Founding director of the Congressional Budget Office, economist Alice M. Rivlin (born 1931) has leveraged her financial savvy into a key post with the Democratic administration of President Bill Clinton.

Considered to be one of the foremost analysts of the U.S. economy, Alice M. Rivlin has never been known to look at the country's financial forecast wearing rose-colored glasses. Independent-minded, Harvard-educated, and with years of experience in both the public and private sector, Rivlin has been credited with molding the fledgling Congressional Budget Office (CBO) into a respectable government agency responsible for long-term analysis and planning of the nation's government spending. Attempting to balance the usual optimism surrounding economic forecasts by the executive branch of government, Rivlin has been careful to act as a counterbalance, employing a conservative, even pessimistic, outlook in the economic projections she generates upon congressional request. Appointed the founding director of the CBO in...