This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Alice Rivlin was involved in national economics and social policy making for nearly six decades. She was in the administrations of Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton. Founding director of the CBO. We're talking about the Congressional Budget Office, vice Chair of the FED, and so much more. And Tim, she started writing a book that was then finished by her son and daughter
in law. Yeah, she sadly passed away back in twenty nineteen, but her son and daughter in law ended up finishing the book we're talking about. Sherry Rivlin and Alan Rivlin. Alan joins us right now. He's CEO of Zen Political Research, also the co author of Divided We Fall? Why can Census Matters? By Alice Rivlin. He joins us on the phone from Washington, d c Allan, good to have you
with us. How are you? It's great to be with you. Tim. Well, before I get to the content of the book, can you just talk process here, because it's not every day that you speak to somebody. Hugh ended up essentially picking up the mantle and kind of finishing a book after his mother passes away. So take us into how you did it in the book writing process that you did
with your mother and your wife. Um. Well, Alice was just very concerned about the state of the economy, but especially the state of politics when she passed away in twenty nine, and everyone who knows her knows how focused she was on sounding a warning that she put in the book. But she ran out of time, and so
Sherry and I finished the book for her. It took us three years, and the world kept changing while we were writing it, but it kept changing in ways that are bad for America, bad for the world, but made the topics we were writing on much more relevant. And that's what's kind of fascinating, right, I Mean, this book is so timely considering the division that we've seen in the country and how it was right really written initially before the January six insurrection and siege on the US capital.
Um So tell us about how that evolution of this three years. As you said, the world kept changing, how that impacted, um what you wanted to include in the book while also staying true to your mom exactly. So, so we were also writing it with an editor but also Brookings Institution scholars UH telling us we needed to keep the book relevant, but we didn't want to change
Alice's book. So we put a forward and an afterward to sort of walk people into our process and how the world was changing and how it was making the book more relevant. But but from chapter one to chapter eleven, there's nothing in there that happened after twenty nineteen. We save all that for the forward and afterward. Hey, I'm wondering, Alan, if you think that Alice would be optimistic or pessimistic today both, she'd be worried, she'd be optimistic. She'd be
UM focused on where we can go from here. They are two big things that are going on right now. One is the debt and deficit issue UM. The markets down again today, and everybody's focused on monetary policy. UM. But our fiscal policy and monetary policy are out of whack. And I think we've given up on fiscal policy, by which I mean the size of the deficit and the mounting debt UM, so we don't even talk about anymore. We we look to the Fed UH to to tighten
things and get control of inflation. UM. As she want would want to be focusing on the deficit. She'd be pretty concerned because our politics is broken. She was on the deficit reduction commissions, really, both of them, the rivelin DOMENICI uh, that's what we call it in our family. Other people call it the demenicci Rivlin and then also the Simpson Bold and the experts knew how to fix our are our deficit and debt in a balanced way that would would spread of pain, so there wouldn't be
too much pain. Um, but the politicians couldn't get there, and they're no closer now. And if you look at the way things may be headed in the next election, we may be headed for divided government and a rerun of through world. Well, you know, it's fascinating. I think about early on in my coverage of business news in the financial markets, we talked about the debt non stop, and you know, the concerns of it, you know, ballooning out of control, and we're way above the level ever
talk about that. We don't really anymore, and so it's really interesting. Shouldn't say never, But it's not something that you here dominate the way it used to, and not in the political you know way that it was before Um, what would you know in terms of the division that we are seeing, certainly politically, in any effort to move forward on major and major initiatives. How does she weigh in and how would she see some kind of solution
for today? Well, know, you asked about would she'd be optimistic? And it has to be said that bipartisan cooperation had a pretty good year over the past twelve months. Uh, you know that. But yeah, Piden and McConnell and and Pelosi and Schumer that they were able to get a whole lot of legislation passed, So it's not completely hopeless. In the book, we say by partisanship happens all the time, much more than people think, because the press is much
more interested in covering the conflict than the cooperation. Much more than people think, but less than we need because there are an awful lot of problems, like the debt but also immigration. I mean, she has a long list of issues that are sort of the opportunity cost of not coming together to solve our problems. Um, so we
got a lot done. We got the infrastructure bill passed, We got a lot done, but we need to get a whole lot more done to make the public feel like, uh, this democracy is we're saving because it gets things done
for people. You know, we're a business show and a business network, of course, And I'm wondering if you think that the financial markets have the wrong incentives when it comes to the stuff, because you often hear the familiar refrain of oh, well, grid luck is good, right, the idea that if in a divided house, or uh, in a divided administration, then not too much will happen, so it's good for financial markets. Um, where do you come
down on that? Well, first of all, you said, no, I spend all day long with Bloomberg, so I am very comfortable speaking the language that you have. But I do think that it's not just the markets have become anti government and and it's good when Congress goes away. The whole country has losing faith in all of the institutions that the president, Congress, the courts, are military, the
religious institutions. Were just a world that has two little faith and a whole lot of people that are being very hard to do things for us and to solve problem. They don't do it enough, but they do do it much more than we give them credit for. So in that sense, I think we need to have more faith in ourselves as a nation and of voters. Uh, we can govern ourselves. We can elect the right people, we can hold accountable. All Right, we're gonna we're gonna leave
it on that note. Allen, really great to check in with you. Really appreciate it. Thanks for spending all day with us too. Appreciate that favorite show, Better People Were Business Week. That's all we're gonna say, Alan Rivlin, thank you so much. Chief Executive Officers and Political Research Divided We Fall, Why Consensus Matters? By Alice Rivlin. Um. She wrote it, as he said, The bulk of the book is what she wrote, but Sherry Rivlin and Allen Rivelin
also helping put it together and get it out. There's just an incredible name, right Vice Chair the Federal Reserve of MacArthur Genius Grant recipient. Um, I mean, the list goes on