roger altman house

I mean, by that time, the group that was advising him on economic policy had become reasonably well set. Right. Theyd been working on it for two or three weeks or whatever one does, but, as they usually do, the day before the profile runs, they want to come in and interview him so they can have a current aspect to it. Certainly on free trade you would say that there was a consistency in his rhetoric during the campaign and the behavior of the administration after he was elected. Richard Nixon resigned from office. Clinton was here, and Mrs. Clinton. Yes, but even more than that, its one thing to say to your Secretary of State, at this time Warren Christopher or Madeleine Albright, its another thing to say to your wife, I dont like it. It traces to Clintons legendary wonkishness. There was no surprise. WebRoger Ebert March 07, 1978. Its rare that an issue divides the Democrats. So there are the four main elements. Do you think that making this effort was driven by foreign policy considerations first and foremost, or was it genuinely an economic policy? I had no background for that. Right around that time I was put in charge of the Treasury transition. There were some enormous differences. My role was also shaped by the fact that Bentsen picked his spots very carefully and not only didnt want to be involved in everything, only wanted to be involved in a very few things. You referred earlier to the cycles of political partisanship, policy issues. As campaigns go, in my recollection, this is fairly early before even the convention that a real policy consciousness begins to develop. Before we come back to this, I want to pose one question and that is about the Presidents style when he was working the phones with members of the House. To make a long story short, of course we all hired lawyers and so forth and we were brought before a grand jury. And the difficulty became quickly evident once the program was laid out. After all, John Kennedy is seen in the middle by historians. But a very useful one. But the other approach for a short-term stimulus would be to do what this President did, or maybe it was the Democrats that forced him to do when he took office, which is refundable credit that goes out in the middle of the summer of your first year in office. I think thats a very important point because it turned out to be an awfully successful piece of legislation and not a single Republican voted for it. Why was that a federal regulatory issue? and the period of time during whichtheres a window during which it had to be submitted for a vote. I mean, I could imagine that in your tenure, the perception might have been quite the reverse, but I dont know. I stay in touch with him. Now streaming on: Powered by There werent many people in the administration who fully understood it. Some of them, yes. We can come back and pick up on each of these strains and try to get you to flesh out the skeleton if we can. Second of all, I am not a classic liberal, so Ive thought for 20 or 25 years that classic 60s liberalism was the wrong way to go. I think his views at that point were in formation. I dont mean that facetiously. Its early 94 and the process on the healthcare initiative begins. So, third, economic policy was number one. The politics of personal destruction as Mrs. Clinton is saying now on her book tour, common in American history, nothing new about it at all. He and Kerrey had a very close relationship. So that went on with mounting intensity over a series of months after the President had actually laid it out. He managed to remain viable through New Hampshire. Were you consulting with the President occasionally after you left Washington and came back to New York? Might have been established by Washington. In general, no. More has been made of that than should be. He told me that at the very beginning. It doesnt make sense, it belies any grasp of history, and so forth. It was quite an experience, in retrospect. And we had the same in the Carter administration, but it had been more junior. I wasnt directly negotiating them. If you think about his history, Bentsen had been a highly decorated war hero. So, when it came to answering Congressman Smiths questions, or Senator Jones questions, we were able to get those answers up there within two hours because we had all the people right in the room. But I remember we went to Little Rock. He lost that election. Theres a time lag between taking painful steps to do something with the deficit and getting some response in the. When concessions needed to be made, this was before you get up too high, Russell referred to the point that deals had already been made. I taught at Georgetown for a little while, and the distinguishing features of the students that I would have had ten or twelve years ago were that they had a high degree of interest in national and international politics. During the day two or three people from the administration spoke to KerreyMack McLarty and Leo Panetta spoke to Kerrey. Youre in such a good position to give us a comparative portrait of transitions internally. You had three candidates on the stage during the debates and so forth. I wasnt there because I was an expert in tax policy. He never did anything spontaneously, at least professionally speaking. He could have just been rhetorically difficult about it and kind of accepted the fact that were steady as she goes on the Cold War, and he didnt. The Treasury has a wonderful history of its own and a great deal of pride suffuses those halls. I did. But I think if you study American history and you look at any number of earlier periods, the attacks on Abraham Lincoln for example comes to mind, the Andrew Jackson period, such extreme partisanship is common in American history. It was very effective because it was a group of roughly 20-25 people, working literally 19-20 hours a day with only one mission, and that mission was to get this bill passed. You say he didnt inspire fierce loyalty amongst a lot of his subordinates, but interestingly, I think a lot of the senior Cabinet members lasted a long time, I mean, they stayed for muchDonna Shalala was Secretary for eight years, Rubin was in for a long time, given the fact that his family didnt move to Washington. That was the logical place because I served there before. Now, maybe we caused that. I thought, perhaps not at that instant, but quickly thereafter, that what Clinton said to me about Wall Street economics was very funny. But, in any event, as soon as I flew back from Tokyo, I moved into this area in the old Executive Office Building they had cleared out and I was the person in charge of the war room, and it worked I think for five weeks give or take. I take these observations, very astute observations, from people who live in this discipline. Alan Greenspan was on it; Simon was chair of it. So again, it wasnt all about President Clinton. We had a good discussion and I went back to the airport and flew home. Mrs. Bentsen responded. which was a separate agency and Presidential appointment. But in any event, there I was, and this guy, as I say, was a master of the game. The great Presidents that you mentioned, the ones that loom large, as you said, are all crisis Presidents. Less and less now that shes her own public figure, but thats her nature. All the groundwork had been done before the storm broke, so there were probably three to four hundred people. No, I just remember the meeting in Little Rock quite vividly, and I think one of the first presentations was given by Allen Blinder about the economic outlook and the extent to which certain amounts of interest rate response would produce likely amounts of growth response. First of all, Clintonand I consider this a very important historical achievement, well see how it lastsmay turn out to have transformed the Democratic party. All types of dire predictions were put forward. I worked very closely with Bob Kerrey, with Senator [Max] Baucus, who had such a problem with the gas tax. I was not one who thought the whole idea of putting the First Lady in charge of this was somehow unsound and I always had good relations with Mrs. Clinton, so we communicated pretty well. So what I actually spent my time on ranged all over the lot. Some of the cookies we use are essential for parts of the website to operate and cannot be switched off in our systems. Mike Blumenthal, the first Secretary of the Treasury, knew, but he didnt have a close relationship with Carter. Tickets to the Kennedy Center and things of that nature, or is this too big a matter. Well, it was also a surprise to many in the administration because the truth is, the fight over the economic plan took every ounce of energy that everyone had and attention didnt really turn to NAFTA until that was over, and that was over in August. By the time 94 was over, the Congress was in Republican hands. After all, his achievements, while in my view quite remarkable, may not be long lasting. Greenspan sat next to Mrs. Clinton. The hearings ended around the fourth or fifth of August and it was now the seventeenth or something. Oh sure, New York is, in terms of Democratic politics, not a terribly big town. There were those obviously who felt the most important thing was to get the deficit down. I think Bush inspires greater loyalty than Clinton, just does. Now, of course, as far as working the Hill was concerned, I would take my cues from the constant and joint planning of the White House and Treasury legislative liaison staffs. Because I think if you serve an administration, and you then decide to comment in some form or other, including in private, about the President and hes got these problems, or hes screwed up in this way, youre just lowering yourself. Theyd review it and youd go to a meeting where you received a 900-page memo, three quarters of which you didnt understand. Did you do any traveling with Clinton on the campaign around New York or outside of New York? Clinton, as we all know, is very open, but also a very undisciplined guy. That certainly, in terms of social assistance to low-income working age people, that was a transformative administration. You dont recall the specific occasion when you first met him? Nobody knew, especially in the White House. No. His first term wasnt so good, but his second term was wonderful. Some of thats a function of, for lack of a better word, the culture within the group of people who worked in this administration, so that there is no penalty paid, in effect, among your former colleagues for being outspoken or saying something in the press critical to the President. He didnt want to be involved in the daily ins and outs of those jobs. Then, that sent the ball in motion so to speak, in terms of that being the focus of discussion, although the senior members of that group were pretty united on the fact that we should make a real effort on the deficit. Anything in particular you recall that can flesh out the record? I was often, or at least periodically, talking to members of the administration but not to the President. In other words a handful of conservative Democrats whose votes we had to have because we had no Republican votes. The American political system has changed a lot. At best I had an input, and in some cases it was just obvious that some of these other folks had to be in it. That was not a high point of the Clinton Presidency. No admission fee, no contribution required. So there was not any anxiety or uncertainty within the core group of people involved in economic policy making about how this might fit in or. During the Ford administration they had something called the Economic Policy Board I believe it was, EPB and Bill Simon as Secretary of Treasury was the head of the board and it met actually every morning in the White House. The next thing is a free-trade agreement, which I think the President could have dodged, he didnt have to go all out on that. They were using very powerful weaponsI think .20 caliber weapons. Yes, but I dont think he thought it was going to be as tough on the Democratic side as it turned out to be. If Im not mistaken, we were looking at a $350 billion deficit, up from about $260 or something that we had been generally using during the campaign. There are too many people in his own administration, at least at the moment, who think that all he finally did was succumb to the Republican position, and anybody who wore a D on his shirt and supported the Republican position could have brought along enough Ds to make the bill happen. And Bentsen did make the call. The assessment was correct because, I cant recall the size of the economy then, but today it is about $10.7 trillion. Is he somebody who, from your perception, makes close friends at all? Thats how I feel about it. It just depended on the size of the concession. It sounds like Bentsens Congressional or legislative savvy was not being availed of in these chaotic meetings, the policy-making meetings. No, let me just correct the record. I only heardpeople are very superstitiousso I was told, It looks better or It looks like it may be all right. In 1987, Mr. Altman joined The Blackstone Group as vice chairman, head of advisory business, and investment committee member. A little bit. Those are my exact words. By the end of the year it had become a massive issue. There is a But I talked to Secretary Bentsen and I think hed been already talked to about it, but anyway, he said, Fine. I dont recall precisely, but Im sure Im right that Clintons standing in the polls was ebbing. Like everybody else, I thought he was finished when the Gennifer Flowers event emerged. Sure, Greenspan was in favor of deficit reduction, so when the administration came forward with an actual deficit reduction plan, which, as we all know, was a bit unexpected, Greenspan supported it, testified for it and so forth. It was, in any normal historical context, yes, right of center because it focused on deficit reduction, tighter fiscal policy, more conservative budgeting. Yes, hes just that way. My point is, I thought the whole discussion had a considerable impact on Clinton, as did scores of others along the way after that. Panetta had made a very distinguished career as House Budget Chairman out of pushing for lower deficits and a more transparent budget process. Well, nobody took more pain up front than Ronald Reagan. Whatever was going on on the deck of the Titanic was comparable, but it was absolutely frantic and incredibly dramatic and tense. He moved it to the center, made it the party of fiscal responsibilitywhoever would have believed that?and enabled the party to shed much of its old baggage. WebKathryn Reed Altman and Roger Altman attend State of the Union Dinner at The Re-Opening of the Plaza Hotel Ballroom on January 28, 2008 in New York Roger Altman and Mayor Michael Bloomberg attend THIRTEEN and WLIW 21 Annual Gala Salute at Gotham Hall on April 30, 2007 in New York City. Yes, here in New York. One of the reasons why the ultimate votes on his economic plan were as close as they could possibly be, one vote in the House and tie vote in the Senate, was because he was dealing from weakness. Clinton made an error, didnt take it. NAFTA had much broader support among the so-called or self-styled elites, the business leadership, all the economics community, the foreign policy establishment. Its been a big help to us and again, we know how extremely busy you are. I direct the Presidential Oral History Program at the Miller Center. Remember, President Clintons first initiative, the stimulus plan, was defeated. No. The questions from all these different parts of the countryOregon, Louisiana, Michiganwere all the same. As I remember the NAFTA campaign was kicked off only a month or two later. Everybody was sitting in a room for the endless hours that have been so widely written about, which was quite a chaotic, disorganized process and not particularly Presidential process. The key players turned out to be the so-called blue dog Democrats. I mean, Lloyd Bentsen had been Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee for a long time, knew Alan Greenspan very well, knew the Fed very well. There are some people who wouldsome of the George H. W. Bush people date the partisanship from the budget deal. New York, Corporate | Was it his personality that won, or was he able to? No, he doesnt, not in terms of the way I would define close friends, genuine friends. But in any event, it hasnt ended with President Clintons leaving. I think I called that evening. Most of the people I mentioned, and Im sure Im forgetting a group of them, in fact, I know I am, but, I can recall getting slightly involved in debate preparationslightly now, not deeplyattending the debates, seeing drafts of speeches before he gave them, again, not all speeches, but certain speeches, that type of role. So I watched the Senate vote, also on television, this time in the war room. Can you tell us about that? Greenspans name hardly came up during these discussions. By that time we were all being treated very well by the campaign because we were seen as the guys who were there at the beginning. I didnt do any work on personnel until Secretary [Lloyd] Bentsen was designated Treasury Secretary. Yes, and also there was considerable uncertainty as to whether Cuomo was indeed a candidate, which, as we all know, he proved not to be. In the spring of 1991, I think it would have been May or June, we had the chance to have a talk here in New York, and I then talked to him by phone. I believe, as I say, it was either the day of or the day after Gennifer Flowers had given her press conference. Bob Dole. We had some serious issues with the IRS. We might have a thousand independent counsels operating under the freedom of the press, investigations. I think the days for that have largely passed, I dont think members of Congress care much about that. There were those who feltI would put Bob Reich at the top of the listwho felt the most important thing was to do a big stimulus program involving a lot of spending initiatives. Am I misremembering, did the President invite Mr. Greenspan, to sit in the gallery next to his wife when he delivered his economic policy. No, what Im trying to say is that there were several points of view advanced by some of the people there, who had, in one form or another, policy experience. Bill Clinton, by that one- or two-line standing, may not make the cut for the top tier. But part of our efforts were to get the Japanese to agree to certain pump-priming measures at home to lift domestic demand, increase the Japanese demand for imports, and better balance the current account relationship. We had to be sure Mexico could live with it. By continuing to browse, you agree to the use of Evercore's cookies. It was just not very well run, as I recall it, until that time. He just knew how it worked. Did you have close relations with people in Cuomos operation, because I think, at least in the early stages, there was still a consideration that he might come out? But of course Republican support was sought. Somebody was wrong. So they came in and interviewed him. Do you recall in your conversations with Senator Bentsen, were there missed opportunities for developing a more bipartisan atmosphere in Washington at this time, or was it pretty much just a foregone conclusion that because the Republicans were now completely in the minority that they were going to obstruct from the outset? So heres a person who knew how to manage himself. You asked me when the most important policy development occurred and I would say there are several answers to that but number one would be post election, not pre-election. Id actually done that precise role before, in 1976, obviously at a much different age, but I was put in charge of the Treasury transition at that time. At the end of the lunch he asked me if I would serve as Deputy Secretary and I said I would. Reagan had a group called the legislative strategy group, the LSG, which was intended, whether this is reality or not, to look at the legislative strategy or legislative implications of the policy as a part of the process, developing very soon after his inauguration. There was a lot of effort and a lot of meetings. If you think about who are almost universally considered the three or four greatest American Presidents, they all faced enormous crises, of course Lincoln, [George] Washington, FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] and so forth, and Clinton didnt. Is the existence of a war room something. Secretary Bentsen was too important and had other things to do than to go down to Waco, Texas, and try to figure out what was going on there. Bentsen knew Clinton wouldnt get anything else if he didnt. I recall, for example, a discussion at that very original dinner in the spring of 1991 and a rather focused discussion on economic policy, and particularly about deficit reduction. Did Senator [Edward] Kennedy figure at all as a help or a hindrance or what in the budget battle, he wasnt really a key player? Yes, that was bad advice. Then he asked me to begin to work on certain personnelpresent him possible choices for the senior jobs in the department. We had so much going on that Bentsen asked me if I would just, on an interim basis, serve as interim chairman of the RTC. Carter did the same thing but much lower key. Im Jim Young. His view was, I want to pick good people and let them do their jobs. We then embarked on a search for a candidate and give or take three or four months later found one who, ironically, was a Republican. That was the moment, that day. I liked him and we had a certain history together, and I was strongly of the view that it was time to get the Republican Party out of the White House after 12 years. But you ended up doing a lot of strange things. A lot of people didnt realize and I didnt entirely realize the regulatory responsibilities of the RTC at the time. No because Clinton had determined, as he well should havesee, Presidents often dont do this, or Presidents-elect, but they shouldBentsen had to be satisfied that this was something he wanted. I would say it had to do with an overall perception that he was the most substantive and the best politician. You look at the turnover that she hador in her case did not haveon her staff, and the turnover that he had. I then had the brilliant ideaIm saying this, obviously sarcastically, that I should inform the White House what those procedural alternatives were. Everything is susceptible to being phased in, to being cut back, to being pilot-programmed. I didnt have a background in healthcare of any kind, and I began to see that it was overloading the circuits to try to do as much as some wanted to. , with Senator [ Max ] Baucus, who had such a good position to give a! 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