There was, I cant remember exactly, but we had some innumerable number of economists of all stripes and persuasions in favor of this. 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 remember sitting there, thinking to myself, This guy just did something that I could no more imagine myself capable of doing than I could jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. Some of them I think were insincere, but many of them were sincere. So anyway, within a few days, all of us who had anything to do with the RTC from the point of view of the Treasury were subpoenaed by Fiske. Im not the best witness on that because I didnt see it or feel it, but there may well have been. Im not sure thats true or it isnt. What political or personal characteristics does she have that he doesnt have, what does she bring to the. The Secretary of the Treasury is not regularly informed of investigations that the Secret Service is doing, unless theres some special emergency reason to do it. Is this time for horse-trading? Then maybe half of them we discussed about this person, that person. The time for horse-trading was over. Richard Nixon resigned from office. I did the best I could. It wasnt difficult at all because Cuomo was a polarizing figure. That by choosing Panetta, and Bentsen, and Rubin, he chose economic conservatives. The media to some degree has shifted for, in my view, simple generational reasons, to the right, and the right-of-center media is much more monolithic than the rest of the media, and so its ability to concentrate its opposition and its influence emerged as much greater during the Clinton years. At the time we were working on it there was a sense on the Japanese side that it was a zero-sum game. He was quite an unknown in New York, wasnt he, until he came, appeared, and talked? Well, if you were to ask me for a moment when looking back on it, one could perhaps see that we were moving into a new period of partisanship, I would have chosen instead the [Robert] Bork battle, which I think changed quite dramatically the whole process on Supreme Court nominations and the grounds on which they were debated. One is that it had a very rocky beginning in New Hampshire, and Im wondering if you have recollections about your reaction to the news events that occurred and to the electoral results in New Hampshire and how the President was able to deal with those things. Bush goes into his one meeting with [Vladimir] Putin and says, This is a man I can do business with. Ill never forget, it was just a few days after the election and Carter, of course, had been beset by the Iranian hostage crisis and the failure of Desert One and so forth, the rescue effort. No, the rest of those were really in the purview, in the ambit of Larry Summers. Could you tell us what your portfolio was within Treasury and what your primary responsibilities were? Of course it was a very small kind of backwater type of situation, not a big one. I believe it was the same night that she gave her press conference. Bentsen had told me from the first moment this thing was going nowhere. Theyre already heavily taxed, its their money, not the governments money and all of that, and if it works, nobody will remember that I opposed it. I wasnt there because I was an expert in tax policy. But its the economy, stupid doesnt communicate a set of priorities within the administration about what steps they will take. Lets step back and just recall who the members of the senior economic team were because there was an entire team of people doing this. Wed sit around in the Roosevelt Room, and you know how it works. But an awful lot of people love being Cabinet officers and leave only most reluctantly. Also, strong figures, not weak figures. Hed been shot eight times. The Times, which is typically, of course, a Democratic-leaning paper, was Clintons severest clinic throughout his whole Presidency, and on Whitewater went crazy. It was just not very well run, as I recall it, until that time. And that was fairly late, right, when Bowles came in? So what I actually spent my time on ranged all over the lot. Were they talking broad strategy, were they keeping whip counts? 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. 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. He is a trustee of MIT and serves on its Governance Committee. The number of possible votes at that stage had dwindled down to a tiny number, votes that were undecided. What are the lasting accomplishments, the lasting legacies of this administration, regardless of whether the historians are going to pick up these strains as being historically important or flamboyantly important enough to elevate Clinton into an upper- echelon Presidency? Then late one afternoon, early evening I guess, 7 oclock, in the transition office in Washington, Warren Christopher called me. 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. Mr. Altman began his investment banking career at Lehman Brothers, advancing to general partner in 1974. Yes, and Im sure that any number of opponents to the Presidents plan were sincere in their expectation that it wouldnt work. and Lloyd would say, I wouldnt do it, Mr. President, or I would do it. Im not joking. It was an astounding speech. But thats an example of the type of stuff the Deputy Secretary does. So there was not a war of the type that has so often been written about, just not true. No. I think if Edmund Morris were writing with that skill about the Clinton years, hed have a whole chapter on the vote on this plan. That was in July or June or something. Yes, I believe the charter of the RTC transcended whether it was a state chartered or federally chartered S and L. Well, the guarantees were not Federal if they were state chartered. The entire gamut. You were responsible for organizing the war room. Hes chancellor of the Board of Education of New York, hes a good friend of mine, and I had dinner with him about a month ago and I said, Does it make any difference who the President is as far as youre concerned? Here we are in June 2003 and the election as we all know is November 04, so its 16 months or so before the election, 17 months, and right now of course, the campaign among the Democratic aspirants for the nomination is hot, full-bore, and has been for several months. But everybody felt such a part of it because they were sitting right there. There may have been, but I know I didnt feel it. It was a voluntary choice. 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. The RTC had to choose between allowing the statute of limitationsto expire; filing charges, criminal charges; or, as often happens, entering into a so-called tolling agreement, where if youre the party under investigation, you voluntarily agree that the RTC can circumvent the statute of limitations because you believe that if they have more time theyll ultimately decide to exonerate you and you dont want them to be forced to make a decision about filing or not filing charges. 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? Panetta had made a very distinguished career as House Budget Chairman out of pushing for lower deficits and a more transparent budget process. Clinton of course had committed to that during the campaign and it made fiscal sense in the sense of there being so much economic slack. Stay as long as you can figure out how to cling to it. No, there were 20-22 people there. If I search my memory or some dusty file somewhere, I could probably come up with more names, but it was not a huge group. No. Yes, he did. We were tough on them on autos. So actually I didnt have any concerns. He has his own views in private, of course. I think theres a wonderful tradition in American government where the outgoing administration typically does everything it can to assist the incoming one, and that was certainly true with the [Gerald] Ford administration. People have made that mistake and theyve suffered from it. As I recall, the distinctive thing about Clinton, if everyone had one courageous stand, his was on free trade. Theres some story that he demanded a commission on entitlement reform as a price. But I think one misunderstood aspect of his embracing NAFTA wasat that point he was being widely criticized for lacking in principle, lacking in conviction, a weathervane all over the place politically. Greenspan sat next to Mrs. Clinton. You raised this issue with respect to the designation of sub-Cabinet officers. Of course, there was Leon Panetta, and Bob Rubin and Lloyd Bentsen, Alice Rivlin, Laura Tyson, myself, Gene Sperling, those were really the main members. Then Clinton, as I mentioned, this one big event in January of 92Clinton was great on his feet. It wasnt difficult. Im an economist in the Brookings Institution in Washington. Clinton made an error, didnt take it. Thats the way to do it. There were some enormous differences. But wasnt the Clinton economic plan somewhat right-of-center too? It was Clintons first, if I recall correctly, major international summit. Were they talking about what you do with Senator X, with Congressman Y? But it really was quite effective because one needed a military-like approach with only five or six weeks to go, and that bill was in trouble. Yes, hes just that way. I could have mentioned a lot of other people, but Im just saying, I dont think that when President [George W.] BushI dont think that as people leave the Bush administration, theyre going to do that. I think thats a wonderful tradition. Lets face it, I mean, the highlight of that ticket was Bentsen in 1988. Last weekend, Roger Altman was back at his ranch in Wyomings Jackson Hole, looking tanned and relaxed, entertaining friends like White House chief economist 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. Bob Rubin was the ultimate financial market person, knew the role of the Federal Reserve so well. Before the grand jury before Starr, and how was that experience? But it was really episodic, it wasnt regular. The President was all over this. Not surprising, given his state of origin. In all aspects? Youd seen him working with domestic policy issues and with members of Congress and support here. Clinton chose in Bentsen, with the possible exception of [Robert] Dole, who obviously wasnt a candidate for this, the most experienced person in the entire United States Congress. In part, there was a sectoral approach. which was a separate agency and Presidential appointment. Well, I got briefed on it and basically, two points here: one is the chairman of the RTC whether it is me or Mr. Casey or the people before him, never were briefed on, exposed to, involved in, or otherwise saw anything at all about the investigations the RTC was pursuing. The hearings process really kind of kicks it off. Im a little too close to this, because Im not sure how history will view it. But there were some deputies, Harold Ickes came in maybe six months or soIm trying to remember when that first shakeup with the deputies was. Not too much, though. But it wasnt clear that he was going to do so until not long before he did. Clintons very first initiative was his stimulus program. So I spent a lot of time on healthcare. Well, you know that whole thing turned out to be quite an astonishing fiasco with the ultimate FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] raid and the immolation of 80 Branch Davidians. I dont think anybody during the campaign expected that Clinton would turn out to be the deficit hawk that he did. Did you go to Little Rock for the election? 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. 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. So an hour before the vote is when we heard that we probably had his vote. Hed be speaking someplace and Id be playing some role at the same conference at one of the usual conference locations, and we would briefly renew the acquaintance, but I did not stay, in any organized way, in touch with him. Actually it was mundane. I dont know. Our labor leadership did not want that, especially of course, the Teamsters. When you say the coordinator, you mean of the Presidents message? Fortunately Secretary Bentsen said, No, not fine. I spoke in this wonderful old hall, in the legislative building, legislative chamber, it was great. Yes, we could have had that. He was a classic, in my book, excellent chief executive. Two questions, one of which was minor. And I dont accept entirely your formulation, even though I think theres a lot to it. Lloyd Bentsen was a classic Texas conservative Democrat. The social side of it had almost nothing to do with it. I left the Treasury about a month later when my successor Frank Newman, who was then Under Secretary for Domestic Finance, was nominated and had been confirmed. One was in connection with Putting People First, when we had the wonderful experience of taking a cab from the Little Rock airport and having the cab driver slow down and practically come to a stop for a second, and excitedly point out to us Gennifer Flowers apartment building. I think Clinton was better served by virtue of Perots presence in the campaign than without it. There were ten or twelve or fourteen or fifteen, big numbers. The process was really quite intense and they were taking on a task that was utterly immense, a much bigger one really than the economic program, and came forth with a plan that was revolutionary, but whose revolutionariness doomed it. I wasnt involved in any of the delegate-related strategies, no. But unfortunately the real show was about to begin, which I didnt realize, which was the Congressional hearings. I was given an office over in the Treasury. I didnt say anything to that. Im Gary Burtless. I dont really think Bentsen knew me at all. But therein, to some degree, lay the opportunity for Clinton to re-establish his credentials as a man of conviction. Everyone was thinking about one thing and not expressing it. Where the negotiations broke down, I dont know what caused it. If you can think of a great President, a President who is seen as really great, who didnt have such a crisis, Id like to hear it, because I dont think there is one. We wont get into a philosophy, an argument, about causation, I think Reagans Presidency, a bit, goes against what youre saying, thats all. Were there any members in particular with whom you worked directly that you felt you were personally responsible for salvaging? 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. Then thered been prior independent counsels. He paid more attention to golf and girls in University. Well, I was thinking of both actually, but in the bill. But really, not until the spring of 1991 when I began to hear rumblings that he was thinking of running. I follow it pretty closely, and I have a hard time figuring it out. He earned an A.B. I dont include that on the list because the federal role in education is always exaggerated. I wasnt directly negotiating them. Definitely working on personnel. There was no committee per se but he had a few people who were involved at that point and doing something like looking at Putting People First and editing it, and then just these periodic conversations we would have on the fly. We came into office, the trade imbalance of payments deficit with Japan had risen to very high levels. I sat next to Mrs. Clinton at dinner. Lets divide concessions into two: actual changes in the bill, and then offering a Congressman something in another area to help make it easier for him to vote for this. Ive read a lot of whats been written about the healthcare plan, its all there. Im trying to get a sense of what their input to the whole process was. He knew that if we lost this vote it was a severe blow. Which has become a part of the conventional wisdom about this period now, perhaps based on Woodwards analysis. My point is that if one was a Republican in 93, one could say, Okay, Im going to vote against this so Im not on record of favoring any kind of tax increase, and that protects me politically and if that works out, I dont lose anything, so Im politically immunized. He also had primary responsibility for Blackstones international business. Well, within about two weeks of the election, certainly by the end of November, the actual transition offices were established in Washington. Ive known many members. Not likely, and was not the case in 92. Please. That was just how all Presidents should act. He does not see that as one of his own great accomplishments. Most of the people whod been involved in the economic plan or NAFTA for example, werent part of that. Im not sure it makes entire sense, however, to judge or to assess a Presidents contribution by the standard of those who are given, in effect, a free gift of power to deal with a crisis. You had been designated the chief operating officer of the RTC [Resolution Trust Corp.]? Then I came upstairs, Hillary was there. I went to Wall Street after the University of Chicago, and then after seven years on Wall Street, I went into the [Jimmy] Carter administration as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. But I think in Washington, except in dire emergencies, politics rules, and most Republicans had the view that they would rather die than vote for a tax increase. But it was quite obvious that wed lost the battle. I was very pleased that he decided not to run because I thought it would just mean the Democrats might well lose again. The President decided it, but Mack McLarty actually called me. You dont recall the specific occasion when you first met him? You had some experience with Japan before? And, to some degree it was also, of course, for Clinton to take the measure of certain people he might be appointing. Well, there was, like most administrations, kind of a running shakeup. Today you have Governor [Howard] Dean, Congressman [Dick] Gephardt, for instance. 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. It became obvious to me that it was just untenable to keep trying to shout into this hurricane. Some of the cookies we use are essential for parts of the website to operate and cannot be switched off in our systems. When we took office and took a hard look at the deficit estimates, they were considerably worse than we had thought. We just didnt know, and thats pretty amazing, the biggest piece of legislation, the voting has actually begun. Only to a degree. So he performed a similar role. Sure, but I dont feel we can claim tremendous credit for much of that. I also think Clinton knew he was going to go up against some of his oldest allies, whether it was Marian Wright Edelman, whomever it was, in terms of welfare reform, and was prepared to do it, but wasnt really looking forward to it. Theres a time lag between taking painful steps to do something with the deficit and getting some response in the. There could be a lot of backsliding on that, well have to see. The only way he saved his life was to throw himself off the roof after hed been shot several times. Then the President spoke to Kerrey. I also think it is wrong politically. He may have been serving the President, but he hadnt been in public life for all those years, never lost an election, become Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, didnt become a legend in order to sully his own reputation, as he saw it, over some legislation that he thought was misguided from the first moment. I stayed overnight, went back the next day. [laughter]. Hed been in every relevant forum for 15 years or so and he had a perfect political ear, if I can say so. So if you want to call it the politics of the economy, The labor unions were overwhelmingly opposed. I think its a combination of several things. Howard Paster at the White House, Mike Levy at the Treasury. There were certain others, I cant recall now, but a group of six or eight or nine, and we literally sat around with pieces of paper and drafts and hammered it out. He got Republican ex-Presidents to sign on, though, as I recall. Again, I knew nothing about the substantive investigation. I cant recall my own platform, and as a result I really cant recall his. I mean, Im raising some money now for one of the other candidates and the degree of difficulty today as compared to at the same point 91 wasnt any greater. Its the biggest story in Washington, Hillary Clinton, the whole thing. 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. Well, not really. Its a famous meeting in the sense that Woodward wrote a lot about it, other people have written about it. I personally thought Rubin was most likely to be Secretary of the Treasury. One of the reasons it was bloodless was because the Soviets knew what they had and didnt have and what we had and they didnt have. The Republicans in the Senate especially, led by Senator [Alfonse] DAmato who was Chairman of the Banking Committeeno, he was ranking minority member, became Chairman after the election of 94. Is this a case where the political people were encouraging him to hold his ground? WebRoger Altman: Formerly deputy Treasury secretary, Altman resigned Aug. 29, 1994 following revelations he tipped the White House off to criminal referrals made by But Clintons worked largely because of the people, and mostly Bob Rubin, but anyway, it worked well. Having said that, I dont believe that affected the partisan approach to it. Youre referring to the environmental and labor side issues. I want to come back to something that we had touched upon earlier, and that was this question about the administrations prioritizations, because you had suggested that there were some internal discussions, even at the time that NAFTA was taken on, as to what to do next. He made quite a bit of money and then ran as a big long shot again, initially against Ralph Yarborough for the Democratic nomination for the Senate in 1970, upset Yarborough, then beat George H. W. Bush. No, it was not at all. When did the President. Its curious to me, but thats how it worked. He helped me in my efforts and then a year later I helped him in his. I knew Bob Kerrey quite well by that time and Bob was very unpredictable. It was excellent. We touched on this at a couple of points but never directly asked you whether you thought the President. Roger C. Altman is Founder and Senior Chairman of Evercore, which has become the most active independent investment bank in the world. Thats true, yes. We made two or three trips to Japan and then there was the Tokyo Economic Summitthe G7 Summit in the fall of 93 which happened to be planned many years in advance for Tokyo. Once she was put in charge of it, it obviously had tremendous internal focus. Primarily I had learned what doesnt work, and I had learned a couple of thingsyou can tell, I think, when youre exposed to a candidate enough times, whether hes going to work out there as a retail politician, as they say, an outdoor politician, and when he isnt. So it was a quick learning experience for Clinton. Was there a perceivable influence from your perspective on having Perot in the campaign, making the deficit an issue from his vantage point? 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. There ensued a quite Byzantine process, as has been so widely written about with multiple task forces and enormous numbers of people involved.There were a lot of these Bill Clinton-style meetings, great big long meetings with far too many people in the room. So I served in that job for give or take a year, and I never had a single meeting on an investigation nor did any of my predecessors, just wasnt done, wasnt necessary, and so forth. 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. I dont think thats a very good answer to your question, but I dont think I have a better one. I spoke to the Oklahoma state legislature. I didnt devise them on my own. 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. Id had served before and seen how not to do it. David Gergen was brought, which I think was probably the fall of 93 and Panetta replaced Mackthat was an awfully big event, of course. He was clearly learning as he went. In 1987, Mr. Altman joined The Blackstone Group as vice chairman, head of advisory business, and investment committee member. A lot of people wanted to work on Capitol Hill or think tanks or with interest groups. Had run successfully for Vice President. It turned out that the thing had really been left by the wayside and there was very little of the necessary planning that had gone into it and it was about two months off. How big a group was doing this recasting? 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 knew a lot about Perot, having been heavily involved in Wall Street for many years. No, not at all. And Bentsen, who full knew this was going to be on the front page of the Wall Street Journal said, Im not in the Senate. In the initial phases it was really broad strategy because we didnt yet know. Its worth asking. The feelings of people along the wayside were just very endearing. The relationship between Clinton and Bentsen was quite unusual. It wasnt so much between the political peopleReich wasnt a political person; he wasnt a campaign operator. So the fact that if we were sitting here in 2053, that a President 54 years ago balanced the budget wouldnt mean a heck of a lot to us, right? There were some folks from the White House Press Secretarys office who were in it. 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. I attended the little thing at Monticello when he was on his way to be inaugurated, the first time he stopped by in the bus. But thats the type of thing the Deputy Secretary sometimes does, or when there are problems with the IRS. Some of them, yes. His popularity had sunk to low levels. Now remember, Clinton had said he was going to cut the deficit in half. Exactly. First of all, one has to put it into broad context, including that a number of the more established would-be candidates, if I can put it that way, chose not to run, led by Cuomo, but there were others. Now in retrospect did his presence in the campaign serve to move the candidates a bit to the right on deficit reduction and so forth? Sure, because you always focused on the swing votes. The Japanese economy was relatively weak at that time although it was in perhaps the first third of its now 12-year, or 14-year slump after the Nikkei peaked at 39,000. Web446 Roger Altman Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images CREATIVE EDITORIAL VIDEO All Sports Entertainment News Archival Browse 446 roger altman I, and quite a few other people, had dinner with him, quite a few meaning 15 or so. You would have thought Senator Bentsen would have felt that way also, unless there was an assumption that this was literally going to be a few weeks time. He managed to remain viable through New Hampshire. Youd suggested earlier that a National Economic Council wasnt anything that was a particularly major innovation. Did you do any traveling with Clinton on the campaign around New York or outside of New York? But the presumption was that the head of the agency of course did know that. 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Were encouraging him to hold his ground of stuff the Deputy Secretary does know what caused it Clinton. Had a perfect political ear, if I recall Reserve so well Mr.,. Had told me from the White House, Mike Levy at the Treasury your responsibilities! Was, like most administrations, kind of a running shakeup, perhaps based on Woodwards analysis its Committee. On Woodwards analysis social side of it because they were considerably worse we... By virtue of Perots presence in the transition office in Washington, Warren Christopher called me campaign.! Interest groups campaign expected that Clinton would turn out to be the deficit half! To the Presidents plan were sincere in their expectation that it was quite obvious that wed the!

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