Alice Rivlin

As he announced the first members of his economic team Thursday, President-elect Bill Clinton made clear that the loudest voice in the new Administration's economic policy will be his own. With unusual force, Clinton stressed that, while he will look to his new team for advice, "in the end, I will make the ultimate decisions and be the ultimate arbiter."

In the first months of the Clinton Administration last year, two camps waged a ferocious battle over the direction of the Administration's first budget--and of the Clinton presidency. One of the winners was Alice Mitchell Rivlin, a tenacious bureaucratic infighter and an unchallenged authority on federal spending, who on Monday was promoted to budget director.

Federal Reserve Board Vice Chairman Alice M. Rivlin, a staunch supporter of the central bank's strategy of letting the U.S. economy race forward even at some risk of inflation, unexpectedly announced Thursday that she will resign, saying that she wants to devote more time to untangling the finances of the city of Washington.

Robert M. Ball is one of the most revered figures in Social Security history, a man whose devotion to safeguarding the program from ideological attacks and political cant over six decades made him the program's  "undisputed spiritual leader. " Alice M. Rivlin is a distinguished budget expert at the  Brookings Institution  whose willingness to promote "entitlement reform" (read: cut benefits) as a deficit nostrum has given her a reputation as a danger to Social Security and  Medicare . So when Rivlin was named the ninth recipient of the annual Robert M. Ball Award for Outstanding Achievements in Social Insurance this week, Social Security advocates erupted in fury.

Alan Greenspan will be confirmed by the Senate today to a third term as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, the world's most powerful central bank. The Senate vote will end a four-month delay on President Clinton's nomination of the conservative 70-year-old Republican, a proven inflation hawk with a legion of friends and foes.

Tom Bethell's column, "Clinton Falls Fast for the Beltway Trap" (Column Right, Feb. 7) contains a 180-degree misinterpretation of the position of Deputy Budget Director Alice Rivlin, whose deputy I was when she directed the Congressional Budget Office in the 1970s. His careless inaccuracy throws his whole column into doubt.

President Clinton will pay out of his own pocket the electricity bill to keep the Christmas tree lit during another partial government shutdown, White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said. Without a temporary spending bill, the National Park Service loses its funding as of midnight Friday, and the lights of the tree would go dark. White House officials could only wince at the prospect of headlines trumpeting the darkening of the national Christmas tree as a symbol of the budget crisis.