It was a very costly enterprise upfront and, as I recall from testimony we had from others, there was a big problem in that whatever savings would have been recorded as a part of this enterprise had actually been absorbed into the earlier budget deal. Some time around 1989 or so, Hillary Clinton went on the board. Bentsen had known the then head of it, Albert Casey, whod been chairman of American Airlines, and didnt have a high regard for him. Once again, were grateful for your time. I can recall that we had a fundraiser. Thats true, yes. While at the University, So the vote ended, Senate vote I mean, and we had that celebration. First of all, the Clinton White House wasnt really oriented to that. Bentsen could tell you, within 4 percent accuracy, what was going to happen to every one of these bills. But the next day, Monday, I was on a plane to Waco, Texas. Im not in the Senate. I think less well than he was treated while he was in office. 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. Was there a group of people who were helping him on the policy side respective to economics? The entire economic team flew on a chartered plane down to Little Rock. Its always a mistake to get in any kind of hassle with the Federal Reserve Board, always. Because if you decided not to go on NAFTA you really couldnt ever go back and say, Im a pro-trade President. Senior Management, U.S. Investment Banking and Evercore ISI businesses are conducted through Evercore Group L.L.C., a member of. Carter had the famous $50 rebate, which became the object of much derision ultimately. I think thats a wonderful tradition. I think it counts for four, five percent of the spending. Id had served before and seen how not to do it. How were those dealt with, the decision to make a significant concession in the bill? I ended up doing that over the space of four, five, six weeks. But there was a discontinuity between the campaign and the administration, In this respect exactly right. 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. Casey resigned and it was vacant. As everybody knows, ultimately there was not a single Republican vote cast for it, neither in the House nor the Senate. I guess we have to just win then. So I didnt take him seriously except as in a sort of inner political context. If were talking about 1991, I think his ideas were in formation. 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. 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. No, he doesnt, not in terms of the way I would define close friends, genuine friends. Theres a time lag between taking painful steps to do something with the deficit and getting some response in the. I did not have a crystal ball to the effect that he was going to make it and that the dominos were somehow going to fall in a certain way that enabled him to do so. I think the answer to your question was, Yes, it was, but the RTC was charged with the responsibility of cleaning up all S and Ls [Savings and Loans]. What external factors were at work here? There are many people in the administration who dont like the welfare reform that was ultimately signed, believed that Clinton ultimately turned centrist on the issue and anybody could have done that and once you did it as a Democratic President, you were going to have welfare reform. Was this a group of people that you primarily put together, or is it bits and pieces of people that the Clintons had known. WebRoger Ebert March 07, 1978. Yes, but Mack was entirely averse to confrontation and played a completely backstage role in these things, which is not really what a President needs. You look at the relationships he ended up having with a lot of people that he was initially close to and were central to his administration, whether its George Stephanopoulos or whoever else it may be. 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 burden of my question was it would be a lot of the people whod voted for the economic package that youre putting in this position, right? Georgetown was the equivalent of a placid, slow-moving river and Chicago was the equivalent of a roaring torrent. Roger C. Altman. He created a big expectation with that speech that he gave I think in the fall of 1993. We had a couple of others. The only reason I think it worked was Bob Rubin, who had the skill and the temperament to make it work. He wanted to focus on a few important things at any particular time. 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. Were seeing it today. His Presidency itself I think was a very strong one, but it doesnt make it into the top five or six. Why? 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. In retrospect, a limited, very grudging change. 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. 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? But, first, right at the outset, it was a terribly flawed idea to have a full-time member of the administration serving also as the head of an independent regulatory agency and that should have dawned on me in the earliest going, just the inherent conflict there. Clinton, as we all know, is very open, but also a very undisciplined guy. 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. Mr. Altman began his investment banking career at The Federal Government doesnt have much of a role in education. I had no background for that. Right around that time I was put in charge of the Treasury transition. The President and Vice President, I think it was Leon Panetta, and myself, one other person, he and I were standing there, looking out, it was a beautiful August night, not too hot, and it was just an amazing moment. Did you do anything else? Malibu, California (CA), US. Were you at all involved in the development of the side agreements on environmental issues and. Well, both is the answer. Was this your first opportunity? But most of my time was spent on legislation. So that resulted in my having, I suppose, a jack-of-all-trades job. Rather than ask about the mundane, I think it makes sense to go right to the next dramatic thing. Four agents had been killed and others seriously wounded and it was the worst loss of life in the history of the ATF in a single incident. I believe it was the same night that she gave her press conference. That was not a high point of the Clinton Presidency. 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. Everything is susceptible to being phased in, to being cut back, to being pilot-programmed. But I talked to Secretary Bentsen and I think hed been already talked to about it, but anyway, he said, Fine. 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. 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 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. No, Im sorry, it didnt have the power to do that, but there were ways of achieving that outcome. But I didnt unilaterally choose all the members of it. 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. Bentsen only talked to about five or six Senators. Greenspan sat next to Mrs. Clinton. There was very little interest in that. Tickets to the Kennedy Center and things of that nature, or is this too big a matter. That was not clear to me. As I say, we assembled sometime between the 20th and 25th of November in Washington and then December 5th or 6th or 7th or whatever it was he made his choices. You were responsible then for recruiting the people who were going to be in it? There was concern that we had already spilled an enormous amount of blood on the economic plan. Of course, any situation like that always has its humor. 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. But you know, theres a real sense of the torch passing and history, and one had to be struck, even though Id been involved with Clinton from mid 91, by the youth and vigor that Clinton and Gore exuded, and Ive always personally liked the south, so I enjoyed being there, so I did go. Somehow it came off successfully in Miami with all these heads of state and everybody was very happy with it. Way back in season one of Shameless, Fiona got a housekeeping job at a hotel. I knew a lot about Perot, having been heavily involved in Wall Street for many years. Did it come from DAmato, or what? The second point is the nature of the key individuals chosen. We founded Evercore in 1995, on the premise that clients would be best served by an investment banking firm free of the conflicts of interest inherent to large, multi-product financial institutions. 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. I wasnt there because I was an expert in tax policy. The administration made a change in the way economic policy-making was going to be made too, and I think that choice was made during the transition to have a National Economic Council, and that would have been a great unknown given the Treasurys historical role in economic policy-making. The arrangements, as far as the White House, how it passes operation, and the Treasury operationshould that be seen as well coordinated, or is it difficult to coordinate? No, but it wasnt just entirely that. Today it is seen as structural. 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