Im not joking. He paid more attention to golf and girls in University. He said, Its up to you. I was often, or at least periodically, talking to members of the administration but not to the President. 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? This is a bit of an anecdote, but of course Joel Klein served in the Clinton administration. He didnt want to be involved in the daily ins and outs of those jobs. Then Clinton, as I mentioned, this one big event in January of 92Clinton was great on his feet. Its probably strange humor in this instance. 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. You ultimately get into a room like this and you say, youd better start to train me, tell me how this happened. Then, I was in Tokyo. I think this had to be artfully crafted in order to get through. We had a macro economic task force. Those characteristics I thought were rather evident upon meeting him just a few times. So if you want to call it the politics of the economy, The labor unions were overwhelmingly opposed. Does that resonate with you? Decided to do this. 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. Yes, there was a big debate about whether it should be healthcare or NAFTA. 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. 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. @ 34.032138, -118.722249. So an hour before the vote is when we heard that we probably had his vote. Weve talked about the general idea that the administration was going to accept pain by having deficit reduction in the early years, but theres still the question of how youre going to mete out the pain. I know the Congress and the Congress isnt going to buy it. It was Clintons first, if I recall correctly, major international summit. You know, the only other thought I would express on this is, despite the drama of the moment and the stakes, everyone, as they say, puts on his pants one leg at a time. Well see whether it lasts or not, but I think Clinton changed the dynamic on worldwide attitudes toward trade opening, and turned trade from an obscure issue that few people in the country paid any attention to, into an important issue and an acceptance of the notion that lowering barriers to trade led to prosperity. 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. The Regency Hotel. No, I went back the next day. And every day I would speak to Bentsen about it. Then maybe half of them we discussed about this person, that person. It is especially important then for the people who worked with him to give us reflections on his role. We sat there, the two of us, watching it on television, mostly in silence. My testimony was rather a highlight of that. So I knew a little bit about what was worth doing and what wasnt. We had lunch. But it was a mixture of considerable travel, considerable speaking, lots of radio and television shows, in some cases done locallyin other words, youre in St. Louis, youre doing them, or, alternatively from Washington where you go over to the White House and sit on a chair and do seven satellite feeds in a row, or five radio shows, or what have you. He managed himself beautifully and with great self-control, and Clinton had very little self-control. They were using very powerful weaponsI think .20 caliber weapons. I did, not before Congress, before the grand jury. and he said, No. Here we are in June 2003 and the election as we all know is November 04, so its 16 months or so The assessment was correct because, I cant recall the size of the economy then, but today it is about $10.7 trillion. 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. So the fact that a variety of people serve a long time, theres nothing mysterious about that, that had nothing to do with Bill Clinton. No, no. The relationship between Clinton and Bentsen was quite unusual. I mean just the vote itself and the fact that not a single Republican voted for this, which even by its critics is seen now as having been at least a contributor to the economic prosperity and fiscal balance that later resulted. I was often at the National Economic Council meetings that deliberated on those. 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. 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. 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. 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. It really wasnt that way. He didnt say so, but supposedly he never does. Im not in the Senate. But there was the sense, based on conversationsI think you could go back and say that there were some discussions between Bentsen and Greenspan, Rubin and Greenspan, Clinton and Greenspan, although the sum total of those conversations probably took an hour. Is this time for patriotism? You could have something like the Paris agreement in 1985 when there was coordinated strengthening of the European and Japanese currencies and weakening of the dollar. He really enjoyed it, stayed up every night till four in the morning, and believe me, I know that because I was going to his room at three in the morning with these various wordings. During the transition period the question was, Who are we going to nominate the head the RTC? You get there and then you figure out what your actual sequence of initiatives is going to be. I think part of him saw an embrace of NAFTA as an opportunity to reestablish that he was a person of conviction, that he wasnt just in the pocket of the old traditional Democratic constituencies, wasnt just a tax-raiser and spender. Toward the end it was all about these four names or these six names and how do we get their votes. Of course. We had wonderful cooperation, at least in the Treasury. Some people thought they were misguided. Healthcare got the nod. I never heard of them. Not surprising, given his state of origin. He said he wanted to tell me that the President had decided to appoint Bentsen to be Secretary of the Treasury and Rubin to be head of the National Economic Council. The two camps were right there sitting in front of the President for six hours at a time. The President decided it, but Mack McLarty actually called me. He was quite in the minority at the time. 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. That was great. I mean, theyre all just issuing healthcare plans right now and there are some important differences among them, but 99 percent of the primary voters will not know those differences. You become President, theres a new Congress. 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. There were no violations of ethical guidelines, there was certainly no legal violation, and that proved to be pretty meaningless in the context of the uproar. I can remember feeling very chastened because he talked about how many children we were helping and how many families we were helping and I chose to try to makejust in the spirit of celebration, a few jokes. I knew Bob Kerrey quite well by that time and Bob was very unpredictable. People forget that, even today. We believed our model would attract the most talented senior finance professionals to our firm. One, the recession of 91 and early or mid 92, the economy was performing poorly. 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. Altman donated $41,000 to the Biden Action Fund, a joint fundraising committee, in May, according to Federal Election Commission records. Bob Rubin talked with great credibility about the bond market responding, and James Carville was so amusing for so long afterwards saying he wanted to come back in his next life and be the bond market because everybody paid such fealty to it. They were done among the United States, Mexico, and the Congressional parties involved. Phil Gramm, Ill never forget, predicted that it would usher in a new depressionI mean depression, not recession. 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? As I say, it was sort of a double-barrel summit. But it wasnt political on one hand, policy on the other, just different ideologies. But in 1987, I think it was, the Democrats in this case, I must say, rewrote the rules and decided that ideology should be the grounds on which this was decided, and Mr. Bork may have had great credentials, may have been a scholar of great distinction but his ideology was unacceptable. Chicago, of course, always has been, and they attracted very different students. But the presumption was that the head of the agency of course did know that. A lot of people didnt realize and I didnt entirely realize the regulatory responsibilities of the RTC at the time. It began to get organized at the end of 91. Before the grand jury before Starr, and how was that experience? But yes, we had meetings in his hotel room at three in the morning. Lets hold off if we can just a couple of minutes before getting into the transition period and let me ask you a couple of questions about the campaign itself. Secretary Bentsen took a lot of heat not long after being sworn in saying hed like to see a stronger yen, and that touched off a lot of controversy. Born on April 2, 1946 in United States of America, Roger Altman started his career as Financial professional . I do believe it was able to make a difference. The Clinton stimulus plan just was not well conceived. That was a bad mistake. 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. You couldnt do that. People trooped down and sat around and briefed Carter, but he was sitting there figuring out do I want to appoint this guy or that person, and so forth. Hes the first guy who stepped in defeated. I dont know why we were the earliest on the list. We were all trotted out in Little Rock on the same day. 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? No, Im sorry, it didnt have the power to do that, but there were ways of achieving that outcome. I think it did. My view, theres no single answer to that at all, but if I were to list the elements of my response, the first one would be post-election. No, this was in December. 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. He never did anything spontaneously, at least professionally speaking. But its the economy, stupid doesnt communicate a set of priorities within the administration about what steps they will take. Then I came upstairs, Hillary was there. You said earlier you were involved raising some money, but also providing some advice and guidance on economic policy. So there were a couple of weeks of high anxiety, maybe more than that, maybe everybody was in a state of anxiety between the election and yes, it wasnt at all clear who the Secretary of Treasury would be. I wasnt there because I was an expert in tax policy. Web446 Roger Altman Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images CREATIVE EDITORIAL VIDEO All Sports Entertainment News Archival Browse 446 roger altman Had run successfully for Vice President. Carter had his famous Pond House meetings, and I went to a couple of those. The following MondayI was out West actuallyI flew back to Washington and I believe I resigned on Wednesday. On the policy issues at this point are you beginning to see any kind of evolution or any kind of establishment of governing priorities, or again, is this a question thats held off on until after the election? I remember the very stirring tableau as you may remember, the Clintons and the Gores came out onto this beautifully lit portico and there were, it seemed, thousands of people on the street in front of them. 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. She wears her heart on her sleeve much more than he does. Anyway. For example, a year later, the fall following my graduation, I attended the University of Chicago, which was perhaps more than any other university, except the University of Wisconsin, the center of SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] activity. 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. Or was it just that you were persuaded that he was going to be a great candidate? We just didnt know, and thats pretty amazing, the biggest piece of legislation, the voting has actually begun. I mean, by that time, the group that was advising him on economic policy had become reasonably well set. You may not have been conscious of it. This goes back to that question about the interim between the pain and the payoff. So I knew nothing about the substance of the Clinton case. In fact, Bernard and his late partner, George Katz, were both involved. 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. Or should be, not will be, but should be. So not long after arriving in the new offices, which were over there on Vermont Avenue, I remember that, I went over to the Treasury and met with Secretary [Nicholas] Brady and the Deputy Secretary, very nice manname escapes me at the momentand began to debrief the senior members of the department. Evercore uses cookies to give you the best experience on our website. Its been a big help to us and again, we know how extremely busy you are. When you were suggesting Edmund Morris I was thinking. We had a couple hundred people there. Was it his personality that won, or was he able to? Clinton, as we all know, is very open, but also a very undisciplined guy. But wasnt the Clinton economic plan somewhat right-of-center too? I dont think anybody during the campaign expected that Clinton would turn out to be the deficit hawk that he did. The buzz on Clinton, even then, among those few following it, was positive. Did it come from DAmato, or what? Then thered been prior independent counsels. 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. In retrospect, a limited, very grudging change. and the period of time during whichtheres a window during which it had to be submitted for a vote. Also, wed had 12 years of Republican rule and there was a widespread sense of time for change. What did you find on the ground when you got there, if I could? So, the decision-making process was more than a bit chaotic, and the decision on the energy taxes was reflective of that. So Japan arguably has been in a 12- or 14-year slump, but at that time the weakness in the Japanese economy was seen as just cyclical, not structural. 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. We did have goals. He should have taken it. I didnt feel it because I had a long relationship with Bob Rubin, which had been ten or 12 or 14 years, and Bentsen and Rubin had had their own long relationship and I saw no real problem with everybody relating successfully to each other. 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. 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. Was there a group of people who were helping him on the policy side respective to economics? Howard Paster at the White House, Mike Levy at the Treasury. It was a successful fundraiser. I should have said I was either going to or not going to, but anywaySo that meeting came and went and at least nobody at the Treasury thought much about it. So one knew through the press who was going and so forth. He knew that if we lost this vote it was a severe blow. For example, the Btu tax and the raising of the highest rate, highest bracket. Was there a contrasting case in your experience in the Clinton administration where support was received both sides of the aisle and soughtwas it sought in the budget case? That was about the last time he didnt listen to Bentsen, but he should have. You know, she made comments like I could have stayed home and baked cookies but I decided to be a real person, which served to severely antagonize a lot of traditionalists. But there was the issue of the Clintons association with it and the fact that Madison Guaranty had made loans to the actual Whitewater Development Company, and the question of whether those loans had been made under pressure from the Clintons and in fact whether [James] McDougal, who ran it, had defrauded the depositors in cahoots with the Clintons. But apropos of my comments earlier that classic, unreconstructed liberalism had never been my cup of tea, I never identified with Mario Cuomo. He said, What do you want to do? The reason I posed the question the way I did is that since World War II theres been bipartisanship in Presidential leadership on free trade. Sure. 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. Did he come to you with an idea about what he wanted to focus on with the economy or some of his primary domestic policies, or was this at this point still in the process of being formulated? Well, Im not actually trying to establish whether these were particularly important in the campaign. Well, let me stop. You referred earlier to Garys question that most of the decisions that Clinton made about his priorities came post-election, but the process. Im an economist in the Brookings Institution in Washington. But you ended up doing a lot of strange things. He was clearly learning as he went. But before then, somebody was charged with thinking about transitional issues, actually before the November election, and my question to you is whether, in your work in Treasury transition, you had relied on any work that had been done before? Bentsen could tell you, within 4 percent accuracy, what was going to happen to every one of these bills. So I didnt take him seriously except as in a sort of inner political context. So the Carter White House was a bit at seavisvis the Federal Reserve and its role, how to relate to it. Bentsen tended to say very little at those meetings except at the end, when Clinton would turn to Bentsen and say, What would you do, Lloyd? The following MondayI was out West actuallyI flew back to that question about the substance of RTC! 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