Gene Steuerle: Alice Rivlin: The George Washington of the Congressional Budget Office

Dr. Eugene (Gene) Steuerle is an Institute fellow and the Richard B. Fisher chair at the Urban Institute and a member of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. He recently wrote a tribute to past Committee member and founding director of the Congressional Budget Office Alice Rivlin, an excerpt of which is below: 

Alice Rivlin, who passed away on May 14, was among the greatest public servants of the modern era. I admired her so much that I once told her I’d quit my job and join her campaign if she would run for president. Even in a likely loss, it would be a winning proposition, I asserted, to finally have someone honest and forthright in a presidential debate.

A few years ago, George Kopits, now at the Wilson Center, asked Alice and me to write chapters on the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for a book he edited on independent fiscal institutions. Alice was as famous among budget experts abroad as she was in the US for her role as founding director of CBO--widely regarded as the best and most independent fiscal institution in the world.

Read the entire tribute here.

"My Views" are works published by members or staff of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, but they do not necessarily reflect the views of all members or staff of the Committee.