I went and visited the injured agents in the hospital. I have to admit I didnt. Everything is susceptible to being phased in, to being cut back, to being pilot-programmed. I knew Bentsen enough by reputation to know it was not by any means all set up, so to speak, by the time I went in there. A lot of kids who went to Georgetown were interested in having a good time, and most people who went to Chicago were really serious about their academic pursuits and the world around them. Roger Altman April 4 2016 Receive free US trade updates Well send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest US trade news every morning. What political or personal characteristics does she have that he doesnt have, what does she bring to the. I follow it pretty closely, and I have a hard time figuring it out. You had three candidates on the stage during the debates and so forth. He loved it. Very, I think, untoward behavior, myself. He voted against it, we had a boom, he never paid a dimes worth of price for that. So Ira was, to some degree, as youve read thousands of times, off in the corner doing this whole plan. But the presumption was that the head of the agency of course did know that. They were cutting deals like there was no tomorrow. I guess we have to just win then. By the time 94 was over, the Congress was in Republican hands. People who liked Cuomo liked him a lot; people who didnt like him didnt like him at all, and it was about half-and-half. The only reason I think it worked was Bob Rubin, who had the skill and the temperament to make it work. So Clinton wisely determined that this was something that Bentsen ultimately had to make the call on. Can you tell us about his decision-making process on this? The only other observation that just randomly runs through my mind is, I was always described in the press as an intimate of Clintons and that was just not the case. Were there any members in particular with whom you worked directly that you felt you were personally responsible for salvaging? We just discussed one of them, which is the up cycle in partisanship, as I call it. Hundreds of meetings over many months, also similar to those original meetings, too many people, too long, too many people talking and so forth. I think it was serious as a political thing, meaning you had three candidates instead of two and of course, the dynamic was different. I stay in touch with him. But I didnt know where the President was on NAFTA. It was an astounding speech. Thats a different issue. 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. Well, how do you know? I want to ask one more question about the election because Ross Perots name hasnt come up and been explored. My own view on that is that American history is filled with examples of severe and indeed brutal partisanship. Things like, I cant remember what example we used, but Senator X voted for us because he was afraid hed have to have lunch with the President again, things like that. WebRoger Altman is Founder and Senior Chairman of Evercore, the most active independent investment bank in the world today. I can tell you without any fear of contradiction that anyone who makes either of those mistakes, and I can think of others, will ultimately rue the day that he made them. Then of course, the Senate voted the next day and we only had 49 votes that we knew about and Senator Bob Kerrey was the undecided vote, the only one left. The thing was televised, nonstop. Once he decided he was for it, he really got into it. By and large, most of the members of the Finance Committee in the Senate and the Ways and Means Committee in the House. I cant think of anything you didnt ask me, or anything I didnt say that I would have liked to have said, so with that exception. We knew each other, but we turned out to be the first two to go down and I dont know why that was. He was very impressive. I divided my time between the transition office and the Treasury. His popularity had sunk to low levels. Im Jim Young. There are extremes here. The New York Times put it on the front page and this giant controversy erupted. He may have kicked it off in a certain sense, but it has continued even more strongly to some degree in the last couple of years, but that was another broad historical development, critical historical development, which characterized the Clinton period. I think the critical revelation that day was the notioninitially I believe put forth by Allen Blinder, that a certain amount of deficit reduction ought to translate into a certain level of interest rate response, which in turn should be more stimulativeshould inject more stimulus into the economy than anything that we could do on the fiscal side. He wouldnt call the others back; hed have me do that because when youre Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and some freshman Senator called you, you didnt tend to talk to him. I personally thought Rubin was most likely to be Secretary of the Treasury. It became obvious to me that it was just untenable to keep trying to shout into this hurricane. The most frantic imaginable effort was going on during the five or six hours preceding that vote. So, in August whatever it was the final vote was cast and the economic bill became lawwell, with the Presidents signature it became lawwe didnt really know what we were going to do on NAFTA. I was just in awe of people like that. When you were suggesting Edmund Morris I was thinking. I want to ask you, was that a note that had been sounded with some emphasis as early as these very early meetings that you were talking about in 91? But in any event, the cooperation in both cases was optimal. No, there were 20-22 people there. He knew every comma and apostrophe in the bill. If you think about it in the context of today, well see how the primary campaign plays out, but it will be unusual if differences on issues were the decisive factor. So the Congress decided to hold hearings on all aspects of Whitewater and, as everybody remembers, everyone from Maggie Williams to Harold Ickes to everybody had to testify. How difficult was it to raise money in the environment, Cuomo aside, just for somebody who had been a Governor of Arkansas in a campaign season when theres. I do hope as we proceed that you will take the time to give us your continuing perceptions of Bentsen because unfortunately he is somebody we had approached about doing an interview and. Two questions, one of which was minor. Im sure there are numerous aspects of that that the administration given a chance would like to do over, to prepare better, and it was a team that didnt have a lot of legislative experience, although, in the case of Panetta and Bentsen, it had a couple of very strong elements. President Clinton, in retrospect, his disavowals on some of his private life were almost certainly false and the way he handled the Lewinsky matter was about as bad as it could be because heessentially swore before the American people that he didnt do it, and of course then recanted. Now youre raising a subject that is an entirely different one, which is why was this so partisan and why were the Clinton years so partisan? I just didnt; it wasnt my style. And the reason he wasntnothing to do with Senator Kennedy himself. No, two funny stories, Jim, dont let him off so easily. The two camps were right there sitting in front of the President for six hours at a time. Then, I was in Tokyo. While most of this was extreme and unjustified, President Clinton played a role in it himself. The Wall Street Journal reporter says to Secretary Bentsen, Mr. Secretary, if you were in the Senate, would you vote for the Presidents healthcare bill? The IRS employs 120,000 people or so. We were tough on them on autos. I recall speaking about 20 minutes before the vote to Marjorie MargoliesMezvinsky,with whom I had developed a friendship, and it became evident to me that she was very reluctant but willing to vote for the bill. The Clinton stimulus plan just was not well conceived. Thats just the way history works. I might have if I had not known Bob Rubin, but I knew him better than anybody else in the administration knew him and I had great confidence in him and knew that he and I would relate well. Those are two different questions, Id rather answer the will be question. But it wasnt political on one hand, policy on the other, just different ideologies. From the very beginning I was spending a lot of my time on the Presidents economic program. We didnt spend a tremendous amount of time talking about, If we do this, Greenspan will do that. President Clinton, Democrat, nominated a Republican to this job and the Democrats defeated his nomination. Keeping in mind that with the exception of labor, which is a heck of a big exception, all of the powerful economic groups in the United States were for it and Clinton had just gone through a bruising battle where many of them were on the other side of him. Any meaningful change in the bill, particularly if were talking about the last month or two, was only done with the approval of the President. I hadnt been parachuted in from some distant spot without any such relations. So they came in and interviewed him. I guess I probably began to help raise money, its a rough memory now, in the early fall, perhaps September of 91. I think any President who is either fortunate enough or skillful enough to preside over a period of peace, at least as far as American soil and American forces are concerned, deserves credit either for his good luck or his skill. Secondly, the National Economic Council would meet very often for purposes of reviewing where this stood; I was on that as a standing member. he is one of famous Financial professional with the age 75 years old group. It was Clintons first, if I recall correctly, major international summit. He doesnt even know about the advent of optical scanners in grocery stores, and that was the theme, that was THE central theme as codified, so to speak, in [James] Carvilles famous comment, its the economy, stupid. Bob Rubin. I think Clinton will come out pretty well. Will policy differences be the reason that candidate X or candidate Y emerges with the nomination? The politics of the Btu tax per se versus other types of energy taxes, including the gas tax, which we ultimately fell back on, werent well considered. It was after all largely negotiated by his predecessors, and yet he took a big gamble on that one, too, and thats sort of a kick in the midsection to a lot of his Democratic supporters. So Mack played relatively little role in this. But that was really after the economic program passed. But most of my time was spent on legislation. Eventually they did, but it wasnt because of this agreement, big macro forces had them do it. So I think Clintons own behavior did play a role in it and that in retrospect there would have been better ways for Clinton to have dealt with some of these things. Altman ran the White House war room during last 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. Bentsen, of course, didnt know the House as well as he knew the Senate, so it wasnt unusual that he himself wouldnt know in the House. By that late stage of the budget battle, all the concessions and fine-tuning that could be made to the bill had already been done, so you had a package at that point that wasnt going to be reopened. Its very difficult to do that during a campaign. For example, much has been made of the dueling camps, the deficit hawks versus the populists. I mean, it was just a morgue. One of the themes they advanced was deficit reduction, not the only one. I traveled to Japan a lot on business. So there was not a war of the type that has so often been written about, just not true. Clinton moved quickly. There were so many different Japanese Prime Ministers in that period I cant remember which one we had at that moment. Bentsen had a lucidits hard to describe how lucid Bentsens observations always were. So, as always happens, the policy apparatus was being built and the policy process was being deepened and becoming more sophisticated as the entire campaign evolved. But I was briefed on the procedures the RTC had to follow here. In the early period, there was a lot of discussion of broad strategy, how to create support for deficit reduction as a whole, how to talk about the program, what type of interest groups we needed to particularly work with and work on. That was a bad mistake. Hed been shot eight times. and he said, No. I think it was obvious to Clinton that there were several serious people there in New York whose support he wanted to get who felt strongly about what I would call a centrist economic policy, perhaps right of center economic policy. 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. Actually the bigger debate was over what came after NAFTA, welfare reform or healthcare. In the end the answer was no, nothing, period. Bentsen had known the then head of it, Albert Casey, whod been chairman of American Airlines, and didnt have a high regard for him. and I had no previous knowledge of it at all. Any particular memories from that successful trip? I know this will sound quite strange, but Clinton was in some awe of Bentsen and a little bit of fear of Bentsen. Nothing, zero, never did, never would have. I recall taking maybe one or two trips with him outside New York, mostly just for my own enjoyment, to see what it was like. Could you see at that point a set of priorities emerging with the candidate? I do recall some rushed discussions at the very end about what we do now and how we flesh out his policies, and I can recall talking to George Stephanopoulos the morning the convention ended about certain steps we were going to take now in terms of getting better organized on policy development and issues. He told me what would happen to the Clinton stimulus bill the day it was put forward. You never saw, one time, Bob Rubin do that, not one time, after he left. You should have asked me about the vote, unless youve already talked to enough people about it. We can go into that in a little more depth, the pure politics part of it. He managed himself beautifully and with great self-control, and Clinton had very little self-control. He is the only person who has declined because of heath reasons and we wont have the opportunity to talk with him. As I recall, Al Gore wanted it, cared a great deal about it, to some considerable degree got his way on it. Its very puzzling to me how that could happen when the man had such an obvious gift for feeling peoples pain and a very strong public presence. But the reason I remember it was that it was funereal. I dont think this is what it really says, but I suppose in the distant lens of history, Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War. I know I didnt and I was very involved in trade policy as a whole because much of our trade policy involved Japan and I was very involved in that. [laughter]. Ill never forget, I went in to see one of them whod been shot eight times. But of course Republican support was sought. It was an all right agreement. I knew a lot about Perot, having been heavily involved in Wall Street for many years. But its just a reality that in an economy of that size, spending changes arent going to have much effect on the economy; monetary changes can. Its fashionable for conservatives to say that the recovery had already begun on George H. W. Bushs watch and that if we just stood aside, the same results would have occurred, but those werent the economic forecasts we were looking at at the time, nor do I believe that school of thought to be accurate, but thats another matter. It wasnt difficult at all because Cuomo was a polarizing figure. Thats just exactly what I said. He helped me in my efforts and then a year later I helped him in his. There was also a very memorable event that was held in the East Room of the White House, and recall that within a week or two of this event, Clintons own position on NAFTA was still up in the air. We might have a thousand independent counsels operating under the freedom of the press, investigations. It was easy. Youre only there because he allowed you to be, and you owe him a debt of gratitude for that because without him no service, and without service your life is less. As far as healthcare versus welfare reform? He never did anything spontaneously, at least professionally speaking. Yes. That day I knew we were headed for defeat. Kerrey made a quite dramatic speech, rather excoriating Clinton, urged Clinton to get back on the high road and so forth and then cast the vote and Gore cast the tie-breaking vote and thats how it happened. So it could be revived again tomorrow. Its possible that President Clinton rues the fact that 9/11 didnt occur on his watch, because it was a transforming crisis and did transform, at least to date, the present President. I cant remember allTom Brokaw was there, Davis Weinstock, Dick Beatty, Bob Rubin, George Katz, and/or Bernie Nussbaum were there. In other words, all the work that goes in before its actually sent to the Hill. He did quite well. We went back to square one. Clinton loves meetings like that. We still joke about that today. Fourth, I recall that the economic forecasts for 93 were not very heartening. Altman made a point to carry shoes as tiny as size 5 and mammoth as size 20, with widths ranging from super skinny AAAA to 6E and kept 23 basement storage I would say we had a definite policy, we just didnt achieve too much of it. I talk to the President now from time to time with some frequency. We can all speculate. Ive never either been attracted to that approach nor felt that it was an effective one. That was a factor. A lot of the talk was about the public credit markets responding, not so much the Fed. Were you involved in that effort? In the initial phases it was really broad strategy because we didnt yet know. But I talked to Secretary Bentsen and I think hed been already talked to about it, but anyway, he said, Fine. Very, very intensive, one of the most intensive things Ive ever been involved in. Against that test, a noncrisis Presidency, what can they achieve, under the extremely adverse politics of this time, thats been building up. How did the decision-making go about to decide on these different components of the package? Thats the way to do it. As everybody knows, ultimately there was not a single Republican vote cast for it, neither in the House nor the Senate. We had some serious issues with the IRS. During the transition period the question was, Who are we going to nominate the head the RTC? I did have the impression from the beginning that he was politically gifted and ambitious. 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. I dont think there have been many members of Congress in the 20th centuryI would think of Lyndon Johnson, Russell Long, Richard Russell. I mean, the worst recession since the Great Depression occurred in 1981 and 1982 and in the fall of 82, in early August, Reagan was being described as Herbert Hoover, politically dead, gone, might as well already make his reservations back to Santa Barbara and so forth. When we had the opportunity to sit down, our own leadershipyou mentioned Leon Panetta, for example, having been chosenand formulate a fresh set of estimates based on all the then latest data, and obviously reaching out to a whole host of experts, it became clear that the deficit outlook was considerably worse than we thought. I called him and said Id be interested in helping him in some form if there was a way to do that, and then one thing let to another and I got involved, not long thereafter, in his campaign, both from a fundraising point of view and from the point of view of economic policy and issue development. He does not see that as one of his own great accomplishments. Which did he bond most closely with and were there instances where there were tough nuts for him to crack? You know, you call in for five minutes apiece and theyre all lined up. Clinton had one and in this instance, on the stimulus program, he should have listened to him. I wasnt sitting all by myself with him, but sure, there were various opportunities to be in relatively small groups with him. and I said, I just want to serve.Im not going to give you a speech about why I should be Secretary of the Treasury. I cant recall my own platform, and as a result I really cant recall his. You get there and then you figure out what your actual sequence of initiatives is going to be. You havent told us about your own appointment. The first thing that we typically do is a quick voice identification so that the transcriptionist will know whos talking at any given time.Im Russell Riley, the project leader for the Clinton Presidential History Project. So if Clinton and Burns ever had any conversations, they certainly didnt communicate, Im sure. You know, Bushs approach to international diplomacy is, Here are my buddiesall of whom he seems to nickname. Its rare that an issue divides the Democrats. It was a mixture of people and some of the names I recall of course were George Stephanopoulos and Gene Sperling, Bob Rubin, Bob Reich, Rob Shapiro, myself. So the dynamic between the two was quite an interesting dynamic and quite quicklyto come to your pointafter the stimulus plan went down, Clinton began deferring to Bentsen on everything. Was this your first opportunity? Youd worked in a couple of campaigns before this one, or youd been involved in campaigns. The social aspect of it also involved here? Who was the coordinator, if any, in the first follow up? He said, Its up to you. So that the link in Clintons mind between deficit reduction and stimulus disappeared when it got into the political arena. 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