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Alice Rivlin

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Economist

The Resume

    (March 4, 1931-May 14, 2019)
    Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
    Birth name was Alice Mitchell
    Wrote 'The Role of the Federal Government in Financing Higher Education' (1961), 'Systematic Thinking for Social Action' (1971), 'Economic Choices' (1982) and 'Caring for the Disabled Elderly: Who Will Pay?' (1988)
    Member of the Brookings Institute (1955-93)
    First Director of the Congressional Budget Office (1975-83)
    Director of the Office of Management and the Budget (1994-96)
    Vice-Chair of the Federal Reserve (1996-99)
    Co-chair of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Debt Reduction Task Force (2010)
    Appointed by Barack Obama to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (2010)

Why she might be annoying:

    She described her CBO job as 'official purveyor of bad news to Congress.'
    She bipartisanly recommends tax increases (ticking off Republicans) and entitlement cuts (ticking off Democrats).
    Paul Ryan kept trying to make his budget proposals more palatable to Democrats by insisting they are based on her ideas. (Unfortunately for him, she kept popping up to make remarks like, 'This budget plan is quite different from anything I would recommend.')
    She does the Harlem Shake in a video aimed at getting young people to pressure lawmakers to address the national debt.

Why she might not be annoying:

    As CBO director, she rejected rosy 'this will pay for itself' projections for both Democratic spending programs and Ronald Reagan's tax cuts.
    She won a MacArthur Foundation 'genius grant' (1983).
    She said about her sometimes unpopular deficit reduction plans, 'I have a bias against magic wands and painless solutions.'

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 7 Votes: 42.86% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 12 Votes: 75.00% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 93 Votes: 55.91% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 11 Votes: 54.55% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 8 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 9 Votes: 55.56% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 55 Votes: 65.45% Annoying