POLICY: Everyone's Wild Over Alice

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Will Congress ever get comfortable with economics? Despite their constitutional power over the nation's purse strings, the moguls on Capitol Hill have rarely been able to joust on an even footing with the White House when it came to arguing about the cost of specific programs or shaping the federal budget. When they tried—so they bitterly complained—they were almost always zapped by a barrage of expert-sounding figures prepared by professionals in the President's Office of Management and Budget. All that changed, or was supposed to, three years ago, when the legislators created their own Congressional Budget Office and staffed it with their own economic wizards. But a good many Congressmen are still complaining irritably—this time about their own experts.

Influence Policy. The focus of their ire is the CBO's boss, Alice M. Rivlin, 46. When she came to the Hill as the first head of Congress's budget bureau in 1975, she had been a highly regarded working economist at that liberal Democratic enclave, the Brookings Institution. Maine's Senator Edmund Muskie, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, personally steered her into the job. Now some of his—and her—colleagues in both parties wish her four-year term could be cut short.

The main complaint against Rivlin is that she is too publicity-conscious and sometimes goes beyond her $52,500-a-year job as staff technician and seeks to influence policy. The CBO, with its staff of 208 economists and other specialists, was set up to analyze tax and spending options in all areas, from defense to welfare, and assess costs and probable impact on the economy. As a result, Congress can now set spending ceilings and sometimes even cut appropriations to stay under them. At the same time, the legislators can keep a close watch on individual spending programs. Before, Congress groped blindly, passing hundreds of appropriation bills each session without ever being able to determine their cost or how much revenue would be needed to pay for them.

Rivlin started out by annoying conservatives. In one report she pointed out that President Ford's spending budget was inadequate to the needs of the economy. Lately the CBO has been digging into Carter proposals—and the reaction of Democrats has been equally pained. After assessing the President's energy plan, Rivlin announced that the Administration's estimates of what the program would accomplish were "overly optimistic." For example, the CBO found that savings on oil imports would be closer to 3.5 million bbl. daily by 1985 than the 4.5 million bbl. projected by the President. Said Rivlin: "There's been a lot of talk of sacrifice, but one just doesn't see it here."

House Speaker Tip O'Neill and other Democratic congressional leaders were stung. In a stormy confrontation. Connecticut Democrat Robert Giaimo. chairman of the House Budget Committee, warned Rivlin during a committee meeting to shut up in public.

"Who do you think you're working for anyway?" stammered Giaimo. "Congress or the general public?"

"Both," shot back Rivlin.

Giaimo now talks about creating specific guidelines to govern the way the CBO releases its reports—meaning a muzzle for its chief.