Alice's Adventures in Budgetland

Though it controls the nation's purse strings, Congress has long been outmatched by the Executive Branch in brainpower for evaluating federal spending proposals. Only a few Senators and Representatives have acquired much proficiency in economics, and the Administration can overwhelm them with spending and revenue estimates prepared by the Office of Management and Budget and the Council of Economic Advisers--in all, an apparatus of some 700 people. This year the imbalance has been lessened by the new Congressional Budget Office and its articulate, politically liberal director, Economist Alice Mitchell Rivlin.

The CBO was set up as part of the new budgetary process under which Congress votes spending and deficit ceilings rather than passing appropriations bills in disorderly bits and pieces. Rivlin's job is to systematically analyze the probable effects of various choices on the economy. As she puts it, "Congress has always had a lot of power over the budget, but it was not organized to think 'Is that really what we want to do?' "

Rivlin operates out of cramped quarters on the ground floor of the former Carroll Arms Hotel; her desk occupies the spot where a bar once catered to thirsty Senators. She has spent most of her three months on the job assembling a staff of 200, including some top economists. They will be kept busy in the next few months. A typical task will come this summer, when Congress, in a move to combat unemployment, will decide whether to spend more on public works or simply send more revenue-sharing funds to state and local governments, or combinations of both. Rivlin's staff will analyze the costs of both programs in order to provide Congress with objective standards for a choice.

By the end of this month, the CBO staff will produce budget estimates and an economic forecast for 1976. In the fall, using tallies and economic models prepared at Rivlin's behest by Chase Econometrics, Data Resources Inc. and the Wharton School, Congress will add up what it has actually appropriated in voting on separate bills and act to bring the total under the agreed-upon deficit ceiling.

Rivlin already has much experience in analyzing budgets: as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, she co-authored studies of the 1972, 1973 and 1974 budgets under the title Setting National Priorities. She has spent 18 years as a professional budget watcher, part of it as an Assistant Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, helping to plan Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs.

The daughter of a physicist, a Bryn Mawr alumna and a Radcliffe Ph.D. in economics, Rivlin, 44, is the wife of a Washington lawyer and the mother of three children--whose tasks have been lightened by housekeepers throughout her career. She became interested in economics during a summer course at Indiana University. Says she: "It seemed less fuzzy than history or political science." Short (5 ft. 2 in.) and an impeccable dresser, Rivlin is regarded by colleagues as even-tempered and firm but not stubborn.

Negative Tax. Before taking over at CBO in February, Rivlin had championed tax reforms intended to redistribute income from the rich to the poor, including a negative income tax. Her liberal record aroused some opposition among congressional conservatives to her confirmation in the $40,000-a-year job. But Rivlin insists that her advocacy will stop during her four-year term. "This will be a strictly nonpartisan, professional operation," she vows. Liberals can expect no automatic sympathy from Rivlin. Says she: "What worked in the 1960s isn't working any more. Liberals are going to have to state the costs and face the music."

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