I.O.U.S.A - Addison Wiggin [49]
I am not saying that was all because of the Clinton plan, but it certainly helped. And by about four years later, we not only had a balanced budget, the budget was moving into very substantial surplus.
Q: Can you tell me, was it just the White House that was able to get those victories in the late 1990s? Or did you benefi t from having a Republican - led Congress, and if so, how?
Alice Rivlin: I think almost all progress on fi scal responsibility has been as a result of a bipartisan compromise. That was quite obvious in 1990, when President Bush Sr. made a deal with the Democratic Congress to reduce the budget defi cit and to put in place some rules about how the Congress could consider the budget. And it was even more obvious, I think, in 1997, when the Clinton administration had to cut a deal with the Republican Congress to keep progress on the defi cit going. It was not fun. It was a very diffi cult negotiation that went on for several years, actually, between the Republican - led Congress and the Democratic Clinton administration, with the president vetoing frequently and using the veto as a weapon. But we cut a deal. And the Budget Act of 1997 was the one that really pushed the budget from defi cit into substantial surplus.
Q: On the Fiscal Wake - up Tour, and just around Washington in general, there are many sets of numbers that refer to the same thing. Why is it that the numbers generated by the CBO
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tend to be the most commonly used numbers in and around Washington?
Alice Rivlin: The Congressional Budget Offi ce was created to give the Congress a solid, nonpartisan, professional set of numbers.
And it has existed for more than 30 years through lots of different administrations, but working for the Congress. The [CBO]
produce the best numbers that they can. There is always some uncertainty, but they do not have any political axe to grind. They work for both the House and the Senate, and they work for the Republicans and the Democrats. So their charge is, just give us the best numbers that you possibly can. It is not that they do not ever make mistakes, but they are a reliable source.
Q: So did you ever have a congressman or senator call you after a report and say, “ These numbers just do not help me at all ” ?
Alice Rivlin: When I was running the CBO, now quite a long time ago, there were lots of controversies. It was during several presidencies, of Ford, Carter, and the beginning of Reagan. So there were different administrations and different control in the Congress. And I thought it was a success when we were being criticized from both sides. And it often happened that we were cited. The CBO ’ s report was cited in a debate over energy policy or defense policy or health policy, on both sides or several sides of the argument. And that I considered was a success because we were raising the content of the argument to a higher level.
Q: Numerically speaking, what does life look like in a recession as opposed to what life looks like during economic growth and good times?
Alice Rivlin : From a budgetary point of view, recession is a very diffi cult thing. Now, it is diffi cult for everybody. People lose their jobs and companies cannot make a profi t in a recession because they are not selling as much. But from the point of view of the federal budget, the result is since people are not earning as much, they are not paying as much tax, and some of the programs that the government has actually increase automatically when there is a recession — unemployment compensation, for example. More c07.indd