Samuel Cohn; dubbed 'Budget,' he oversaw nation's ledger

WASHINGTON -- Samuel M. Cohn, 90, the venerable government economist who for a good many years presided over the nation's ledgers as the top career official in the Bureau of the Budget, died Dec. 15 at the Jefferson care facility in Arlington County, Va. He had Alzheimer's disease.

Mr. Cohn often characterized his job, tongue in cheek, by calling himself ''the S.O.B. of the B.O.B.," a numbers man who worked with the administrations of five presidents to produce massive federal budget proposals.

Then, with a keen eye for detail, he monitored billions of dollars in federal agency spending.

His official title read assistant director of budget review, but it was his unofficial nickname of ''Budget" that seemed to capture the influence he wielded as the person with the insight into the complex procedures of how the figures of the nation's purse strings were formulated.

''We used to say there were only two people in the world who understood the budget," Joseph Laitin, former head of the Budget Bureau's public information office, said in a 1985 New York Times article. ''One was (Mr. Cohn), who wrote it. The other was some guy in the Kremlin."

Self-effacing and hardworking, Mr. Cohn rose through the ranks of the bureau between the time he joined the agency in 1947 and his promotion to assistant director of budget review in 1966.

He was there when the Nixon administration reorganized the agency in 1972 as the Office of Management and Budget.

During his tenure, he won praise for his deft touch and collaborative efforts in working with administration officials, agency heads, and lawmakers, including Senator William Proxmire, a Wisconsin Democrat and noted budget hawk who shared both the same birth and death dates as Mr. Cohn.

Mr. Cohn retired in May 1973 and a few months later became a senior associate and ultimately vice president of Robert R. Nathan Associates, a Washington economic consulting firm.

Mr. Cohn was a native of Philadelphia, where his father ran a corner grocery. A math whiz in his youth, he earned a merit scholarship to attend the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 1936.

He began working for the government at the War Production Board and the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion. He then served in the Army's Finance Division in Germany during World War II.

Mr. Cohn was an accomplished bridge player. In retirement, he also cultivated dahlias and enjoyed occasional trips to the horse races.

He leaves his wife, Alma of Falls Church, Va.; a daughter, Anne of Falls Church; a son, Richard of Chapel Hill, N.C.; and two grandchildren.