The Regency Hotel. There was, I cant remember exactly, but we had some innumerable number of economists of all stripes and persuasions in favor of this. 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. You recently saw Secretary John Snow in a very studied fashion talk about, make an effort to ease the dollar down, we saw that on two different occasions, and I know how these things work. He demonstrated his phenomenal grasp of policy issues, just through sitting there for many hours a day. I have no evidence, and I think I would have had, that he went into that meeting with the expectation that hed come out the way he did. Why? 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. and Lloyd would say, I wouldnt do it, Mr. President, or I would do it. In all aspects? I was given an office over in the Treasury. No, Im sorry, it didnt have the power to do that, but there were ways of achieving that outcome. We might have a thousand independent counsels operating under the freedom of the press, investigations. I believe it was the same night that she gave her press conference. 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. Did Senator [Edward] Kennedy figure at all as a help or a hindrance or what in the budget battle, he wasnt really a key player? Yes, and also there was considerable uncertainty as to whether Cuomo was indeed a candidate, which, as we all know, he proved not to be. I was not. Anything in particular you recall that can flesh out the record? 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. More has been made of that than should be. 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. No. Did you have a lot of organizational responsibilities, or it was a going concern when you. Or Ill put it another waywe didnt know where the President was on NAFTA on that day. I also think it is wrong politically. Bentsen could tell you, within 4 percent accuracy, what was going to happen to every one of these bills. 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. Sure, Greenspan was in favor of deficit reduction, so when the administration came forward with an actual deficit reduction plan, which, as we all know, was a bit unexpected, Greenspan supported it, testified for it and so forth. Bentsen advised him to take it. That wasnt a very long meeting. For a variety of reasons, I dont think he had the pure luxury of just saying, Lets do NAFTA a year from now. He told me what would happen to the Clinton stimulus bill the day it was put forward. But I didnt unilaterally choose all the members of it. If he predicted over the two years I worked for him, the fate of 25 pieces of legislation, he was right on all 25. Yes. I believe, as I say, it was either the day of or the day after Gennifer Flowers had given her press conference. What was different about it was that it worked, because most of them had been somewhat dysfunctional. Within a month, I remember vividly one day, I had seven radio shows. Senior Management, U.S. Investment Banking and Evercore ISI businesses are conducted through Evercore Group L.L.C., a member of. Was there a representative of the campaign. Nothing, zero, never did, never would have. I had no background for that. Japanese discussions were harder, but the G7 summit was fine, it was easy. So the traditional Democratic field has had in it a few candidates who represent that. The country needs it, the Democratic Party needs it, I need it. I think I called that evening. I think this had to be artfully crafted in order to get through. You know, you call in for five minutes apiece and theyre all lined up. Of course that depends on the moment in question. Thats one of the things that kind of surprises. No, I went back the next day. You had been asked to be a part of that enterprise. Then there were other people who went down and the press was following all this. I know Bentsen, especially in retrospect I know Bentsen. It wasnt as simple as that. So I did a lot of work representing the Treasury on any number of issues in the White House councils of deliberation. And I also think that theres a certain sense of loyalty among the people that are currently serving in this administration, which is more in keeping with tradition, than the Clinton folks, or many of them I should say, brought to it. 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. We had lunch. My testimony was rather a highlight of that. Well, let me stop. I had really not fully ever grasped from my Wall Street days, that there was a great big regulatory side to it including enforcement side, where the RTC was also charged with pursuing investigations against former thrift officials and ultimately prosecuting them if circumstances warranted. He got Republican ex-Presidents to sign on, though, as I recall. Which did he bond most closely with and were there instances where there were tough nuts for him to crack? So it became effectively a simultaneous multilateral and bilateral summit because it became the setting for Clintons direct discussions with the Japanese Prime Minister. I think we made some, but it was grudging and limited. Two questions, one of which was minor. Do you have any recollections of seeing anything different in him as a candidate at that point for that position? 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 took an hour plus to do this. And the difficulty became quickly evident once the program was laid out. It turned out to be the equivalent of walking the plank. And I dont accept entirely your formulation, even though I think theres a lot to it. I mean, youre sent down there, you have no training for it. So my average day was spent a few blocks from here, working full-tilt on the business responsibilities I had. I thought, All right, well get half a loaf. So he got people to serve for a long time, even if they were not intensely loyal to him. I ran three times for student office while I was there. Thats the way to do it. I dont know who was, and some people say there werent any, but I wasnt, even though I was always described that way, always baffled me. I suppose you could have strengthening of the yen, coordinated G7 action to do that. I think John Kennedys famous line about Jefferson applies because he had nine simultaneous careers, and the Presidency was only one. Clinton was offered a compromise by Senators [John] Breaux and [David] Boren. Mr. Clinton became aware of that. You wouldnt choose to go before a grand jury instead of, say, going to Yankee Stadium to see the Yankees playAt that point I was already out of the administration and I had no real concerns. I think it was over two days. You couldnt say to yourself, Well in the end hell be fine. Well, both is the answer. You had been designated the chief operating officer of the RTC [Resolution Trust Corp.]? Well, I recall particularly how weak the field was. 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. He was named the first week of December. 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. 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 didnt have to spend a lot of time with Lloyd Bentsen to know that he wasnt going to be shunted aside. Andrew Garfield presented the Robert Altman Award at the 2022 Film Independent Spirit Awards to his old friend, Fran Kranz, for his film Mass. I dont think I would have known otherwise. Can you tell us about his decision-making process on this? 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]. I went and visited the injured agents in the hospital. The feelings of people along the wayside were just very endearing. There were a lot of people who did take that candidacy very seriously though, right? That was the first time we had an opposition takeover. Why dont we break now. I want to ask one more question about the election because Ross Perots name hasnt come up and been explored. But the student radical movement had not penetrated? At my sons school, on the floor where the history department is, each President gets a little tiny picture and about two lines. So the swing votes were the object of our attention. Then the President spoke to Kerrey. But an awful lot of people love being Cabinet officers and leave only most reluctantly. But the election result itself was anticlimactic. There was an acknowledgment, though, fairly early on that something needed to happen? Bentsen knew Clinton wouldnt get anything else if he didnt. Did it come from DAmato, or what? As I remember, we gave that one to labor as a way to try to ease the pain, even though NAFTA called for that to happen. There was a lot of effort and a lot of meetings. We were tough on them on autos. Greenspan sat next to Mrs. Clinton. Just promotes disunity and so forth. Each day hed give a speech and mark off a day, counting down the days to the expiration of the statute of limitations and saying these people at the RTC damn well better be sure that justice is served, the Clintons arent off the hook. 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. Most of the budget directors thus far, Alice Rivlin, Leon Panetta, Jack Lewwe spent a day with Larry Summers, a number of the political people as well, speechwriters and so forth. 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