roger altman house

You were in Tokyo when the President went over? So I didnt take him seriously except as in a sort of inner political context. The most frantic imaginable effort was going on during the five or six hours preceding that vote. I think Clinton recognized that, by virtue of his being an outsider in Washingtonhe never served in Washingtonhe needed a link to the Congress, a really superb link, of the type that Bentsen afforded, especially since Clintons first priorities were economics.The Senate Finance Committee was going to be, more than any other single place, where the action was. That was a factor. A fairly major effort went into that, which I was part of. Thats how I feel about it. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Tuesday interviewed investment banker Roger Altman, a former Treasury official, as a candidate to replace He knew what was possible; he knew what wasnt possible. I dont know this, but I suspect that was decided largely between the President and Mrs. Clinton. But, I can tell youa bit of a digression. There are extremes here. And then, of course, the political people in the White House: George Stephanopoulos of course, and others in the White House. I believe Stan Shuman was there. Im sure there are lots of aspects of the preparation plan. I mean, its amusing in a certain sense, but of the hundred members of the Senate he probably talked on any kind of regular basis to about ten. The only reason I think it worked was Bob Rubin, who had the skill and the temperament to make it work. In fact, the exact oppositethe people who voted for it were punished in 94. 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. I believe Greenspan went to Little Rock. So there wasnt all that much time, maybe ten days, twelve days, between opening the office, showing up down there and then having the Treasury Secretary and the rest of the members of the economic team chosen. 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. 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. One, the recession of 91 and early or mid 92, the economy was performing poorly. So in the early period, Id have to go back and look at when the President laid the legislation forward, but I want to say it was first of March or something like that. Word comes up, you just say nothing. Wasnt that a state-chartered institution? Unfortunately, during the Clinton era ultimately there were four, five, or six independent counsels chosen to look into Bruce Babbitt and Ron Brown and some of the other people. So an hour before the vote is when we heard that we probably had his vote. It was just an evolution of the prior role. I would say presided over, Id have to check the statistics, but probably the greatest period of economic prosperity in the entire century, or ushered in the greatest period of prosperity in the entire century. Then, in 1995, he formed Evercore. I worked in the White House another three or four months, worked on, for example, the bailout of Washington, D.C., and then the passage of the new control board type legislation and then my kids got out of school in June. Oh sure, New York is, in terms of Democratic politics, not a terribly big town. Also, wed had 12 years of Republican rule and there was a widespread sense of time for change. 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. Yes, actually there was a big debate about healthcare, welfare reform, and NAFTA. As I say, it was sort of a double-barrel summit. Bentsen and Dole were very close friends, which is a measure of the stature that Bentsen had. I worked in the White House. I recall, for example, a discussion at that very original dinner in the spring of 1991 and a rather focused discussion on economic policy, and particularly about deficit reduction. Yes, because obviously I was seen as somebody who had business credentials to some degree, conservative credentials, by Democratic standards at least. 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. Can you tell us about how that unfolded, your perceptions of Mrs. Clintons role in all of this? 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. Id met Bentsen a few times. 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. He was clearly learning as he went. Yes, he did. I took an hour plus to do this. [Mikhail] Gorbachev was an enormous free gift to Ronald Reagan. They just didnt come to the Secretary, to the Chairman of the RTC, no more than investigations being pursued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, or the Secret Service or what have you come to the Secretary of the Treasury. One of the themes they advanced was deficit reduction, not the only one. The economic plan was, to some degree, controversial from the beginning because of the tax increases and some feeling that the deficit reduction was unnecessary or could be counterproductive. 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? She didnt cast it because of me, but it just became obvious to me in that conversation that she was very reluctant to cast that vote. I was very pleased that he decided not to run because I thought it would just mean the Democrats might well lose again. Once again, were grateful for your time. Oh yes, sure. Georgetown was not a hotbed of political activism. I just remember that being contemporaneous with the real beginning of an organized effort here. Well, nobody took more pain up front than Ronald Reagan. Mostly because Clinton put everyone in a room, for endless hours, to the point where most people wanted to drop and everybody was sitting there around the table. Im not sure that was what they originally intended, I suppose it was, but I wasnt involved in the planning of the summit, I just went to it and had a role on one of the panels and sat around for a couple of days, really. Well, when we actually re-did Putting People First, we went to Little Rock and worked on it for a few days. Then, while the agreement called for there to be no further duties or tariffs or anything on everything, a whole variety of items were carved out in order to get certain votes. As has been, as I said, so widely chronicled, the focus was on the economy because the economy was sluggish, in a recessionary state. We knew each other, but we turned out to be the first two to go down and I dont know why that was. But I would also say he contributed to his own under-appreciation. 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. I took a trip out to Oklahoma to visit the district of a Congressman from Oklahoma whose vote we needed, and ultimately I think we got. I dont really think Whitewater, at least this part of it, was terribly different from some of the other such situations that weve all seen, whether its the John Tower hearings or its Bert Lance or whatever it is. What Im interested in is when the man who was elected to the Presidency decided on his course of action in some of these policy areas. But in any event, there I was, and this guy, as I say, was a master of the game. Toward the end it was all about these four names or these six names and how do we get their votes. 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. He had a great time. For the first part of the Clinton years, Arthur Burns was famously mystical, quite like Greenspan. I was the natural person to do that, having served in it before. 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. Bentsen really respected Dole. Lets take five minutes and well come back for the rest of the morning session. It was just not the way to run the railroad. Well, within about two weeks of the election, certainly by the end of November, the actual transition offices were established in Washington. A lot of time of the National Economic Council was spent on it. Yes. So its funny how reality quickly returns. Against that test, a noncrisis Presidency, what can they achieve, under the extremely adverse politics of this time, thats been building up. It wasnt how he said it, it was what he said. 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. 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. There was very little interest in that. 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. I didnt say anything to that. Not particularly. You sit down with the leaders of your own party in the Congress, ultimately with the entire leadership, and then you learn a little bit about the realities that you face from the legislative point of view. The film director, known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized A certain candidate or two will be perceived as the heavyweights in the field, and thats an amorphous thing, but you become anointed that way by the media, and if you have the right set of political skills you can capitalize on it. Obviously Sam Rayburn. But it was quite obvious that wed lost the battle. Do you remember at what point this revised estimate comes in? The White House decidedwell, there were certain people who were obviously going to be in it. Because if you decided not to go on NAFTA you really couldnt ever go back and say, Im a pro-trade President. I think well probably want to pick up there and find out about that experience. But, in any event, everything was going fine at the RTC until, unfortunately, the matter of Madison Guaranty came up. Hes not focusing on it, he doesnt particularly care about it. There was some action forcing the schedule and the President would have had to ditch the treaty, just say, Ive decided Im not for it. Did you know him, you said you hadnt known him before then? The chief, the captain of that ship with Mickey Kantor, USTR [United States Trade Representative], and to some considerable extent Ron Brown, Secretary of Commerce, and Lloyd Bentsen played a big role in it. No, it never got to a vote. But the key revelation was the most stimulative thing we could do for this economy is to induce a monetary response. 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. Scientist, architect, botanist, Copyright 2023. We had a chat; we had a nice time. Fortunately Secretary Bentsen said, No, not fine. Youre referring to the environmental and labor side issues. When you were suggesting Edmund Morris I was thinking. Sure. Yes I was asked to be part of that enterprise, but much later in the process. Having watched very carefully what Bob Carswell, who served for three plus years of the four Carter years as Deputy Secretary, did in that role, and that was actually rather different than my role. Rather than ask about the mundane, I think it makes sense to go right to the next dramatic thing. I respected him, but I never identified with him and I didnt see him being a successful Democratic nominee. Ive seen it happen so often in business as well as in government. I remember that very vividly, and I said, I want to do the honorable thing. The social side of it had almost nothing to do with it. You know, theres another element of this. I think we made some, but it was grudging and limited. Youd suggested earlier that a National Economic Council wasnt anything that was a particularly major innovation. I suppose you could have strengthening of the yen, coordinated G7 action to do that. 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. Hes the first guy who stepped in defeated. Now a good deal of it was also formulated pre-election, but if I had to choose between the two, which period played the bigger role, the transition period or the pre-election period, I would say the transition period. Oh, in the bill itself? 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. That they felt that people who had served the President. I mean, there are libraries full of books that have already been written about that. While at the University, Yes. Hes pointing to the right-hand column of theWall Street Journal. He didnt want to be involved in the daily ins and outs of those jobs. In business. The politics of Oklahoma. But thats the type of thing the Deputy Secretary sometimes does, or when there are problems with the IRS. He had tried to offer every imaginable olive branch to the Iranian leadership. 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. Did you think it was a waste of time at that point? They began to mount quite a drumbeat of Republican outcry to the effect that it was the responsibility of the RTC to unilaterally extend that statute of limitations on the theory that it would be wrong to let the Clintons off the hook, and the RTC had the power to do that. Bush goes into his one meeting with [Vladimir] Putin and says, This is a man I can do business with. This was breaking news, CNN [Cable News Network] was interrupting its programming and so forth and President Clinton said, What is this about? 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 entire economic team flew on a chartered plane down to Little Rock. Why didnt that work, from your perspective? So you can imagine sitting next to Mrs. Clinton at dinner. I left the White House around April, took a couple of months off, and went back to New York. Roger C. Altman. A lot of the talk was about the public credit markets responding, not so much the Fed. No, I had very little contact with Mr. Clinton for roughly 20 years after leaving. So by the time I had to do it again I wasnt particularly concerned. And we had the same in the Carter administration, but it had been more junior. You havent told us about your own appointment. You can see it in real life at 3901 S. Michigan Avenue, about 20 minutes from the First of all, the Clinton White House wasnt really oriented to that. He served as assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury from 1977 to 1981 before returning to Lehman, where he later became co-head of overall investment banking as well as a member of the management committee and board. I might have a point of view about what those ought to be based on certain inputs I was receiving directly from the Hill and we need to work more on this or that. I wasnt making a distinction between Clinton and his predecessors, but rather making a distinction between Clinton and his successors since there wont be any more. Which has become a part of the conventional wisdom about this period now, perhaps based on Woodwards analysis. Theyre going to ask you about it, say nothing. In retrospect, the idea that he finished second is seen that he had triumphed. 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. That was the moment, that day. I ended up doing that over the space of four, five, six weeks. 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. Evercore uses cookies to give you the best experience on our website. Web(Studio: Charles Gibson) Earlier interview held with Evercore Partners Roger Altman about the House vote and the market reaction. You should have asked me about the vote, unless youve already talked to enough people about it. 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. With the exception of his Vice Presidential candidacy, he never lost another election. WebRobert Altman's House (former) Malibu, California (CA), US Like Tweet Share Pin The film director, known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized If you take the transition as one chunk of time, rather than chopping it up into chapters, I did a lot of work on personnelwe all did a lot of work on policy development, what was the economic policy going to be, and getting right down to very specific potential decisions. In fact, the matter of Madison Guaranty came up is to induce a monetary response Edmund Morris I thinking... Oh sure, New York ask you about it No, I want to be part the. We could do for this economy is to induce a monetary response NAFTA you really couldnt ever go and... 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