Alice Rivlin is a Democrat heavyweight. An economist and an expert on the budget, she was Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve under Clinton from 1996 to 1999; Director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1994 to 1996; 1st Director of the Congressional Budget Office under Carter and Reagan, from 1975 to 1983. She is currently on the board of directors of NYSE Euronext, corporate parent of the New York Stock Exchange and Euronext. She was an Obama appointee to the Bowles-Simpson National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (aka The Catfood Commission).
Ryan wants to get political advantage, painting his budget proposal as bipartisan and claiming Rivlin's support. “Alice Rivlin is a great, proud Democrat,” Ryan said at his presentation of the plan. “This path to prosperity builds upon those Ryan-Rivlin plans that we put in here.”
It's true that the two worked together as co-chairs of the health care task force on the Bowles-Simpson debt panel, where they drafted a “skeletal” framework for a premium support plan, in which beneficiaries could choose their plans over an exchange.
According to Meredith Shiner at Politico, however, Rivlin disassociates herself from the final plan:
"But the Democrat said there are two major differences between the plan she supports — the Rivlin-Domenici alternative with former Sen. Pete Domenici — and the plan put forth by Ryan Tuesday.
"In the plan Rivlin advocates, she said seniors would have the choice between keeping their current form of Medicare or choosing to enter the pool. In Ryan’s version, he did not keep the beneficiaries with the choice to keep what Rivlin called the 'default option.'
“'I prefer keeping the old version as a choice,' Rivlin said.
"The other main difference is in the rate of growth in subsidies for beneficiaries entering the new exchange system.
“'In the Ryan version, he has lowered the rate of growth, and I don’t think that’s defensible,' Rivlin said. 'It pushed too much of the cost onto the beneficiaries.'”
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