobs

The Honorable Alice M. Rivlin

Alice M. Rivlin is a senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program at Brookings and a visiting professor at the Public Policy Institute of Georgetown University.

Before returning to Brookings, Ms. Rivlin served as vice chair of the Federal Reserve Board (1996-99). She was director of the White House Office of Management and Budget in the first Clinton administration. She also chaired the District of Columbia Financial Management Assistance Authority (1998-2001). Ms. Rivlin was the founding director of the Congressional Budget Office (1975-83). She was director of the Economic Studies Program at Brookings (1983-87). She also served at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare as assistant secretary for planning and evaluation.

In February 2010, Ms. Rivlin was named by President Obama to the Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. She also co-chaired, with former Senator Pete Domenici, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Task Force on Debt Reduction.

Ms. Rivlin received a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship in 1983 and the Moynihan Prize in 2008. She was named one of the greatest public servants of the last 25 years by the Council for Excellence in Government in 2008. She has taught at Harvard, George Mason, and The New School Universities. She has served on the boards of directors of several corporations, and as president of the American Economic Association.

Ms. Rivlin is a frequent contributor to newspapers, television, and radio, and is currently a regular commentator on Nightly Business Report. Her books include Systematic Thinking for Social Action (l971), Reviving the American Dream (1992), and Beyond the Dot.coms (with Robert Litan, 2001). She is co-editor (with Isabel Sawhill) of Restoring Fiscal Sanity: How to Balance the Budget (2004), Restoring Fiscal Sanity 2005: Meeting the Long-Run Challenges, (with Joseph Antos) of Restoring Fiscal Sanity 2007: The Health Spending Challenge, and (with Litan) of The Economic Payoff from the Internet Revolution (2001).

Ms. Rivlin was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Bloomington, Indiana. She received a B.A. in economics from Bryn Mawr College and a Ph.D. from Radcliffe College (Harvard University) in economics 1958. She is married to economist Sidney G. Winter, professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. She has three children and four grandchildren.