So he didnt have the luxury of saying, Lets do it a year from now, as you often do with other things. Im very fond of her, extremely fond of her, and it was, Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. [Mary Todd] Lincoln? For example, Putting People First was reissued, I believe in June of 92. But it coincided, I think more importantly than that, with the onset of huge political problems for Clinton in the context of Vince Foster, Whitewater, and the entire beginning of that. So I attribute that to just the fact that Woodward talked a lot to Greenspan, but that may be just an incorrect take on it. It was a successful fundraiser. That was about the last time he didnt listen to Bentsen, but he should have. If he predicted over the two years I worked for him, the fate of 25 pieces of legislation, he was right on all 25. I believe Stan Shuman was there. Can you give us a picture? The notion, by the way, in Bob Woodwards book, The Agenda, that Greenspan was hovering over the proceedings like an angel of death is completely fictitious. We talked for about 12 seconds about any role that I might play. So I said, Well then, thats the course Im going to take. I may have attended a few meetings, but I only began to be immersed in healthcare after the Presidents plan passed and I became the Treasury person on the Hillary Clinton healthcare task force. I raise the issue because I think theres an extraordinary difference in contemporary politics without the existence of that, without the fact of an independent counsel lingering over an administrations head, and you obviously having had some experience with this would be able to testify to infractions. Were you involved in discussions at this point about what would be next in the queue for the administration, because there were some other. The only thing that Id like to leave this on in respect to any follow-up is this: If at any point you dont think you have a clear picture of Lloyd Bentsens role, since he is not in a position to speak for himself, feel free to call me or talk to me further about that. That was the fundamental choice they made in devising the reform. Everyone was thinking about one thing and not expressing it. I was just in awe of people like that. 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. We still joke about that today. The process for conceiving it was a frail one, poor one. People have made that mistake and theyve suffered from it. Of course we learned quickly that these were really difficult negotiations. So is there a lot of policy difference today between the nine candidates running for the Democratic nomination in June 2003? WebBy tlp333 @ 2008-03-23 21:45:51. There were so many different Japanese Prime Ministers in that period I cant remember which one we had at that moment. That day I knew we were headed for defeat. We believed that by maintaining the highest standards of excellence we could create a firm unlike any other in terms of capabilities to advise on highly complex strategic transactions, dedication to our client and our experience and professionalism. No, he doesnt, not in terms of the way I would define close friends, genuine friends. 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. In part, there was a sectoral approach. 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. I mean, youre sent down there, you have no training for it. I thought, perhaps not at that instant, but quickly thereafter, that what Clinton said to me about Wall Street economics was very funny. Under the normal circumstances, like Clintons, they have considerable difficulties in an adverse political environment to get anything done, and that is the more normal historical situation. There are some very famous stories about Bentsens war experience. Secretary Bentsen had already left. I really believe it was that day that his view changed. I think his views at that point were in formation. I can recall David Halberstam on the way out saying to me that he never heard a politician as effective as Clinton since JFK [John Fitzgerald Kennedy]. which was a separate agency and Presidential appointment. 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. So the vote ended, Senate vote I mean, and we had that celebration. My own view on that is that American history is filled with examples of severe and indeed brutal partisanship. But I dont really think that was the reason that he voted for it, but only an hour before the vote in the Senate did we know we had his vote. So no, Bentsen did not go over to the White House, hang around, talk about legislative strategy. Those meetings were, at one level, rather riveting, but at another level they were disorganized. I sat there for two or three hours and he took the measure of me and at the end he said, Would you like to do this? 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? It was going to be a different kind of animal. Did you have a sense on the Japanese policy that we actually had a policy or that we had something that was in lieu of policy? Bentsen and Dole were very close friends, which is a measure of the stature that Bentsen had. I think at the Pond House meetings there were also some of the Congressional leaders, werent there? Where the negotiations broke down, I dont know what caused it. These cookies do not store any information that directly identifies you. Against that test, a noncrisis Presidency, what can they achieve, under the extremely adverse politics of this time, thats been building up. He gave the best speech I, at least to that point, had ever heard him give, and I think almost everyone in the administration who was in the room felt the same way. So one knew through the press who was going and so forth. My comment is a retrospective comment. During the transition period the question was, Who are we going to nominate the head the RTC? One of the initial ideas was an energy tax. Can you tell us about that? And, to some degree it was also, of course, for Clinton to take the measure of certain people he might be appointing. But it was not a novel idea at all. Ill give you an answer but Ill preface it by saying Im not sure my memory is quite right here. Or Ill put it another waywe didnt know where the President was on NAFTA on that day. Carter, whos a wonderful man, God knows, however is very rigid. That was great. So what I actually spent my time on ranged all over the lot. I cant remember allTom Brokaw was there, Davis Weinstock, Dick Beatty, Bob Rubin, George Katz, and/or Bernie Nussbaum were there. He was a classic, in my book, excellent chief executive. I spent the last couple of hours of that period in the Oval Office with the President and that was quite unforgettable too because the President was hugely animated, to some extent discouraged, to some extent angry, and there were moments when I was the only one in there with him. And, of course, the ATF agents didnt know what they were going to experience and he found himself exposed to an open line of fire. Thats not particularly my recollection, no. 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. My testimony was rather a highlight of that. There were, however, many people who thought, I would say this was the majority view: well ask for this, were going to end up with this. Right as it was up, the Wall Street Journal does a full-page profile on Bentsen, right here on the right. We didnt spend a tremendous amount of time talking about, If we do this, Greenspan will do that. He told me what would happen to the Clinton stimulus bill the day it was put forward. Rather than ask about the mundane, I think it makes sense to go right to the next dramatic thing. Roger Altman, Evercore senior chairman and founder, joins Squawk on the Street to share his thoughts on Bidens infrastructure plan and the corporate tax debate. Im just saying that Im a little too close to it because I recall so many of those battles, and I recall so many people feeling that, as you remember, the administration, in some form or other, lost three times, and each time came back with a more conservative version. Im thinking of what historians will say. What Im interested in is your perception of when the views that crystallized with economic policies were adopted in the first months of the administration. I think this had to be artfully crafted in order to get through. He did a version of what Carter did earlier, which was end up positioned to the right of most of his opponents in the Democratic primaries. I consider that another important legacy, since not that many Presidents of the 20th century have it. It was not as big a change as it was advertised to be, or has been seen historically. Mickey Kantor was in charge of the famous Little Rock Economic Summit. But in any event, what gets discussed most in the campaign historically may or may not be the first or second major initiative that comes from the new President. I cant recall what year it was but it was in the late 80s, and now its seven or eight thousand, actually up toward nine, but has more or less slid ever since. He had just made it through this cliffhanging vote on which the administrations credibility for the next several years, I think, would largely depend, and it depends on the support of overwhelming shares of Democrats in the House and the Senate to get through. So I knew early on, but only because Lloyd Bentsen was in effect telling me. They were using very powerful weaponsI think .20 caliber weapons. Is he somebody who, from your perception, makes close friends at all? Yes. But I was briefed on the procedures the RTC had to follow here. Some of them I think were insincere, but many of them were sincere. So maybe among the so-called populists there was a lot of anxiety as they saw this axis, the Bentsen-Rubin axis, develop and recognizing that both were relatively conservative. We cant afford to lose it, that type of stuff. Most of the trade was being handled by what was called the NEC [National Economic Council] deputies, which is the Deputy Secretary level of the NEC. It was excellent. Clinton had plied the waters of the Democratic Party with great assiduousness for many, many years. I had the benefit of having the office next to Lloyd Bentsen, and maybe there are some people around, even in American history, that have had a better grasp of the American Congress than Lloyd Bentsen, but I never met one. I was struck from the beginning that Clinton was blessed with a very weak field, which, for example, is not the case today. In fact, Carters very first initiative was his stimulus program, neither of which incidentally succeeded, both of which were dropped and failed entirely. He told me what was going to happen to the Clinton healthcare bill the day it was announced, actually before it was announced. Georgetown was not a hotbed of political activism. Was it his personality? I just remember that being contemporaneous with the real beginning of an organized effort here. 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. Id actually been politically active in high school, but my political involvements didnt extend beyond the campus. Ickes arrived for different reasons; that wasnt to try to lend organization to the process. The country needs it, the Democratic Party needs it, I need it. He has his own views in private, of course. Yes, because obviously I was seen as somebody who had business credentials to some degree, conservative credentials, by Democratic standards at least. Lets face it, I mean, the highlight of that ticket was Bentsen in 1988. Then, of course, he became chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which is the most powerful single position in the Congress other than Majority Leader, and some would say it is more powerful, and ran the committee with an iron hand. Of course it was a very small kind of backwater type of situation, not a big one. Every time they had a new Prime Minister, we had a new set of characters. The second point is the nature of the key individuals chosen. To make a long story short, of course we all hired lawyers and so forth and we were brought before a grand jury. I think my point is slightly different. Id served four years in the Carter Treasury but I hadnt had that much exposure in those years to the President. The bigger gamble then was, as you say, the long term, the response in the long-term credit markets, whats going to happen, and that, I take it, is where Allen Blinders. I respected him, but I never identified with him and I didnt see him being a successful Democratic nominee. Well, nobody took more pain up front than Ronald Reagan. I didnt say anything to that. But there was a divide, so to speak, in the administration between those who felt that we should try to remake the healthcare system in this country in one fell swoop and those who felt we should pursue an incremental approach. I mean, not one encounter, until the early to mid 80s when I was quite involved in various aspects of the Democratic Party and there were a few forums at various places that I would attend and I would occasionally run into him. But the next day, Monday, I was on a plane to Waco, Texas. No, I went back the next day. Did you get the sense that this is true? Everybody gets a nametag, and theres the Secretary of the Treasury, the Deputy Secretary of this and Director of OMB, and youre all sitting around, a very staged setting. 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. Secretary Bentsen didnt know about it but a lot of other people did, and nobody paid much attention to it. Once you get NAFTA behind you, my guess is that there were further discussions at that point about what ought to be next and this is when healthcare becomes a priority. Exactly. So it was a combination of an organized role. He does not see that as one of his own great accomplishments. It used to be, I believe, that they were graded on grounds of competent scholarship and so forth. So obviously by inauguration day hed largely assimilated them. Last weekend, Roger Altman was back at his ranch in Wyomings Jackson Hole, looking tanned and relaxed, entertaining friends like White House chief economist So I watched the Senate vote, also on television, this time in the war room. Did he interact comfortably with the other leaders at the summit? Were you consulting with the President occasionally after you left Washington and came back to New York? It wasnt particularly formed before then. 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. As I recall the campaign of 1992, there were lots of policy debates amongst the Democrats. Ive read a lot of whats been written about the healthcare plan, its all there. I remember Allen going through that. I think as a general matter the perception, which has become the accepted wisdom, of those dueling camps, is much overstated. Id have to do a little homework. In fact, it was six months before. Founder and Senior Chairman | So a group of us at the deputy level, Joan Spero, Charlene Barshefsky, Bo Cutter, me, who were the four senior members of that group, started entering into discussions with our Japanese counterparts. You become President, theres a new Congress. While at the University, The difficulties that you had were primarily generated by Congressional investigators then, rather than the independent counsel. Im not quite sure what their input was. So theres no reporting responsibility, its treated as one office, a little bit like a corporate office of the chairman which includes the chairman, and the CEO, and the President and chief operating officer, and maybe even one or two others. I think its wrong from a policy point of view. But it was quite obvious that wed lost the battle. Our labor leadership did not want that, especially of course, the Teamsters. It was a good-sized ballroom here in New York. We talked a lot about the organization of economic policy-making and the role of the Treasury because I had a certain history. The President relied on Bentsen and Altman to take on some of his Administrations toughest tasks. Im not sure he would have known me really at all. So Im sure therell be another independent counsel. We had to be sure Mexico could live with it. I think Clinton authentically saw healthcare as more important, believed it was a bigger national problem, and thought he was tackling the bigger of the two. My memory is a bit fuzzy on that. Three-quarters of the people who go into the Cabinet never want to leave it, its great being a Cabinet officer. Who was the New York group that helped him with fundraising and maybe also with policy? He helped me in my efforts and then a year later I helped him in his. Web(Studio: Charles Gibson) Earlier interview held with Evercore Partners Roger Altman about the House vote and the market reaction. I just never took him seriously as a candidate. Bentsen could tell you, within 4 percent accuracy, what was going to happen to every one of these bills. There are extremes here. So I knew nothing about the substance of the Clinton case. Roger Altman, chairman and founder at Evercore, discusses the state of the U.S. economy, the four things that need to be included in the next round of stimulus, and Anyway, a couple of days later I flew to Austin, Texas and met him and Mrs. [Beryl Ann] Bentsen in a hotel room in Austin. I mean, not to take any credit away from other players, you wouldnt want to do that Im sure, but there must have been some. You can do it through tax increases and then you have to choose the tax, and you can do it through spending reductions and you have to choose the area youre going to focus on. That was the all-time low for the dollar. I think it was serious as a political thing, meaning you had three candidates instead of two and of course, the dynamic was different. But the key revelation was the most stimulative thing we could do for this economy is to induce a monetary response. For example, keeping its currency weak, not taking some of the steps to improve domestic demand such that Japan could become a stronger force for imports into Japan, ironically some of the same issues that are just as present today. But I think he may turn out to have transformed the party, which really is an important historical achievement. The entire gamut. I mean, I have no reservations about when Lloyd Bentsen approached me, I think he thought it was just going to be very brief and wed send some name up and it wouldnt take long to get that name confirmed and I might end up spending two or three months doing this. I would say we had a definite policy, we just didnt achieve too much of it. What specifically arose was that the statute of limitations on any prosecution involving the failure of an S and L was about to expire. Help us understand why he would elect to move NAFTA at this point? 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. During the transition period, you are formally involved in the transition effort. So I had that meeting with Clinton. So an hour before the vote is when we heard that we probably had his vote. Thats a very important difference, because it addressed healthcare, various items on childrens policy, crime initiatives, urban policythe full span of domestic policy issues, of which economic policy was just one element. Do you have the perception that there were some other instances where maybe this wasnt done? I did. It certainly wasnt optimal. Its curious to me, but thats how it worked. But yes, we had meetings in his hotel room at three in the morning. He did quite well. But its there on the record; everybody can read those reports. Right around that time I was put in charge of the Treasury transition. Youre referring to the environmental and labor side issues. It was an astounding speech. he is one of famous Financial professional with the age 75 years old group. Two questions, one of which was minor. He demonstrated his phenomenal grasp of policy issues, just through sitting there for many hours a day. You were responsible then for recruiting the people who were going to be in it? But in any event, Im sure it wasnt as good as it should have been. Yes, here in New York. What external factors were at work here? The White House decidedwell, there were certain people who were obviously going to be in it. 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. Were you helping write drafts of Putting People First, platform areas? Thats a different issue. I raise the question because one of the outside perceptions that you get later on is when, in the early post-election period of the administration, theres some considerable debate within the administration about which of the priorities ought to come first, and among some of the people that you mentioned in Little Rock at the time. Hes the first guy who stepped in defeated. Greenspans name hardly came up during these discussions. 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. Everyone understood there was a lag factor. Well, if you think about spending initiatives that you could take today that are politically imaginable, they amount to a hill of beans in a $10.7 trillion economy. I mean one of the oldest rules of Presidential management is, take your pain up front. Then it went down to defeat. By the way, when the three-judge Washington panel that chose Fiske threw him out and replaced him with [Ken] Starr, Starr went back to the beginning and went over the entire thing again and came to the same conclusion. I dont believe Yeltsin attended the summit, but there was a lot of focus on Russia and what the G7 could do for Russia at that summit, so it was all kind of nice, uplifting stuff. Doing concerted, multilateral action of the type youre referring to is really only appropriate in the midst of a crisis. 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. Certainly, when he captained it, it was a different party than it had been for the previous 50 years. Im not sure. Before you get into that, can I ask you another question about the arrangements on the 1993 budget? This goes back to that question about the interim between the pain and the payoff. I think John Kennedys famous line about Jefferson applies because he had nine simultaneous careers, and the Presidency was only one. 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. Thats just exactly what I said. You may not have been conscious of it. So I wasnt sure what was going to happen, but there was no one in the field that was suddenly squashing everyone else including Clinton. But wasnt the Clinton economic plan somewhat right-of-center too? If we have another Iran-Contra therell have to be an independent counsel, thered have to be. 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