That chieftains on Wall Street are calling for my resignation is not, in and of itself, cause for alarm. What concerns me is that they have a reasonable argument.
It began innocently yesterday morning at precisely 8 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, 2 p.m. Paris time, where a conference on the global economy was under way. I was linked by satellite.
FRENCH COMMENTATOR: Mr. Reich, the U.S. unemployment figures for December are out today. I am sure you have seen them. Can you give us an indication of what they show?
ME: Actually, December’s unemployment report is due out tomorrow. I can’t tell you exactly what it will show, but I think employment will have risen by probably another 160,000 to 200,000 new jobs.
The interview continued for another twenty minutes, on issues ranging from education to prospects for international trade.
At exactly 9 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, 3 p.m. Paris time, the following bulletin goes out on the Reuters International news wire:
REICH SEES U.S. DECEMBER EMPLOYMENT UP 160,000—200,000
PARIS, JAN. 6—U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich told a business conference in Paris that tomorrow’s December jobless figures would show a rise in total employment of 160,000 to 200,000 jobs. Economists polled by Reuters are expecting tomorrow’s figures to show a much larger rise.
At exactly 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time:
ANALYSTS BAFFLED BY REICH JOBS DATA COMMENTS
NEW YORK, JAN. 6—U.S. analysts are baffled by Labor Secretary Robert Reich’s comments, with some calling it a calculated move aimed at forestalling a snugging of credit. “I think more than anything else it was a move to put pressure on the Federal Reserve,” said one analyst at a large securities firm. “You’re dealing with people who do nothing without premeditation, and who have tremendous axes to grind—the primary one being the Fed.” Reich’s comments quickly led to a sharp rally in the U.S. Treasury market. In late morning trade, interest rates on long-term Treasury securities were down to 6.34 percent from 6.40 percent.
At exactly 11 a.m. Eastern Standard Time:
WALL STREET LOSES TEMPER OVER REICH’S COMMENTS
WASHINGTON, JAN. 6—Wall Street lost its temper Thursday—and maybe some big bucks—after Labor Secretary Robert Reich’s prediction that December’s employment report would not be as strong as the markets expected.
Traders think the Secretary may have gotten a sneak peek at the closely-watched figures, and many bought bonds on that assumption. The Treasury market rallied on Reich’s forecast.
Most Wall Street economists are sticking with their consensus forecast of 225,000 to 240,000 jobs. But Steen Slifer, senior financial economist at Lehman Brothers, said he believes Reich must have some inside information. “I find it inconceivable that he doesn’t have some idea of what is going on.”
Some called for Reich’s resignation.
“You would think that he’d know how such comments would affect world financial markets,” said Mike Niemira, vice president and economist at Mitsubishi Bank. Reich’s forecast caused the dollar to inch higher against the mark.
“It’s scandalous,” said a government securities trading-floor economist. “He better be right because if he’s not, he’s misleading the financial markets.”
Peter Greenbaum, an economist with Smith Barney Shearson, said, “I don’t know what the hell he’s doing. If he’s wrong he’ll have caused a lot of people to lose a lot of money.”
By yesterday evening, with millions (billions?) of dollars having been bet on my unwitting preview, the voices emanating from Wall Street were even less restrained: “Sack him.”
In fact, I have absolutely no idea what’s in the December jobs report. I don’t get a peek until one hour before the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases it to the public on the first Friday of the month. (Alan Greenspan gets the number of manufacturing jobs on the Wednesday before; the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers sees the total number Thursday afternoon and sends it to the Treasury.)
But how could I be so dumb as to suppose that I could give my own little private forecast without everyone thinking that I had seen it? And how could I be so naive as not to know that Wall Street lives and dies by this particular number?
In a moment I’ll discover what the real number is. The Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics sits across from me at the big round table in my office. As she does on the first Friday of every month, she hands me a gray folder containing the magic number. “Are you okay?” she asks as I take it. “You don’t look well.”
I peer in. New jobs in December: 183,000. Almost smack in the middle of my estimate. I was dead on.
“Thank God,” I say, flipping the folder back to her. “If I’d blown it, they’d hang me in effigy over Wall Street.”
“Wrong. They’d hang you in person.” She looks vaguely amused, although yesterday’s hurricane couldn’t have been easy on her either. “They still may.”
“But I hit it right on the button.”
“That’s the point. Yesterday they weren’t quite sure whether you got a sneak look. Now they think they know.”
“But no one got hurt! If they bet on me, they did fine.”
She puts the folder back into her briefcase and stands to leave. “Yeah, and if they bet against you, they lost their shirt. For every winner on the Street there’s a loser on the Street.” She walks toward the door and turns. “A word of advice, Mr. Secretary?”
“Hmm?”
“From now on, leave forecasting to the professionals. See you next month.” Her exit suggests she’s not exactly pleased with my recent performance.
Wall Street is the largest legalized gambling operation in the world. You don’t make money by betting correctly on the strength of the economy. You make money by betting correctly what all the other gamblers will bet, and being there first. And most bets turn on morsels of news—the employment number, to take an example at random—that suggest whether Greenspan and his band are likely to raise or lower short-term interest rates, and by how much.
Clustered around each big gambler is a legion of advisers—fancy-dancing analysts, economists, futurologists—all of whom are paid large sums to make guesses, creating an appearance of special wisdom and insight, so that the big gambler can attract more money. The larger his bet, the bigger his commission. The fancy dancers around him take their cut, and the game continues.
What I’d done wrong was change the rules. For twenty-four hours, no one knew how to play the game. The fancy dancers didn’t have a clue as to how to act. All the usual bets were off. The gamblers were completely exposed, and they were infuriated. I won’t do it again.
At last, a kudo. Sports Illustrated lists under “What Went Right in 1993” my decision to save little Tommy McCoy’s job as batboy for the Savannah Cardinals. “Reich stepped to the plate and knocked the regulation out of the ballpark.”
Was it a year ago that we last did this? As before, we march into the House chamber and take our places in the front row in the order our departments were founded. Commerce before Labor; Labor before Health and Human Services. We children of the 1960s who disdained protocol are now ruled by it. But we still find subtle ways to subvert it: Ron Brown whispers a joke about Dick Armey, one of the Republican leaders of the House, who’s huge, partisan, and humorless. Donna Shalala pokes me in the ribs and tells me to look who’s sitting next to Hillary this year. I gaze into the gallery. There, in the penultimate seat of honor, sits Lane Kirkland, grinning broadly. Last year, Alan Greenspan sat there. I suppose this marks progress—or more likely, a White House political operative’s decision to give the AFL-CIO a symbolic hand after having given them the back of our hand on NAFTA.
And then the President enters. We rise, the applause begins and grows, and we’re swept up in the moment. As before, the speech marks the end of tumultuous weeks of battles over what it should contain. How much emphasis on deficit reduction? How much on education, retraining for new jobs, preschooling, mass transit, and other investments? How much on health care?
Leon Panetta and I have been locking horns. At a recent meeting I pushed him over the brink of his normal affability.
“We’re riding high in the polls, Leon. Isn’t this the ideal time to advocate an investment budget, separate from the nation’s operating budget? Balance the operating budget. Borrow for new investments, just like a family does.”
“We can’t do it. It would be a tactical mistake.”
“But strategically wise,” I say. “How the hell are we ever going to finance the investments? If we don’t do this, Leon, I guarantee we’ll be forced to come up with a balanced budget and the President can kiss his investments good-bye.”
“Bob, I guarantee that if the President suggested an investment budget, his credibility on getting the deficit under control would drop to zero.” Leon is almost shouting. This is the third time I’ve pushed the idea within the last month, and his patience has worn thin. He’s worried I may go to B directly with it.
Panetta does not anger easily. To the contrary, he’s about the sweetest-natured person I’ve met in official Washington—usually full of chuckles and giggles, winks and smiles. He has strong views and he keeps his own counsel, rarely letting anyone know what he’s planning to do or when. He’s also a confirmed deficit hawk and leans toward moderate Republican positions on most issues. But I can’t help but like him.
Panetta began his Washington career almost thirty years ago as a member of the staff of Senator Thomas Kuchel, a liberal Republican from California, and then headed up Nixon’s Office for Civil Rights, which enforced school desegregation orders. He did his job too well, eliciting criticism from his superiors, including then Attorney General John Mitchell. Panetta quit in protest and returned home to Carmel Valley, California, to practice law and ponder his moderate Republicanism. He returned to Washington as a Democratic congressman in 1976, when Jimmy Carter was swept into the White House, and remained in Congress for the next sixteen years—working his way up to the chairmanship of the Budget Committee, and working himself into a lather over the growing federal deficit—until B tapped him to run the Office of Management and Budget (Dick Darman’s power center).
Bob Rubin sides with Panetta over whether to propose an investment budget. Rubin worries about Wall Street’s reaction. Laura Tyson leans in my direction. She and I even worked up a memo for B, suggesting how an investment budget might work. It would contain all proposed spending on education, job training, and mass-transit infrastructure. Congress and the President would negotiate its size, its rate of growth, and the amount of debt allowed to finance it as a budget separate from the operating budget. Thus the public would gain a clearer sense of its investments in the nation’s capacity to be productive in the future, and therefore might be more likely to accept some indebtedness to support it. Rubin and Panetta didn’t want B to get the memo. They were afraid he might actually like it. I briefly fantasized about slipping it into B’s pocket at the end of a meeting, or bribing the White House cook to put it on his breakfast tray. But I didn’t; I played by the rules.
Obviously, the proposal never made it into the State of the Union address. Instead, the speech is the usual blend of everything, mixed so as to appeal to every taste. It even includes a pledge not to cut defense spending. B makes it all sound coherent, as if bounded by a clear, overarching vision of where the country needs to go. And I’m sure he feels that he has one. But for the life of me I still can’t figure it out. The two main accomplishments of the first year were passage of the first budget, which cut the deficit but left almost nothing for new public investment, and ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Jobs are beginning to return as the economy picks up speed, and almost sixty percent of the public now approves of the job B is doing as president, if polls can be believed. But the underlying problems we came here to confront—the widening gulf between rich and poor, stagnating or declining wages for half the workforce, deepening economic insecurities—have barely been addressed.
Stan Greenberg, a pollster with erstwhile populist inclinations, is ecstatic about public reaction to the speech, which he announces immediately afterward. He has armed random citizens from around the nation with electronic applause meters. As they listened to the speech they turned the dials to register how much they liked or disliked what they heard. Each meter was directly connected to a master control, over which Stan presided. The cumulative meter-reading thus gave Stan a second-by-second account of how America reacted to a particular idea, a sentence, a turn of phrase. The entire State of the Union address was plotted like an electrocardiogram.
“A b-i-g hit!” Stan tells me. “They loved it.”
“What precisely did they love?” I ask dryly.
“Crime came in number one. Cops on the beat is v-e-r-y good.” Stan says this like a scientist dissecting a rare insect. “But you’ll be interested in this. Free trade didn’t do well. And deficit reduction was a turn-off.”
“Is that so?” I file the information away for my next Roosevelt Room battle.
“And get this: Right after crime, the second-biggest hit of the speech was your stuff. Investment in education and training. In fact, when the President said he wanted to move from an unemployment insurance system to a re-employment system, the meter went ballistic.”
“Do me a favor, Stan.” I try to prevent my voice from sounding too conspiratorial. “Tell him. Tell him exactly what you just told me.”
Union presidents gathering here for their annual convention are not exactly happy campers. A few would enjoy target practice on me. All they got out of Clinton’s first year was deficit reduction and NAFTA. The thing they most wanted—a law banning the permanent replacement of striking workers—still hasn’t passed. Many of them feel certain that if B had twisted congressional arms on this as hard as he twisted on NAFTA, they’d have won it already, and they’re right.
“I know that there are some of you in this room who are less than satisfied with what we’ve accomplished,” I say.
The room rumbles: “You said it.” … “You and Clinton sold us down the drain.” … “Accomplished bullshit.” … “Don’t give a damn.”
I raise my voice. “And I also know that several of you have made some fairly nasty remarks in public about this administration.”
The tension in the room suddenly escalates. They were prepared for a song and dance, the way Republican secretaries of labor used to try to divert them from their discontents. Now I’ve put the skunk on the middle of the table.
“In fact,” I continue, “I’ve even heard tell that one of you thinks I’ve spent all my life in college, that I don’t even know what a screwdriver looks like.” Bill Bywater, the pugnacious purveyor of that particular insult, visibly stiffens.
“Forget it,” Lane Kirkland tells me, nervously. “Don’t take it personally,” advises another union official. They’re afraid I’m about to lose my grip.
“No, I wont forget it. Someone here said that. And I think we need to have it out in the open.”
The room is silent, taut. Bywater can’t hold it in a second more. He explodes. “Yeah. I said it. And I’ll say it again.” He fires like a machine gun. Bywater is a scrapper, sixty-five years old but always ready for a fight. Several of the presidents move to shut him down, but it’s useless. His face is bright red and his chin is now an inch in front of the rest of his face. He stands up across the table from where I’m sitting, and leans in. “You don’t know a goddamn thing about working people. You’ve never even seen a screwdriver.”
“This is getting us nowhere,” says Lane desperately. “Let’s move on.”
“I don’t want to move on,” I say in a slow staccato, staring Bywater straight in the eye. “You’re wrong, Bill.”
The atmosphere is charged, like a showdown between two gunslingers at the moment when everyone else ducks for cover.
Bywater remains standing. I keep my eyes fixed on him, while I reach under the table. “To prove it, Bill, I want to present you with this screwdriver … which I brought here especially for you.”
I hand him a large monkey wrench.
The room explodes.
For a split second Bywater doesn’t know what to do. And then it hits him. I can see the chortle starting low in his belly and working its way up, then blasting out his mouth with a howl. He doubles over, clutching the monkey wrench to his chest. Then, still roaring, he holds it high over his head like an Academy Award.
Lane tries to restore order, but the hilarity won’t stop. The union presidents are out of their chairs, laughing and clapping. Bywater struts around the large table, showing off his monkey wrench. When he gets to me, he looks me straight in the eye and breaks into a wide grin. He shakes my hand. “Mr. Secretary, you’re really something.”
“Mr. Bywater, the feeling is mutual.”
The rest of the meeting goes smoothly enough. The union presidents are still pissed off, but they don’t take it out on me. I tell them the President is looking forward to meeting with them sometime soon, and make a mental note to set up the meeting.
The first cabinet meeting in months. We sit stiffly while B talks about current events as if he were speaking to a group of visiting diplomats. I’ve been in many meetings with him, but few with the entire cabinet, and it suddenly strikes me that there’s absolutely no reason for him—for any president—to meet with the entire cabinet. Cabinet officers have nothing in common except the first word in our tides. Maybe B is going through the motions because he thinks that presidents are supposed to meet with their cabinets and the public would be disturbed to learn the truth.
I gaze around the room. Even the formal tides belie reality. Each of us has special responsibility for one slice of America. Some of the slices are larger than others; some of the slices crisscross. I make a list of the real cabinet while I pretend to listen to B drone on.
SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR—Secretary of the West (mining and timber companies, cattle ranchers, environmentalists)
SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY—Secretary of Wall Street (bond traders, investment bankers, institutional investors, money managers, the very rich)
SECRETARY OF HUD—Secretary of Big Cities (mayors, developers, downtown Realtors, minority entrepreneurs, the very poor)
SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE—Secretary of Small Towns (farmers, small-town mayors, rural electrical cooperatives, highway contractors, local chambers of commerce)
SECRETARY OF COMMERCE—Secretary of Corporate America (Fortune 500 companies, global conglomerates, top exporters and importers, large trade associations)
SECRETARY OF LABOR—Secretary of Blue-Collar America (industrial unions, service unions, building trades, unorganized low-wage workers, the shrinking middle class, the working poor)
And so forth. Some portfolios are more focused. The Secretary of Energy is really the Secretary of Mountains and Deserts, especially oil and gas production and nuclear wastes. The Secretary of Transportation is the Secretary of Disastrous Crashes, mostly involving aircraft and trains.
Other portfolios are more obscure. The Secretary of State is the Secretary of Middle East Peace Accords and Other Frantic Meetings in hot spots around the world that worry particular ethnic groups inside America. The Secretary of Defense is the Secretary of Half the Discretionary Budget of the United States, mostly supporting the aerospace and telecommunications industries. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is the Secretary of Doctors, Hospitals, and the American Association of Retired People.
No wonder we rarely meet.
Adam is thirteen today,
I’m rushing off to a 7:30 a.m. breakfast. I pop my head in his room. He’s sitting on his bed, putting on his shoes.
“Adam! You’re a teenager!”
He smiles knowingly. “Yeah. I’ll be home just five more years. You better enjoy me while you have me,” he says and then laughs.
“Teenagers aren’t supposed to be enjoyed. They’re supposed to be endured.”
“Then endure me while you have me.”
“I’ll suffer through it.”
Adam has an uncanny way of knowing exactly where I’m most vulnerable and then sticking it to me precisely there. Since the three of them moved to Washington last July, I’ve seen them only slightly more than I did before, when I was commuting to Boston for weekends. I leave home early every weekday morning just as they’re getting up, and I return late, often just after Adam and Sam have gone to bed. We even have less time together on the weekends than before, because now that I’m down here on Saturdays and Sundays, Tom, Kitty, the assistant secretaries, and B himself all feel perfectly justified in encroaching on weekend time when something “important” comes up that needs my attention. Last Saturday it was a pending strike of aerospace workers. The Sunday before was an OSHA problem involving the explosion of an oil tank. Before that was a meeting with chief executive officers who were in town for a weekend meeting and needed to be mollified about a new department rule requiring them to fully fund their pension plans. When I was in Boston on weekends, rarely did such “important” events intrude.
I assure myself that it’s just a matter of managing my time better. I tell Kitty I want more time at home in the evenings and on weekends, and she agrees to lighten up the schedule. A few days go by and I get home for dinner and my Saturdays are reasonably free. But after several weeks we seem to be back to the usual intensity.
“What time you coming home?” Adam asks.
“ ’Bout eight, I think. Plenty of time for a few presents,” I say and then smile meekly. It’s his birthday, for chrissake. Why can’t I be home earlier? I resolve to take it up with Kitty.
“Don’t be late,” he says.
“No chance,” I scoot down the stairs.
“Bullshit,” he yells after me.
“Don’t swear,” I yell back.
“But I’m a teenager!”
He’s also a smart-ass, with a wonderful sense of humor and a deeply kind disposition. I see Clare’s integrity in him. He’s a private person who doesn’t easily open up. He treats people respectfully and chooses friends carefully. He hates hypocrisy. He’s unimpressed with pomp. I’m out the door.
I’m back at eight-thirty on the dot.
Father William Cunningham has wavy gray hair and a round, pink face. When he talks about what he’s accomplishing here with a hundred or so inner-city dropouts, his blue eyes twinkle and his Irish face gets even pinker.
We’re watching a sixteen-year-old boy manipulate a computerized machine tool, carefully punching in various numbers, analyzing the results, readjusting the settings. Father Cunningham waits until the settings are complete before introducing us. The boy’s name is Frank. He is jet black and small for his age. I ask Frank to explain what he’s doing.
“See that cutting tool over there?” Frank points to a large box, the size of an automobile. One side is covered in glass, and inside I can see an automated arm attached to some sort of cutting instrument. Frank’s computer is connected to the box. “I can cut metal into whatever shape I want if I pro-gram this right.”
Frank takes so much pride in the verb that I repeat. “You program it?”
“Yeah!” Frank becomes animated. “These machines, they got to be pro-grammed. It’s complicated, but I’m gettin’ into it.” Frank smiles but then withdraws into shyness as if embarrassed by his enthusiasm. “I still got a lot more to learn.”
“Frank is making excellent progress,” says Father Cunningham, putting a hand on Frank’s shoulder. “He’s been with us only three months but can already use statistical process controls. If he continues to do this well, there’s a good job waiting for him as a precision machinist.”
I asked Frank what he was doing before he came here. He looks away. “Nothin’. Hangin’ out. Gettin’ in trouble.”
Father Cunningham and I spend the next hour meeting other teenagers who are learning computer-aided design, computer integration and other advanced manufacturing techniques. They are eager to show off what they’re learning. Several of them cluster around each machine, with a teacher guiding them. The computers and machines are state-of-the-art. The whole facility is modern, clean, spacious. It occupies an entire city block.
Most of these kids dropped out of high school before arriving here. Some were in trouble with the law. Last year, eighty teenagers graduated from this Machinist Training Institute, and almost all now have jobs starting at $7.50 an hour.
It’s hard to remember that we’re in the crummiest and poorest part of Detroit. Most of the storefronts in the area are boarded up. Rival gangs have demarcated their territories with spray-painted graffiti on sidewalks and stop signs, but there’s not a speck on this complex.
We reach the end of the tour, back in Father Cunningham’s office. He seems even more enthusiastic than when we began. “We also offer a six-year course in manufacturing engineering,” he says with obvious satisfaction.
“Okay, what’s your secret?”
“Secret?” His blue eyes open wide.
“How do you do this?”
“These children want to learn. We offer them a clear path to good jobs. You see”—he sits on his desk—“most poor kids don’t see any relationship between what they do in school and the real world of work outside. In fact, they don’t see much of that world at all. We connect the two. This isn’t just vocational education. This is education in advanced technology. It’s the future. We’re giving them real skills linked to real jobs that are in demand. And they know it.”
He’s evangelical. “We’ve already got good jobs for hundreds of young people. And each of them is now a role model for many others. There’s no reason this can’t be done in every city in America.” The good father is in the business of saving souls through the grace of employment.
We walk to the door. A car is waiting to take me to a “Jobs Summit” being held in a large auditorium a mile away. B will be moderating. Top government officials from all major industrial nations will spend this afternoon and tomorrow blathering about how to create more good jobs in advanced economies. I’m beginning to think we should have held the summit right here, in Father Cunningham’s institute.
“I still don’t quite get it,” I say. “Can this really be duplicated, or is it you? Do we have to clone you to make this work elsewhere?”
Father Cunningham’s round pink face turns even pinker. “Oh, heavens. It’s not me, not by a long shot. Of course this can be done around the country. There’s a huge need for skilled technicians. And there’s a huge number of confused, troubled, poor teenagers desperate to find a future for themselves.” The priest then chuckles to himself. “Of course, I do have one particular talent.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m very good at knocking people up for money.”
“I meant to ask. How do you pay for all this? Your grant from the Labor Department can’t go very far. Yet you’ve got the most advanced equipment I’ve seen anywhere, and no more than ten students per teacher. That’s big bucks.”
“The auto companies provide some. But I’ll let you in on the real secret.” He chuckles again, and fakes a whisper behind his hand. “The De-fense De-part-ment.”
My ears prick up. “How the hell did you get DOD money? Pardon my expression.”
By now we’re at the car. “Let’s just say there’s a senator who’s very fond of us, who sits on Defense Appropriations. He’s one hell of a guy, pardon my expression.”
On the way to the Jobs Summit I ponder what I’ve seen. A lot of America is ready to write off poor inner-city dropouts. But I’ve just watched a bunch of them master complex algorithms. They’re on the way to good jobs and productive membership in society. This isn’t magic. It’s happening because of a strong-willed, talented man backed by a lot of money.
The Jobs Summit is a deadly bore. I have to sit next to the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, who talks endlessly about the virtues of the free market and the social benefits of selfishness, all with such pomposity that I have to restrain myself from causing an international incident by telling him what I think. He is as rotund as he is arrogant, a thoughtless disciple of Margaret Thatcher. Will the Tories wreck Britain before the British wreck the Tories? I marvel that this man and Father Cunningham share the same English language and today inhabit the same city. They actually live on different planets. I’d rather live on the priest’s.
Everyone knows the welfare system is broken. But the way to fix it isn’t to simply eliminate it. It’s to change it into a job system. How to do this without busting the bank? B isn’t satisfied with the answers he hears.
“We’re not going to save money by reforming welfare,” says David Ellwood, a former colleague from Harvard and an expert on welfare who was brought into the administration to cook up the plan.
B is wary. “How much will it cost?”
“We figure at least $2 billion a year over current welfare expenditures, and that’s for a stripped-down program.”
Ellwood explains that although almost five million parents collect federal welfare checks, seventy percent of them find jobs within two years. The problem is that most don’t keep their jobs, and then they fall back on welfare. That’s because (1) the job they find usually pays close to the minimum wage, which doesn’t allow them to support a child (let alone themselves), (2) they don’t have enough education or skill to get a better one, (3) they can’t afford safe child care, (4) they lose Medicaid when they leave welfare and can’t afford private health insurance, and/or (5) the economy is in recession and jobs are hard to come by.
So even if you figure in the savings from moving people off the welfare rolls, you’ve still got to pay this extra freight if you want to move them into work and have them stay there—job training, child care, health care (at least for the kids), and public jobs when there’s nothing available in the private sector.
“Where do we get $2 billion a year?” B has that glassy look in his eyes I see at budget meetings when he doesn’t like what he hears.
No one has a good answer,
I suggest reducing the yearly cap on mortgage-interest deduction from $1 million to $500,000. It would affect only the top two percent of earners and bring in several billion dollars. Add a small tax on estates valued at more than $600,000 when they’re transferred to children (again, affecting only the very wealthiest), and you’ve got more than enough to move people from welfare to permanent jobs. Earmark these taxes so that the public knows that the very rich are helping to pay for jobs for the very poor.
Predictably, Lloyd is opposed. “Confiscatory!” He pounds his index finger on the table.
B has a larger problem. “How do we explain to the public that we’re adding $2 billion of spending a year in order to limit welfare benefits to two years?” he asks. He likes the overall plan, but wants us to go back and think some more about how to pay for it and how to justify it.
The meeting breaks up as so many do, with nothing resolved.
I’m now sure we made a mistake during the campaign. Instead of talking about welfare reform as “two years and out,” we should have used the phrase “two years and work.” Getting poor people into jobs and keeping them there is the goal, not simply cutting them off from welfare. But the campaign phrase has taken on a life of its own, and I don’t have a good feeling about where that life might end.
What if we can’t find the extra money? Worse yet: What if the deficit-reduction crusade gains so much momentum that the public would rather save money by cutting benefits to the poor below current levels than by cutting benefits to the middle class and the wealthy? Spending on poor children—Aid to Families with Dependent Children, food stamps for poor families with kids, and child nutrition—eats up less than three percent of the federal budget, but most Americans think it’s much more than that. The truly big entitlements are Medicare and Social Security, which are doled out more generously to the richest twenty percent of Americans than to the poorest twenty percent. Even the mortgage-interest deduction is a $55-billion-a-year housing subsidy mostly benefiting the middle class and the wealthy, who own their homes, rather than the poor, who mostly rent.
When the knives come out, the poor won’t be able to defend themselves against the big middle-class and wealthy entitlements. Under the banner of “two years and out,” we might end up with millions of poor children on the streets.
I’ve been in a foul mood. It’s just so goddamn hard to make any progress. Deficit reduction is the only game in town. I couldn’t pull off my grand bargain. Sure, the tax code is a bit more progressive than it was when we came to office, but I can’t even get a boost in the minimum wage. B is caught up in health care.
I’ve kept my bad mood to myself. No sense depressing the people who work for me.
Kitty walks in and stands in front of my desk, arms folded. “You’ve been in a rotten mood.”
“I have not. I’m perfectly happy,” I say defiantly.
“That’s bull and you know it,” she says. “Everyone around here is in a tailspin because you’re depressed.”
I’m taken aback. I’d been making such an effort to appear upbeat. “Well, maybe I am a little down right now, but how does anyone know? Why does anybody care?”
Kitty sits on a chair next to my desk, the war veteran about to counsel the new recruit. “You’re an open book,” she says. “You think you’re putting on a good act, but everyone around here can see through it.”
“That’s ridiculous. You’re the captain. People watch you for subtle cues about whether our team is winning or losing, and whether they’re doing what you want them to. Every one of the assistant secretaries and their deputies, along with hundreds of senior staff around here, see that hangdog look in your eyes, the way your shoulders droop. They listen to the hesitation in your voice, and that pathetic little whine you’ve been giving off lately. And they get discouraged. People in your position set the tone. And quite frankly, for the last few weeks that tone has been off-key. In fact, it’s been a bummer.”
I say nothing. Kitty rises from her chair. “You’ve got to lighten up,” she says. “Okay, so you’re not getting everything done that you wanted to. But we are making progress.” She begins ticking off a list on her fingers. “A new law for getting job counseling and training to workers who’ve lost their jobs, another one requiring companies to fully fund their pension plans, a third that’ll give millions of high-school kids the chance to be youth apprentices. We’re implementing the Family and Medical Leave Act. These are victories! And look at this whole department.” Kitty makes a sweeping gesture with her hand. “You’ve reenergized it. It’s active in ways it hasn’t been in years.”
She moves to the door but turns back to deliver a final salvo. “What did you think government would be like, anyway? Did you suppose you could snap your fingers”—she snaps hers—“and America would change? That’s just arrogance, Mr. Secretary. Pure arrogance. And you better learn to be happy with the victories and stop dwelling on defeats that you can’t do anything about, or you’re not going to last long in this job.” Kitty is halfway out the door. I’m no longer looking at her. “And neither am I.” She’s gone before I’ve had a chance to respond. She didn’t want me to respond. Her mission was to deliver the lecture.
Kitty is right about the arrogance. It’s the same arrogance I accuse policy wonks of exhibiting, as if they know what’s best for America and should be able to impose it at will. I need to be patient, to keep perspective. We are making progress, and there’s still time to turn things around for working people and the poor.
Joe Dear, the assistant secretary for OSHA, whose thankless job is to manage the crossfire between business and labor on the passionate issue of workplace safety, relates the following story.
Last October, Robert Julian, a fifty-three-year-old employee at Bridgestone’s tire plant in Oklahoma City, died when his head was crushed in an assembly machine that was supposed to have been shut off before he tried to reset it. In January, another employee’s arm was severely mangled and broken in the same factory when he tried to un-jam another machine that also was supposed to have been shut off. A month ago, a third employee was bashed on the head and badly burned by dye that was supposed to have been secured. And that’s just the last seven months. Bridgestone’s Oklahoma City factory has had a long history of gruesome deaths and injuries. The company’s other plants have similar problems. Last week, a workers head was caught in an assembly machine in its Morrison, Tennessee, factory. Co-workers pulled him out, but not before his face was badly mangled.
OSHA investigators have tried to coax Bridgestone into taking a simple precaution to make sure machines are turned off before employees reset or unjam or clean them—the same precaution that every factory in America is supposed to take. It’s a lock that cuts the power off, which costs only about six dollars per machine to buy and install. But Bridgestone’s executives won’t budge. Joe thinks it’s because they don’t want to give employees the power to shut down the assembly line. The Rubber Workers local might use it for potential bargaining leverage in upcoming contract negotiations.
“We’re proposing a seven-and-a-half-million-dollar fine, the maximum,” Joe says in a monotone. I can tell he doesn’t relish this fight. Bridgestone is a big company, the second-largest tire maker in the world. It’ll drag the case through the courts for years unless we eventually settle for a fraction of that. And when we do settle, OSHA will come under heavy criticism for knuckling under. Worse, the final settlement may not be enough to get Bridgestone to mend its ways: The company may figure it’s cheaper to pay up and continue risking employees’ lives and limbs. It won’t be the first time a company has made that kind of calculation.
I’m indignant. “We’ve got to stop this. Maybe they could get away with this kind of thing under the Republicans, but I’ll be damned if we’re going to let them do this on our watch.” I can feel righteousness coursing through my veins.
Joe looks skeptical. “We can’t go any higher with a fine. We might be able to go to court in Oklahoma City and get an emergency order forcing them to comply there. It’s dicey.”
“But workers are getting killed and maimed. Why not use all our ammunition?” I’m putting on my holster. “Let’s also mobilize public opinion.”
“Public opinion?” Joe’s skepticism deepens.
I explain my theory: “Big companies like Bridgestone spend millions on advertising to boost their public image. If we get this story on television we’ll embarrass the hell out of them and strike fear in the hearts of every other corporation that’s screwing its workers.” I strike the table with my index finger, trying to imitate Lloyd Bentsen (on a subject distinctly unlikely to bestir Bentsen’s index finger).
Joe hadn’t planned on my fury. He doesn’t know how to manage it.
“I want to go out there,” I say, simply. “I’ll deliver the legal papers in person. We’ll fly out Sunday night and do it Monday morning. We’ll alert the media so they can be on hand. Afterward we’ll hold a press conference, maybe with some of the injured workers, even the widows of workers who were killed.”
“Widows?” Joe is incredulous. This is no longer a legal matter. It’s become an issue of morality and public relations. He warms to the idea. “I’m sure Mrs. Julian will help us.”
“Joe,” I ask, “is this situation at Bridgestone as outrageous as it seems?”
“Yeah. It’s bad, chief.”
“Will the employees be with us on this?”
“No question. You’ll be a hero.”
“Okay, then. We go to Oklahoma City.”
I imagine myself galloping into town on a large white stallion, a sheriff’s badge pinned to my vest. Few feelings in public office are more exhilarating than self-righteous indignation—or as dangerous.
Late last night, we met in the federal building in downtown Oklahoma City to plan the final details of today’s sting operation. With me are Joe Dear, Tom Williamson, who is the department’s top lawyer, two security agents, and a press aide. We talk in whispers, although there’s no apparent need. The building is nearly empty.
We plan the route that our two vans will follow to the company headquarters, the precise time of departure, when we’ll alert the press so that they can set up cameras outside the gate and film us as we enter, when we’ll alert the company president so that he has enough time to direct company officials to receive us but not enough to unleash his lawyers and publicists, what I tell the executives inside, and the time and place of the press conference afterward. Mrs. Julian has agreed to appear. The head of the Rubber Workers local is informed. He’s thrilled we’re here, and guarantees strong support from the workers.
Early this morning I place a call to Bridgestone’s president at his home, near the company’s Nashville headquarters. The company is Japanese-owned, and its president of North American operations is Matatoshi Ono. Mr. Ono’s command of English is not all it might be.
“Hello, this is the Secretary of Labor. Is this the president of Bridgestone Tire and Rubber?”
“Yes. My name Ono.”
“I’m sorry to trouble you at home, Mr. Ono, but this is a very important matter and I wanted to be sure to reach you.”
“Home? Okay.”
“Mr. Ono, the United States government is imposing a heavy fine on your company for failing to protect the safety of its workers, and is filing legal papers today to force the company to use a simple safety device.”
“Wha’?”
I repeat the sentence.
“Okay. Okay.”
“Do you understand me, Mr. Ono?”
“Understand? Okay.”
“Would you like me to arrange for an interpreter?”
“Interpreter? Wha’ interpreter? No. Okay.”
“Mr. Ono, I’m visiting the Oklahoma City plant later this morning to deliver the legal papers in person. Please make sure your people receive me.”
“Ready? Okay.”
“Do you have any questions, Mr. Ono?”
“Question? No. Okay.”
The morning is misty. Joe Dear, Tom Williamson, and I, along with two security agents, ride in silence across the flat countryside. I’m nervous. What if they don’t let us through the gate?
A half-dozen TV cameras are waiting at the gate to record the spectacle. The guard allows us through. We park.
“We’ve hit the beach, captain,” says Joe.
“Walk slowly and keep your ammo dry,” I say.
We walk across the lot to the plant entrance. I imagine the scene on the evening news: barely visible through the mist, the silhouettes of America’s runty but courageous Secretary of Labor leading his small battalion of gallant men to their fates, as they take on Industrial Evil.
Once we’re inside, a nervous receptionist asks us to follow her. We walk down a narrow corridor and into a linoleum-floored room with a Formica table in the center, encircled by several chrome-and-plastic chairs. She says that two gentlemen will be with us shortly, then rushes off. Is this an ambush?
Two grim-faced men enter the room and ask us to sit. One is a top executive from company headquarters. The other is the plant manager.
I introduce myself and the others, trying to prevent my voice from betraying my nervousness. “We have come here to present you with court papers alleging that this plant presents an imminent hazard to the safety of its employees,” I tell them gravely. Joe removes a half-inch-thick pile of legal papers from his briefcase and places them in the center of the Formica table. The two men stare at the pile, expressionless.
I continue, more forcefully. “We have urged you to correct these hazards in the past, but they have not been corrected. We have no choice but to seek an emergency order which will require you to equip employees on the assembly line with simple devices to turn off the power when they have to clean or unjam the machines. We’re also imposing a seven-and-a-half-million-dollar fine.”
I look intently at the two men. They stare back. They say nothing.
What now? We haven’t rehearsed this part. Is this it? Are we done? At a minimum, I had expected them to try to defend themselves. This would have given me the chance to express outrage. I would berate them for failing to buy six-dollar locks that could have saved lives and limbs. They might have yelled back about government interference in the free market. At this point I’d coolly explain that the government exists to protect American workers from precisely the kind of callous, contemptuous bottom-line indifference to human life and suffering which they and their company represent. Having verbally vanquished them, I would then rise from my chair and, dripping with disdain, abruptly leave the room, followed by my stalwart team.
But neither of them utters a word. I look to Joe for guidance. Joe returns my gaze. Finally, I stand. The two men stand. Joe and the security agents stand. I extend my hand to one of the men. “Good-bye,” is all I can think of saying. “Good-bye,” is all he says. I shake hands with the other. “Good-bye.” “Good-bye.”
We march back out of the building and across the parking lot. The camera crews are still lingering outside the gate. I try to look determined, like someone who has just summoned the full force of the United States government.
A half hour later, the press has gathered for a news conference at a downtown hotel to hear of the great battle we have engaged. Mrs. Robert Julian, the widow, stands beside me on a raised platform, a frail woman in her late fifties. Around us are several of the employees who have been injured or maimed in the plant, and gathered around them are thirty or so members of the Rubber Workers local.
I’m at the microphone, explaining why I have come in person to Oklahoma City, describing the mayhem that the company has caused and what actions the department will take. I crank up to full throttle, doing a weak imitation of William Jennings Bryan: “We will not allow workers to risk death and dismemberment simply because a company refuses to buy a six-dollar piece of safety equipment. American workers are not going to be sacrificed on the altar of profits. We’re not going to allow a competitive race to the bottom when it comes to the lives and limbs of American workers.”
The workers around me applaud. Mrs. Julian’s eyes fill with tears. There are a few questions from reporters.
Then, having cleaned up Oklahoma City, I ride off into the sunset on the next commercial flight back to Washington. I feel triumphant.
The triumph is short-lived.
Soon after I left Oklahoma, Bridgestone’s vice president for public affairs held a news conference to rebut the Labor Department’s allegations. He claimed the company’s own procedures for servicing machinery were fully adequate. They don’t need the Labor Department in Washington to tell them how to run their business, he says. The recent deaths and injuries were simply unfortunate accidents.
Then he delivers the bombshell: Bridgestone is closing its Oklahoma City tire factory, effective immediately. All 1,100 workers are out of jobs. He blames the federal government. Bridgestone is unable to comply with federal safety standards, he says.
Today’s Daily Oklahoman uses my expedition as an illustration of the worst sort of meddling from Washington. In a bitter editorial, it accuses me of grandstanding for political purposes. Its front-page story quotes angry tire workers—now unemployed—saying I should never have come. One asserts that safety was never a problem at the plant: Assembly machines have to be kept running in order to be serviced properly. Checkmate.
Joe Dear and Tom Glynn are at my round table.
“It’s not going quite as well as we might have wished,” I say, hoping a touch of irony will lighten the mood. They don’t smile.
Joe shakes his head. “I can’t believe they closed the factory on us.”
“So much for public opinion,” says Tom. “If it’s a choice between a dangerous job and no job, the dangerous job wins.”
Kitty enters the room nervously, holding a wire story. “The federal judge in Oklahoma City just refused our request for an emergency order. Bridgestone announced it’s reopening the factory tomorrow. But it won’t reopen if we appeal the ruling.”
“They’ve got us by the short hairs,” says Joe.
Tom Glynn asks Joe if he’d considered, before embarking on the expedition, that the Daily Oklahoman was rabidly right-wing and that the district judge out there had been a Republican state senator before being appointed to the bench by George Bush. The answer is self-evident. Joe is silent. “It might be a good idea to check out these kinds of things before we do anything like this again,” says Tom slowly. He’s livid. He hates sloppiness. Tom’s approach to public management centers on careful planning. Every option, every alternative, every possible outcome, should be considered in advance. The Oklahoma expedition was a case study in impetuousness.
“It’s my fault, Tom,” I say glumly. “It was my idea.”
Self-righteousness blinded me to the pitfalls—not just the politics and ideology of the newspaper and the judge, but the larger political reality. Companies like Bridgestone have access to the best lawyers and public-relations people anywhere. They know how to play hardball when they need to. And they understand how to use to their advantage the deepest fear that haunts blue-collar America today: the fear of losing a decent job.
All I’d considered was the moral superiority of our position, and the thrill of mounting my white horse and galloping into town with guns blazing. I didn’t figure that my stallion was old and limped and that the other side was equipped with surface-to-air missiles. It didn’t occur to me that public opinion might turn so easily against us.
The meeting breaks up. Joe Dear lingers after Tom and Kitty have left. “Sorry, chief.”
“Don’t worry about it, Joe.”
“Bastards.”
“We won’t give up,” I say. “Even if we can’t get the emergency order, we’ll pursue tie fine. It’s big enough to make Bridgestone stop and think.”
But I’m haunted by the idea that the company’s green-eyeshade executives and lawyers have concluded that it’s still cheaper to pay the fine than to give workers the power to stop the machinery when necessary in order to fix it.
Bob Michel is the House minority leader, the chieftain of the Republican tribe. I called him last week for help in getting more funds for job training and new legislation to consolidate all training programs into our “one-stop” centers, and he invited me by. He has a kindly face topped by a shock of white hair, and speaks in a mellifluous baritone. The overall effect is grandfatherly.
Michel has just announced his decision to retire from the House and not seek another term, and I sense his ambivalence and sadness. He seems less interested in talking about job training than about what he sees happening to the House of Representatives, particularly the Republicans.
“This place used to be very civil,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “Republicans and Democrats often saw things differently, of course, but we respected one another. We could work on education and job training, or health care, or welfare, and actually get something done. We respected the institution.”
“You see that changing?”
“Its becoming a different world up here. That’s a big part of why I’m getting out. There’s a new breed. They don’t care about getting anything done. All they want to do is tear things down. The right wing is gaining ground. It will be our undoing, eventually.”
“You mean Gingrich?”
“And his friends.” Michel’s voice grows softer. “They talk as if they’re interested in ideas, in what’s good for America. But don’t be fooled. They’re out to destroy. They’ll try to destroy anything that gets in their way, using whatever tactics are available. They don’t believe in bipartisanship. I don’t really know what they believe in.”
Dinner at the White House, seated next to Hillary. I compliment her on her press conference today. In it she answered charges that she acted illegally a decade ago when she earned $100,000 in the commodity-futures market. She appeared calm and spoke without a trace of anger or defensiveness.
She tells me she finds it hard to believe that the public suspects her of wrongdoing, and she feels badly treated by the press. Maybe that’s why her first impulse when questions were raised about the commodity trades and over “Whitewater,” a real-estate deal in Arkansas dating from the same era, was not to talk about it. But her silence only added to the intrigue. Ever since Watergate, the operating assumption in newsrooms across America is that hesitance to reveal anything is a sign of a cover-up. When pushed for titillating information about personal matters, people in public life no longer have a choice: Let everything hang out immediately or endure the slow torture of a public grilling until everything hangs out later.
Even more frustrating for her is the health-care plan, which is facing strong opposition. Democrats are fighting among themselves and Republicans are savoring the battle. The big-business lobbies cooperated until a few months ago because the plan saves them a bundle of money, relieving them of all their obligations to finance the health care of their retirees. But then the Republicans cracked the whip. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce even fired its top lobbyist for being too cooperative with the White House. Business groups have now decided they don’t want a health plan after all, B’s solicitude notwithstanding. B has already delivered to corporate America what even George Bush was unable to deliver—a shrinking deficit and NAFTA. And he’s carefully refrained from raising the minimum wage or banning striker replacements. No matter. The Republican leadership has decided to wreck B’s health-care plan, and corporate America is dutifully taking direction.
The health-care plan plays into its opponents’ hands. It’s unwieldy. I still don’t understand it. I’ve been to dozens of meetings on it, defended it on countless radio and TV programs, debated its merits publicly and privately, but I still don’t comprehend the whole. In the public arena, nothing is more vulnerable to organized opposition than a huge and complex idea.
Hillary is a proud woman, and she doesn’t take sympathy well. I’m at a loss about how to help her. She’s so intent on seeming strong that she doesn’t realize how much hurt and anger she shows just below the surface. And the press corps are picking up on this cauldron. They smell vulnerability the way a hound dog picks up the scent of a rabbit, and won’t let go. She can’t relax with and befriend members of the press because she’s afraid she’ll burst; they know she’s in pain and resent her aloofness. The relationship can only get worse.
It was probably a mistake for her to have chaired the health-care task force. She had no record of expertise in health care and hadn’t been elected by anyone to do anything. Moreover, Americans feel ambivalent about strong women, especially at this point in the nation’s history, when the wages of so many men are dropping and tens of millions of women have to work to make ends meet. The traditional roles of men and women are in flux, and sensitivities are raw, particularly among workingmen who feel humiliated by their inability to support their families.
Hillary and I are old friends, and I feel comfortable talking with her, the way I do with only a very few people. We share many of the same values and want many of the same things for the country. During the campaign and on several occasions since then, she’s spoken with me of her frustrations about becoming the target for so much of the hostility in the air, and I’ve shared with her my frustrations about the country’s obsession with the deficit to the exclusion of the larger issues of widening inequality and falling earnings for so many. I’m careful not to criticize B, and she’s careful not to try to defend him or conspire with me about how to move him. To do so would be disloyal on both our parts.
The bubble surrounding her and B is much larger and more impenetrable than the bubble surrounding me. She says B can’t leave the White House without notifying the White House press corps, even for a run or a walk or a visit to a friend in the hospital. “It’s a prison.”
“How about you?” I ask. “Do you ever escape?”
For the first time in our conversation, Hillary grins. “Yeah. Sometimes I go biking.”
“Biking? Alone? How?”
“The towpath, along the Potomac. I put my hair up under a baseball cap and wear dark glasses. So many people are there—biking, jogging, walking—they don’t notice me. It’s wonderful.” She giggles.
“Aren’t you afraid you’ll be recognized? You’d be mobbed.”
“I’ve had close calls. Last week, I was biking along when a group of Japanese tourists waved me down. They pulled out their cameras and I thought, Oh Lord, now it starts. But I didn’t want to be rude to them. They seemed so excited.”
“They took your picture, baseball cap and all?”
“No. They asked me if I’d take their picture. They handed me their cameras, several of them. They posed. I snapped. Then they thanked me and walked off, and I got back on my bike.” Hillary laughs. Her laughter is the most uncensored thing about her—full-throttled, sometimes even raucous.
Bob Michel’s observation about the growing mean-spiritedness of the House of Representatives is true of Washington as a whole, maybe even of the nation. The press isn’t what causes Americans to feel this way; it simply mirrors their feelings. Mean-spirited politicians don’t simply appear on the national scene by accident; they’re put there by angry voters whose feelings they reflect. I sense it in my travels around the country: People are surly, resentful, anxious. The economic stresses that have been building for years are taking their toll, and anyone with power and visibility in our society is a potential target of resentment. It’s like the electricity in storm clouds. Hillary is one of the lightning rods.
Tulips, rhododendrons, cherry blossoms, spring grass. Here on the Mall, on a perfect Sunday, with Adam and Sam in hand, I can forget Bridgestone, NAFTA, White House deficit hawks, Wall Street vultures, and the National Association of Manufacturers.
“Art? You want to take us to an art gallery?” Adam is incredulous.
“It’s food for your soul.”
“Food is exactly what we need,” says Sam. “When do we eat?”
We’re about to have a family altercation in open air when a middle-aged man dressed in plaid shirt and jeans interrupts. “Excuse me, aren’t you the Secretary of Labor?”
“Yes, but I’m right in the middle of …”
“Look,” the man says, “I just wanted to tell you that I don’t care what they say. I think you’re doin’ a pretty good job.”
“Thanks.” I’m getting used to backhanded compliments. “Now, if you don’t mind …”
“Problem is,” the man persists, “the economy sucks. They made me a contract worker. You know what that means? I’m doing exactly what I did before, but now I got no health insurance, no pension, no unemployment, no nothing.”
“Daddy, I’m h-u-n-g-r-y.” Sam pulls at my arm.
“Just a minute, Sam.” I turn back to the man. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t …”
“It’s happening all over. That’s all I want to tell you. You’re Secretary of Labor. You need to know these things.”
“Dad, we’re not going to an art gallery.”
“Adam, wait, please.”
“In a minute, Sam.”
I look back and the man is gone.
“We’ve got a problem,” Darla says simply. Darla is the career employee who oversees the department’s budget numbers. She’s tall and angular, with thick glasses set on high cheekbones. Darla works hard, and the long hours and stress haven’t been good for her. One of her colleagues told me she was having dizzy spells. I’ve asked her to take a vacation, but she won’t budge from her post.
For a year Darla has been tutoring me on federal budgeting, but I still haven’t moved beyond the third grade. She begins: “You know how tight the overall budget is for this coming year?” I nod. “Defense is an untouchable. So are entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid. So the real action is going to be in the House and Senate appropriations committees, where the remaining sixth of the budget is divided up.”
“But we don’t need to worry, because the President’s budget makes education and job training a priority, right?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t matter very much,” Darla explains. Every time I think I’ve moved one step forward in this game, it turns out to be almost no step at all. “The appropriations committees aren’t bound by the President’s budget. They aren’t even bound by the way Congress’s own budget committee divides the spoils. The only constraint on them is the overall limit.”
“Okay, so what’s the problem?”
“Each appropriations committee has fifteen subcommittees, each headed by a powerful subcommittee chairman who wants as much as he can get. Every department is under one of those subcommittees, so its budget depends on the success of its own subcommittee chair at negotiating a good deal.” She pauses to catch her breath. “That’s the problem. If the President wants even a little more money for education and job training next year, the money has to come out of the hide of another subcommittee, and no one’s willing to give.”
“But the Democrats are in control. Don’t they get it? Even if defense is a sacred cow, aren’t they willing to shift some money out of completely stupid things we do for corporations—like giant subsidies for agribusinesses or giveaways for corporate advertising abroad—and into education and job training for poor kids and unemployed adults, child care so mothers and single parents can get jobs, public-service jobs if no other jobs are available?” I’m indignant.
It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Darla laugh. “Mr. Secretary, you’re really very funny.”
“I don’t mean to be.”
“Every appropriations subcommittee is surrounded by a huge number of lobbyists, representing every group with an interest in keeping money flowing to it. These are the same groups that provide much of the financing for the campaigns of the members of the subcommittee, Democrat or Republican. The last thing that would ever occur to a subcommittee fighting to maintain a stream of funds for, say, the Agriculture Department’s giveaways to big agribusiness or the Commerce Department’s export subsidies would be to donate the money instead to the subcommittees in charge of the poor and the unemployed.”
Darla has just explained to me the dirty secret behind reducing the budget deficit by cutting spending. There’s almost no way to redirect what’s left to the people who need it most. Powerful special interests will fight to the death to keep their own money pots filled. There’s no National Association of Working Poor. There’s no American Federation of the Penniless and Unemployed. The poor and jobless don’t have political action committees. So as the budget shrinks, they’ll end up bearing a disproportionate share of the sacrifice. This is why welfare is endangered, but not Medicare for wealthy retirees. So-called “entitlement” spending is the fastest-growing part of the federal budget, but most of it goes to the affluent. Households with yearly incomes of more than $100,000 get more money from the federal government every year than do households earning under $10,000.
“I’m going to talk to the President about this,” I say decisively, as much to fortify myself as anything else.
I have to let B know what the appropriators are up to. If he wants to save any shred of the new “investments” he promised during the campaign, he’s got to get moving on this, maybe even phone the appropriations chairs himself. I have to tell him in person. He has to understand the urgency.
His assistant suggests that 6 p.m. would be a good time.
As I enter the Oval, he looks up—tired, expressionless. “Hi, Bob,” he says flatly.
I get to the point. “The appropriations committees are ignoring your budget priorities and leaving no room for more education and job training.”
There’s a long pause. His eyes are glazed. I imagine his mind trying to shift from wherever it has been—California politics, health care, “Whitewater,” Arkansas politics, Boris Yeltsin, Somalia, welfare reform—to my agenda, and I’m suddenly embarrassed to be there. I probably should have gone first to Panetta, who, after all, is in charge of the President’s budget. Or to Mack McLarty, the chief of staff. Or to George Stephanopoulos, The fact is, I don’t think any of them would do a damn thing. They’re too busy putting out other fires. Nothing gets done in this wildly disorganized White House unless B orders it done (and even then there’s no guarantee).
“I’ll call Byrd and Obey,” is all he says. He’s referring to Senator Robert Byrd and Congressman David Obey, the chairmen of the Senate and House appropriations committees. He looks back to his desk and resumes writing.
There’s nothing left for me to do but leave. “Thanks,” I mutter awkwardly, then begin to walk out.
“Bob,” he calls after me. I turn. “I’m trying,” he says. “I’m really trying.” It’s the first time I’ve sensed any defensiveness on his part about the larger mission we came to do, and how far short we are of accomplishing it.
“I know.”
“Good-bye, friend.”
I walk into the corridor, feeling very sorry for the man. He’s bogged down in health care. It’s draining his energies and his political capital.
Three minutes later, I stop by George’s tiny office and am reassured. George is already on the phone with Panetta. “Appropriations are screwing us,” George tells him. “We’ve got to get more funding for the key investments. The President is ripped about this.”
If there’s anything more terrifying than standing behind this red curtain waiting for Jay Leno to introduce me, I haven’t experienced it. Why did I agree to do this?
I’ve been in southern California three days, visiting worksites and community colleges, touring training centers, talking up our new school-to-work apprenticeships and one-stop job centers. This morning I met with a dozen Latino teenagers in East Los Angeles who were learning how to diagnose and repair the electronic gadgets underneath the hoods of new cars. Most of the teenagers had been members of local gangs, several had had run-ins with the law. But the track record of the East Los Angeles Skills Center is almost as impressive as Father Cunningham’s operation in Detroit: More than eighty percent of the kids who finish this year-long program become automobile technicians with starting wages of $12 to $15. The key to turning these young people on, I’m beginning to think, is a combination of dedicated instructors, state-of-the-art equipment to train on, and employers who are willing to hire the kids if they finish.
“Ten seconds,” someone whispers in my ear.
The Leno show apparently wanted someone from the administration, and I was the sacrificial lamb. When they discovered I’d be in Los Angeles they pressed hard. This is going to be a fiasco. Cabinet officers aren’t supposed to be comedians. If I’m funny I’ll demean myself. If I’m not funny I’ll make a fool of myself.
Fear releases adrenaline, which enabled our primitive ancestors to either fight or flee when endangered. But they survived mainly because they also possessed brains big enough to prevent them from getting into situations where they’d have to make the choice. Where did I go wrong? Last week when a Leno producer called, I could have said no. But Kitty and Tom said it would “humanize” the administration. I accepted their advice without bothering to ask what they meant by “humanize.” It’s now clear that they meant acting like an ass in front of eight million viewers.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen, a special treat. The Secretary of Labor of the United States, Robert Reich!”
The band strikes up “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” the curtain parts, and I walk out, trying to look happy. A large APPLAUSE sign is lit and the audience is doing what they’re told. I wave, turn toward the familiar face with the huge jaw, walk a few paces, and sit down on the chair next to Leno’s desk.
He senses my nervousness and tries to calm me by throwing soft-balls. “So, what’s it like to be in the President’s cabinet?”
It sucks. I’m working all the time, don’t see enough of my family, and I’m haunted by the fear of failure, that I won’t accomplish what I came to Washington to do because the President decided he had to make huge cuts in the deficit and use up every remaining ounce of political capital on a monster health-care plan which is going nowhere.
“It’s exciting, Jay.”
“What happens at a cabinet meeting, anyway?”
Nothing. We rarely have them. And when we do, they’re complete bores.
“For example, Jay, at the last one, which was a luncheon, we were talking about a major issue of national security when the President leaned over to me and quietly asked, in complete confidence, ‘Are you done with that?’ It was thrilling.”
The audience laughs. Jay chuckles.
“Now, you’re a cabinet secretary. What does that mean exactly?”
“Originally, it meant you were one of the presidents secretaries, just like secretaries today.”
“So on National Secretary’s Day …”
“He sends me long-stem roses.”
I’m on a roll. The heart is still pumping hard and the adrenaline is racing, but I’m starting to think I may actually survive this.
“Excuse me, Mr. Secretary.” The voice is from someone to my right, another guest, someone I hadn’t noticed when I came onstage. His head is bobbing and all four of his limbs seem to be in motion simultaneously. I vaguely remember his cherubic face and antic grin on Saturday Night Live, but I can’t recall the name. No one warned me I’d have to contend with this guy.
“Yes?”
“You studied at Oxford with the President, didn’t you?” he asks in a high-pitched, nasal voice. Dana Carvey, that’s who—a zany comedian. My fate is now in the hands of a fruitcake.
“Yes.” I’m dreading what comes next.
“Well, did … you … inhale?”
The audience explodes. Eight million people are waiting for my answer. I’m damned either way. Will Leno bail me out? Please bail me out. Please, please change the subject. I look to Leno for help, but he’s laughing too hard.
“I’m s-o-r-r-y,” Carvey whines just as the laughter crests, without giving me a chance to respond. It’s the feigned apology of a ten-year-old who has just set fire to the family cat. The audience explodes again. He works the laugh, keeping it going by playing the naughty boy, dropping his head and clasping his hands in front of his knees.
Then, as this second laugh wave crests, he nuzzles up to me, grins, and asks, “Well, did you?” A third loud burst from the audience.
Fight or flee. The primitive part of my brain is on high alert. I have a strong impulse to choke Carvey to death. A television first: Real-life murder committed live before a studio audience. The other impulse is to run off the set and out of the studio, away from Los Angeles, out of the United States, to a remote island somewhere in the South Pacific where people don’t have televisions and never heard of Jay Leno, Dana Carvey, Bill Clinton, or his cabinet. The rest of my brain holds me back. I say nothing, but the expression on my face must give it all away.
“Sorry!” Carvey regresses into a toddler. He curls up on the couch, knees tucked under his chin, thumb in mouth, emitting little squeals. The audience is roaring. Leno is delighted. In a flash, Carvey is back as a ten-year-old, bringing his face close to mine and pouting, “Are you angry with me? Please don’t be angry.” Then to Leno, with a pout: “He’s angry.” Another roar.
The guy’s amazing. Carvey’s body contorts once again, feet up, head down. He’s now a manic teenager. “Don’t send me to jail! Please don’t send me to jail!” he screams. The audience loves it. It doesn’t matter what I do or say. I can just sit here and smile. I’m the straight man, the prop. Carvey is the show, and he’s doing it brilliantly.
I don’t need Leno to bail me out. In fact, I’m beginning to understand that Carvey has already bailed me out. My conversation with Leno was fine as far as it went—it had two good little laughs—but it couldn’t go on much longer without sagging, and Carvey instinctively knew that. There wasn’t enough energy in it. Carvey jumped in and saved the show, saved Leno, and rescued me. That’s why Leno didn’t intervene. Leno knew it too.
There’s a rhythm and a feel to this business which isn’t entirely different from the rhythm and feel of the business of politics. The metaphor can’t be stretched too far, of course, but as I watch Carvey manage this audience it occurs to me that a gifted political leader does something similar—gauging the subtle mood swings of a public, lifting when they need lifting, leading when they’re ready to be led, marshaling their energies and enthusiasms, always listening for every hint of opportunity. In politics as in entertainment, timing is critical. It’s not just manipulation. Carvey is manipulating this audience, surely, but he’s doing much more. He has developed his craft so skillfully that he’s attuned to the audience; he knows exactly where they are at every instant, understands what they need. So, too, with a skilled politician. The relationship between entertainer and audience, between politician and public, is one of mutual consent and reciprocal power. An audience displeased or disappointed will banish an entertainer who no longer entertains, just as a public will banish a leader who no longer leads. Ronald Reagan, who played both roles so well, understood this instinctively.
The segment is almost over. Leno asks me why I’m in town. In less than fifteen seconds I mention the new school-to-work apprenticeship program and what I’ve seen at the East Los Angeles Skills Center. The audience applauds (probably in response to the APPLAUSE sign), and we’re done. In the blink of an eye, more Americans have now heard about school-to-work apprenticeships than in all the months it was debated and voted on in Congress.
There are reasons why the line between entertainment and politics has blurred.
B is upset, red-faced. “Who the hell set this up? Why do I need to be yelled at about striker replacement? I can’t ask senators to give me this one when I need them on health care, damn it.”
George, Mack, and other aides flutter around, trying to reassure him and explain why all the union presidents are waiting for B in the East Room. “They need to hear from you.” “You haven’t met with them in a long time.” “They’ve done a lot of lobbying for us on health care.”
I had requested the meeting, but it’s not my job to justify it. At times like this I thank my stars that I work ten blocks from here in my own department.
Storm over, B and I head out of the Oval and down the open corridor, skirting the Rose Garden, which connects the West Wing to the Residence. Ambulatory moments like these give us time to talk.
“What bugs them isn’t that you didn’t deliver striker replacement,” I tell him. “They’re angry because they think you didn’t try. You might explain you got a majority in both the House and Senate but couldn’t get the last two votes you needed in the Senate to overcome a Republican filibuster.”
“How do I explain that those last two were the two Democratic senators from Arkansas?”
Good question. If he didn’t get Dale Bumpers and David Pryor, how hard could he have tried? We walk silently into the lower corridor of the Residence and into the elevator taking us up to the main floor, then into the East Room.
As we enter, fifty union presidents stand and applaud coolly. B puts his arm around Lane, who grins uncontrollably. He then shakes every hand, flattering every union president he meets with a moment of un-divided attention, seducing each in turn. Even Bill Bywater turns into cream cheese.
By the time the union presidents take their seats they’re in a far better mood than when we entered the room. In fact, they seem positively tickled to be here. All of them had humble beginnings—pipe-fitters, janitors, construction workers, miners. Most grew up poor, children of Depression and war. And now they sit in the glorious splendor of the East Room of the White House with the President of the United States, who had made each of them feel special. They can hardly believe their good fortune.
B begins speaking. His voice is soft, soothing, reassuring. He talks about the fight over health care and why it’s so important to working people. He says big business is resisting, but he’s going to continue to fight for it. The union presidents applaud. Then he mentions the Family and Medical Leave Act, and shares a touching letter he received from a worker who thanked him for making it possible for him to get off work to spend time with his child who was dying from leukemia, the three last weeks of the child’s life. B commends the unions for leading this fight for years, undaunted by the vetoes of Reagan and Bush. He is proud that this was the first bill he signed into law. The union presidents applaud once again, even more vigorously.
B senses an opportunity to clear the air. He says he is aware that many of them disagree with his decision on NAFTA, but he’s determined that no working person will be hurt by it. The union presidents are silent. He quickly shifts to the economy as a whole, and speaks passionately—with more passion than he has said anything so far—of his commitment to ensuring that every hard-working person in America has better pay, better benefits, more security. This brings the union presidents to their feet, the biggest applause yet.
As they settle in their seats again, B’s voice becomes softer. “I want to talk with you about one last thing,” he says, looking around the room, gauging their mood. “I know how important it is to you to have a law stopping companies from bringing in scabs when your members have to go on strike to get the companies to sit down and bargain with you. I know.” Heads nod in agreement. B’s voice grows even softer, his expression more intense. He knows his audience, knows where they are every instant, understands what they need. “Well, I want you to know that it’s important to me too. And I promise you I’m gonna work on this. I’m gonna try to make this happen.” The union presidents are out of their seats again, the loudest applause of all.
B stands motionless for several seconds as the applause continues, his face still serious, almost grave. Then with impeccable timing he moves toward Lane, shakes his hand and puts his other hand on Lane’s shoulder. Lane beams. The union presidents are still clapping, smiling, now cheering. B walks slowly among them, shaking their hands once again. Those whose hands aren’t in the presidential clasp continue to applaud and cheer. Bywater is clapping vigorously and grinning. When B has shaken every hand, he waves to the group and then quickly departs the East Room.
I remain there with the union presidents. They are elated, touched. I approach Lane, who is still beaming. “Excellent,” he says. “Simply excellent.”
Greenspan has been raising interest rates. He started three months ago and is about to do so again. My colleagues seem intent on egging him on.
Lloyd Bentsen argues that the administration should publicly state that the economy is approaching its “natural” rate of unemployment—the lowest rate achievable without igniting inflation. This, he reasons, will reassure Wall Street that we won’t object if the Fed tightens the reins. And that reassurance should maintain Wall Street’s confidence that we’re committed to the inflation fight, which, in turn, will keep long-term rates well under control.
I’m flabbergasted. “How can we be near the natural rate of unemployment when eight and a half million people can’t find jobs?” I ask.
Bentsen stares at me like I’m a Texas toad.
Others around the table explain to me that the last time unemployment was about to dip below six percent—at the end of the 1980s—wages started to rise, pushing up prices. “We can’t let Wall Street lose confidence.” The familiar chorus.
But the economy is different than it was then. Workers aren’t about to demand wage increases this time around. The 1991–92 recession was a watershed. Most people who lost their jobs weren’t rehired by their former employers. In fact, job insecurity is now endemic. Big companies are downsizing. Medium-sized ones are outsourcing and subcontracting. Out of concern that Lloyd’s proposal will carry, I inject a political note. “Has anybody forgotten?” I ask, far too condescendingly. “We’re Democrats. Even if we are approaching the danger zone where low unemployment might trigger inflation, we should err on the side of more jobs, not higher bond prices. That’s why we’re sitting here, and not the economic advisers to a Republican president.” One or two heads nod in agreement, encouraging me on. “So here’s my proposal: The President should warn the Fed against any further increases in interest rates.”
My idea is rejected out of hand. But, happily, so is Lloyd’s. A standoff is better than the likely alternative.
Lloyd does have a point, and it’s a conversation I wish we had. There’s some level of unemployment that will trigger inflation, and whatever that magic level might be, it will still leave millions of people out of work. A seeming paradox: Millions of people unemployed or underemployed, and yet wages begin to creep upward because employers can’t fill jobs. Paradox explained: They can’t fill the jobs with these people. These people are walled off from the economy because they lack the education, or have the wrong skills, or don’t know what’s required, or are assumed to be too old to make the change.
So whatever the “natural” rate of unemployment, we don’t have to assume it’s fixed there. It can be reduced by helping these people scale the wall.
We keep having these goddamn arid debates about deficits and interest rates, as if they were the only variables, as if we were dealing with immutable laws of physics. But economics isn’t a physical science. Its “laws” are subject to change. And the softer variables—ignorance, isolation, prejudice—make all the difference. I wish I could show them Father Cunningham’s project in Detroit, or the East Los Angeles Skills Center, or the community colleges brimming with adults trying to make something more of themselves, or exceptional companies—like L-S Electro-Galvanizing in Cleveland—that are building loyalty and teamwork while they upgrade employee skills.
We should be puzzling over how we can help more Americans become productive citizens rather than how we can help more bond traders stay confident.
Meeting in the Oval about welfare. Still no resolution on how to come up with the extra $2 billion a year it will take to get welfare recipients into jobs. Today’s question is what to do with welfare recipients who have done everything asked of them—trained for a job, looked for a job, taken a publicly subsidized job (“workfare”)—and yet still can’t secure a real job. Should they and their kids be cut off welfare after four or five years, notwithstanding?
The bleeding-heart old liberals argue that if someone still can’t find a job, they should be kept on.
The tough-love New Democrats argue that unless there’s a strict cut-off point, people will take advantage of the system and never get a real job. They believe that anyone who has dutifully played by the rules can find a real job within four years. They concede the difficulty if the economy is in recession, but recessions don’t last that long. At some point labor markets will tighten, and failure to land a job will be prima facie evidence that the person is shirking.
This is the flip side of the discussion Bentsen and I had two weeks ago. Most of B’s economic advisers are ready to accept the necessity for eight million people to be unemployed in order to soothe the bond market and prevent even a tiny increase in inflation. But B’s tough-love welfare advisers assume that enough jobs will be there for even low-skilled welfare recipients.
We can’t have it both ways. Welfare recipients will be at the end of any job queue. If at least eight million people have to be unemployed and actively seeking work in order to keep inflation at bay, the additional four million on welfare simply won’t get jobs.
I make this point, but I don’t know if the tough-love New Democrats get it. B seems to, but I don’t know that he wants to.
Federico Peña, the Secretary of Transportation, phones to ask me how I discover what’s going on at the White House. I have no clear answer for him. The place is so disorganized that information is hard to come by. The decision-making “loop” depends on physical proximity to B—who’s whispering into his ear most regularly, whose office is closest to the Oval, who’s standing or sitting next to him when a key issue arises.
Tom and Kitty each have their sources over there. I also rely on Gene Sperling and a few other campaign veterans to keep me abreast.
One of the best techniques is to linger in the corridors of the West Wing after a meeting, picking up gossip. Another good spot is the executive parking lot between tie West Wing and the Old Executive Office Building, where dozens of White House staffers tromp every few minutes.
In this administration you’re either in the loop or you’re out of the loop, but more likely you don’t know where the loop is, or you don’t even know there is a loop.
Several of us are waiting in the small anteroom just outside the Oval for a meeting with B, when I glance at a TV screen. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer is announcing from the lawn outside the White House that Mack has been fired as chief of staff and Leon Panetta is taking his place. Suddenly all eyes here are glued to the set—Rubin’s, Sperling’s, Tyson’s, mine.
“I can’t believe it,” says Laura.
“What the hell is going on?” asks Rubin.
“Jeee-sus,” says Gene.
I’m as shaken as the others. Our distress has nothing to do with the merits of the decision. Most regard Leon as effective and affable. I like him, even though he’s a deficit hawk with the political inclinations of a moderate Republican. Poor Mack has been unable to impose discipline on a chronically undisciplined president and a chaotic White House staff. What’s so galling is that the decision was made without any of us having a clue. Laura, Bob, and Gene spend most of their waking lives within these walls (Gene spends all of his waking life here, and then some) and yet didn’t hear a word of it. At this very moment we’re inches away from the Oval, and yet we might as well be in Tahiti.
I now know what it must feel like to be inside the central palace in a banana republic during a coup d’état, when the only reliable information comes from Cable News.
So much for my corridor technique. Who’s in the loop? Is there a loop? Only Wolf Blitzer knows for sure. I have to restrain myself from dashing outside to ask him what’s going on in here in the White House.
I’m losing confidence that my memos are getting to B. And even when they are, a fair number leak to the press.
I ask Hillary for advice. “Send them to me,” she says. “I’ll make sure they get to him. Use blank sheets of paper without any letterhead or other identifying characteristics. Just the date and your initials.”
Now I have my own loop.
The mock $3 million check from the Department of Labor is five feet long and two feet high, but its backed by real money. I hold up one side of it for the cameras, and the mayor holds the other. The mayor is six feet six inches tall, so the big check is at an angle. No one seems to mind. The three hundred or so people gathered here in the community center roar their approval.
They are poor, mostly black, and the money is for a one-stop job center that’s needed here more than all the speeches and testimonials could possibly convey. That doesn’t stop the speeches and testimonials. Every local pol wants some of the credit. After the mayor come the congressman, the state rep, every member of the city council, the chair of the school board, the director of the local Job Partnership.
It’s sizzling hot in here, humidity close to a hundred percent. Everyone in the crowd and onstage is drenched in sweat. Yet the speeches and testimonials go on. And every speaker elicits a thunderous foot-stomping, hand-clapping response. Twenty so far, and no letup. I’m going to die.
Three million dollars won’t go far. It’ll pay for rent, a bank of telephones, the salaries of six job counselors and three school guidance counselors, and some school-to-work apprenticeships for high schoolers. The speeches and the enthusiasm they generate seem disproportionate to these modest measures.
Yet it’s as if the reservoir of enthusiasm has been dammed up for years, just waiting for the proper occasion to burst. A small job center—and the mere possibility it represents for getting good jobs—is enough. The various speakers, for their part, have been so thirsty for appreciation that they’ll wait forever in this oppressive heat for a chance to claim some.
When the ceremony is over, I wander across the street from the community center. Several teenage girls are sitting on the front steps of a two-story brick housing project in the neighborhood. They talk and laugh with one another until they notice an extremely short white guy coming toward them with a security guard trailing behind, and they freeze.
I tell them I’m the Secretary of Labor. They don’t move. I explain that my job is to help people get jobs. They still don’t move. I ask them their names.
Without turning her head toward me, one of the girls answers in a tiny voice: “Alicia.” Then come the others: “Sheela.” “Tiffany.” “Aramelia.” “Sandra.”
“Nice to meet you, girls.”
They mumble and look embarrassed.
“We got our report cards today,” Alicia says, finally breaking the silence but still looking away.
“Ax Alicia how she did,” Tiffany offers, with a giggle.
I ask. Alicia takes an envelope out of her pocket and carefully removes a piece of paper, still averting her eyes. She hesitates and then, quickly, hands it to me. Four As and one A minus. “Wow,” I say, handing it back to her. “This is terrific, Alicia.”
She whispers “thank you,” and the smile broadens into a toothy grin.
“Alicia’s smart. She says she gonna be rich,” Tiffany tells me in a mocking tone. “She gonna take that report card and turn it into a b-i-g job. That’s what she think.”
“No way,” says Sheela.
“Way too!” Alicia shoots back.
“No one gonna be rich from here, less they deal drugs,” Sheela tells Alicia. “No one gonna be a nothin’ from here. Girl, you don’ know whatchyou talkin’ ’bout.”
“Yes I do,” says Alicia defiantly.
I’ve started a war. They all pile on.
“Rich, my ass.”
“Yo’ mom’s on welfare. Yo’ dad’s a bum.”
“No jobs here.”
“You out of you’ mind, girl.”
“Rich? Stupid more like it.”
“Honey, you can take that report card and shove it up where you can’ see it, ’cause it don’ mean nothin’ here.”
After a while Alicia stops defending herself, and the other girls turn their backs on her and walk off together, laughing. Alicia carefully puts the card back in its envelope, and the envelope into a pocket. She looks crestfallen. She turns toward me as if about to ask a question, but says nothing.
“It is a great report card, Alicia,” I say.
“You … really think so?” she asks hopefully.
“I do. And I know about these sorts of things. I know about jobs.
You keep working hard, and you will get a good job.”
She smiles and then skips away.
I’m struck by the extremes I find here: unwarranted enthusiasm among the adults for a modest jobs center; deep cynicism among the young about the possibility of ever getting a good job. How can such hopefulness and hopelessness coexist on opposite sides of the same street? And why are they allocated in a way that seems to defy age—optimism in those with experience, pessimism in those without?
Is it that the adults who have bothered to gather in the stifling community center are the few who dream dreams large enough to keep them coming to such ceremonies despite years of disappointments? Is it that the girls who reject Alicia’s dream are afraid to be ambitious because of all the disappointments they’ve witnessed even at their young age?
Darla calls in the middle of family dinner. My heart sinks. It’s the first time I’ve been home for dinner in a week. Darla calls only when there’s bad news.
“Trouble, Mr. Secretary.”
“What this time?”
“I’m in Gephardt’s office,” she explains. Dick Gephardt is the majority leader of the House. “The House just voted an amendment to the appropriations bill which adds money for neighborhood health clinics by stripping it from job training and OSHA. You’ve got to get down here right away. We have to get them to reconsider and reverse the vote.”
Three months ago, she sounded the alarm because Congress wasn’t putting enough money into our appropriations bill. I told B, who made sure that $2 billion was added—enough to keep funds flowing to poor schools and add a few more one-stop job centers. I thought the problem was fixed. Now another crisis.
Sam wants to know when I’m coming back to the dinner table. Waffle is barking in the ear-piercing way that only a beagle can. I ask Sam to wait, and I put my finger in my ear so I can hear Darla more clearly.
“Darla, please slow down. Step by step.”
“We don’t have much time.” She takes a gulp of air. “Here’s the problem. Our appropriations bill also covers the Department of Health and Human Services. The same subcommittee deals with both departments.”
“But that was never a problem before.”
“Normally, it isn’t. Both departments serve mostly the same populations—poor, unemployed, low-wage. The advocates for one don’t fight with the advocates for the other. This time it’s different.”
“Why?”
“Health care. A bunch of Democrats don’t want to vote for the President’s bill, but they want to be on record in favor of something to do with health care, for cover. Neighborhood health clinics are the perfect fig leaf. Meanwhile, a bunch of Republicans have been looking for a chance to cut OSHA so they can crow to the business lobbyists. The two groups put the package together late today and jammed it through.”
“You think we can get it reversed?”
“Possibly. But we’ve got to move quickly. We’ve got a few hours at best. If we don’t persuade them tonight, they’ll be on to other business tomorrow, and then it’s summer recess.”
“Call Tom, Kitty, Joe, Maria. We’ll need the whole team. Meet in fifteen minutes in Gephardt’s office.” If Joe Dear’s OSHA is threatened, Maria Echeveste’s Wage and Hour Division can’t be far behind.
“Right. Bye.”
So much for family dinner.
The odds are against our amassing enough firepower to get the House to reverse itself, but we can’t afford not to try.
I check in with Donna Shalala at HHS. She’s comfortable with the strategy. She doesn’t want to give any Democrats an easy out on health care. But she’s not available to help right now. Sometimes the smell of defeat spreads like skunk, and savvy people don’t get anywhere near it.
By the time I arrive, the rest of the team is there. We go over the list of those who voted for the amendment, and decide who might be persuaded to switch. Then we divide up the shorter list. I’m assigned the ones whose arms will need the sharpest twisting. We agree to reconvene in two hours and compare notes. I feel like Mickey Rooney in one of those old flicks where the kids mobilize to raise money for the orphanage that’s about to close. “It’s a crazy idea,” shouts Mickey, “but it just might work!”
How to find my targets? On nights like this when legislation is being pushed through just before recess, they could be milling anywhere. I ask a Capitol security guard where he thinks members might be congregating between votes.
“It’s their first break since five o’clock,” he says dryly. “They’re hungry. Try the House dining room.” Mental note: When plotting strategy, never forget the primacy of bodily need.
I fly down the marble steps, across an inner court, through several passages and doorways, and into the well-appointed House dining room.
I’ve struck gold. Hundreds of members are there—telling stories, making deals, joking, holding forth, intoxicated by the late-night votes and the pending summer recess.
I make my way around and between tables. The mood is festive.
“Mr. Secretary! What brings you out on an infamous night like this?”
“Apparently the administration just can’t get enough of us!”
“Mr. Secretary, you’re working late. Hope you get time-and-a-half.”
Republicans dine with Republicans; Dems with Dems. I pass a Republican table where Newt Gingrich is holding forth. “Mr. Secretary, tell your boss he’s a nice man but his wife shouldn’t be making policy. Health care is dead.” Cheers and laughter.
From one of Gingrich’s colleagues: “Mr. Secretary, take a good look around. Come next January, there’ll be more Republicans than Dems eating here, and the food will be better.” More cheers.
I see one of my prey at the far end of the room. I’m next to him in a flash.
“Congressman! How are you tonight?” I ask. It’s only when they’re seated and I’m standing that I can do B’s move—placing left arm around their shoulder, grasping their right hand, looking deep into their eyes. The move surrounds its victim in warm ooze and allows a second of complete dominance in which to press a point.
“Just fine, Mr. Secretary.” He knows why I’m here. He struggles to escape. “I was just …”
“Dave, I need your help,” I say. This also is part of B’s technique. Get to the help line as fast as possible. Stops them dead.
“We need neighborhood health clinics in my state, Mr. Secretary.”
Dave’s smart. He knows not to be defensive.
“I understand, Dave. But it’s gonna hurt OSHA, and you’ve got a lot of working people out there. And it’ll take a big slice out of job training. Popular programs, Dave.” I keep my arm around his shoulder, my face close to his.
He turns his head away for an instant and I know I’ve got him. I can feel the gear-wheels in his brain doing the computation. He needs job-training grants in his district. He needs organized labor in the next election. He doesn’t want to directly deny the request of a cabinet officer in his own party’s administration.
“Besides, Dave”—I try to time this last point to coincide precisely with the instant when he is most unsure of the wisdom of his position—“you’re already on record for neighborhood health clinics. You don’t need this vote.”
Silence. His voice is softer. “Well, you got a point, Bob. Let me think about it some more.”
There’s no time. I need to tell the others on my list that he’s joined us in order to leverage their votes. I remove my arm from his shoulder and sit down in the seat next to him. I speak slowly and intently, as if the future of mankind depended on his decision. “I wouldn’t be down here if it weren’t so important, Dave, Can I count on you on this one?”
“Sure,” he says softly. We shake hands.
I thank him and move on to my next mark.
It could be Tupperware or a used car. Selling is selling. I’m still a rank amateur. This dining room is filled with far better. The Oval Office is occupied by the best in the business. The evening progresses. Four of my five marks agree to change their votes.
We reconvene at 10:30 p.m. to compare lists. We’ve got Gephardt’s commitment to reconsider the vote first thing tomorrow, and it looks like we’ve assembled all the votes we need to get the money back.
My team is ecstatic. Darla’s otherwise dour face opens into a wide grin. “Congratulations, Mr. Secretary. You’re a real … politician.”
“Coming from you,” I laugh, “that’s high praise.”
I’m home at midnight. The boys are long asleep. Clare greets me at the door, “Well, did you win?”
“Win? Not really. We prevented a big loss.”
Clare turns up the stairs with a knowing smile. “In this town, avoiding a big loss counts as a win.”
Among the many things about which I know little, two stand out: collective bargaining and baseball. Ignorance about the first has not been a problem. We’ve had only two big strikes so far, and each I’ve handed off to national mediators.
Ignorance about baseball, however, is a major handicap. Men bond through baseball talk. To converse knowledgeably about who hit what today, which team is leading and which trailing, who should be traded for whom, is to smooth the way into hard-nosed deals. But I am a baseball illiterate. I can’t do the smoothing.
Both of these wellsprings of ignorance are about to be plumbed. Major-league baseball players are hinting at a strike. Players want free agency, the right to sell themselves to the highest bidder; owners want just the opposite, a limit on players’ salaries. The 1994 season may be ruined.
I care, not because tens of millions of baseball fans care but because the administration could be blamed if this contest between rival groups of millionaires turns out badly. Conversely, B might get some credit if we saved this national symbol from self-destructing. Moreover, without baseball, blue-collar America will be even more depressed than it is now, and blue-collar blues aren’t good for the party in power in a midterm election year.
I’d rather not get involved, but there are already murmurings from the White House. B’s poll numbers are starting to drop. Health care is dying, and “Whitewater” is gaining a life of its own. The House and Senate Banking Committees started hearings on Whitewater just last week. A breakthrough on baseball would give the White House a welcome lift.
Bruce Lindsey, B’s confidential assistant, phones: “You guys doing anything about this baseball thing?” Translated: The President wants to know if you’re on top of this.
“Been following it, Bruce.” Translated: No.
“Keep me posted.” Translated: The President wants you to get on the stick.
Fenway Park is a Boston grande dame who has seen better days. No fancy skyboxes for her, no dome, no chrome and plastic around her edges, no electronic wizardry. Her wooden bleachers on clunky steel girders are good enough for Red Sox fans.
I’ve been here exactly twice before, both times at Adam’s insistence. The little I know of the game I’ve learned from him, whose pitching led the Cambridge Dodgers to an all-city 1993 Little League championship. He’s with me today, as the Sox take on the Cleveland Indians under the brightest-blue sky of the summer.
Today is also likely to be the last home game before the strike, maybe the last home game of the season. Tom suggested I go to this game, both as a gesture of administration concern and as a kind of final salute to the home team. He guessed the press would be interested. At least we might get a good press photo for Bruce Lindsey to show B.
As usual, Tom’s right. But he underestimated: At least five TV cameras wait for us as Adam and I make our way to our seats. They’re all over me, lenses and mikes shoved in my face. The questions are dead serious:
“Mr. Secretary, what’s the administration’s strategy for dealing with this conflict?”
“Are you going to use shuttle diplomacy?”
“How can you get these warring parties to agree?”
It’s as if I’ve become secretary of state. This is baseball, for Chrissake.
I use the quip Adam has given me. “Bob Feller said it best when he said baseball is for kids. Grownups only screw it up.” I’ve never even heard of Feller, but it seems to satisfy. The cameras get their sound bite, the reporters their quote of the day.
Adam stays safely out of range. He jumped at the chance to join me today, but I warned him to stay clear of the cameras. At thirteen, he’s just too young. They’ll twist anything they can get from him into a pretzel of nationwide embarrassment.
A reporter standing on the fringe of the crowd notices him. Tall for his age, lanky, blond, and pink-cheeked, he doesn’t look like my genetic material—but the reporter sees us sharing glances, and pounces. “Are you the secretary’s son?”
“Mmmm … yes.”
I watch it happening but can’t stop it. I want to reach out and save him—throw my jacket over his head, yell for the police—but it’s too late. All five cameras turn on my poor son, suddenly captured like a firefly under glass.
Microphones are pushed into his face, which is now crimson. Then a rifle-shot question zings toward him, a lethal bullet. “Who do you thinks right, the players or the owners?”
How could they? It’s one thing to try to trick me into saying something I shouldn’t. That’s the way the gotcha game is played. But to try this on a thirteen-year-old is contemptible. I want to shout, “Stop! Unfair! Leave him alone!” but I’m on the other side of the clump of reporters and cameras, helpless.
Adam peers into the cameras and says with complete precision and clarity: “My friends and I don’t care whose fault it is. We just want them to play the game.”
Stunning. My son is destined to become either a diplomat or a political hack. The cameras and reporters love it.
The Sox win 4–1. After, the Sox manager takes us to the locker room. I see huge men taking off dirty uniforms, but for Adam it is a land of enchanted giants. He was never much impressed with the White House or its occupants, but here he is dumbfounded. As we move from locker to locker, I introduce the two of us. None of the hulks has the faintest idea who I am or why I’m here, but they see Adam and reflexively reach out to sign the baseball that has materialized in his hand. He offers it to them as if lifting a golden chalice to the gods. His eyes are wide, his mouth is open, he whispers reverently: “That’s Mo Vaughn.… That’s John Valentin.… That’s … Roger Clemens.”
Outside the locker room, a tall old man walks toward us. He’s unsteady on his feet but has the air of the lord of this manor. Adam knows in an instant. He pulls on my arm. His whisper turns into a high-pitched squeal. “Dad, Dad … Do you know who this is?” I don’t. Adam sucks in his breath. “It’s Ted Williams.”
The old man says hello and courteously shakes Adam’s hand. I’m afraid Adam is about to faint. The old man walks on, but Adam doesn’t move. He just stares at the hand that shook Ted Williams’s hand. It’s the same one that has shaken Bill Clinton’s hand, but without the same effect. I won’t tell Adam that the legendary Ted Williams is also a legendary Republican.
We’re leaving the park when I’m tapped on the shoulder.
“Es-cuse me, please,” says a middle-aged man with large brown eyes and thick black hair. A number is pinned to his overalls, signaling he’s a Fenway vendor. “I know you here about strike,” he stammers. “I hope you stop it.”
“I’ll try,” I say with a quick smile, eager to move on.
“My wife and I, we sell the peanuts.” A small, thin woman stands behind him, holding an empty crate. “This is our work. We need twenty-one more games this summer, or we can’t get through the winter.” He stares at his feet. “I sorry to bother you, but please do what you can.”
“I’ll try,” I say again, this time breaking away. The world would be so much simpler if conflicts among the rich and the vain didn’t hurt the poor and the innocent. Damn. Greedy men are about to stop baseball because they can’t agree on how to divide up $2 billion a year. The ones who will really get nailed are the thousands of vendors, restaurant workers, hotel workers, garage attendants, concessionaires, grounds-keepers, technicians, and clerks who bring home a tiny sliver of the take.
Roger Altman resigned today. As Bentsen’s loyal deputy and triumphant chief of the NAFTA war room, Altman had been in line to become Treasury Secretary when Bentsen left. But his life took a different turn after the Whitewater story broke and he was somehow involved in notifying people in the White House about a pending Treasury investigation into an Arkansas savings-and-loan bank involving one of B’s and Hillary’s old partners. I don’t know exactly who’s alleged to have told what to whom, and what was illegal about any of it, but Alt-man seems to have become the fall guy. Bentsen quickly distanced himself, as did everyone else, leaving Altman to twist slowly in the wind.
A congressional committee has interrogated Altman for hours on end. The immediate issue isn’t the tangled tale itself but the even more abstruse question of whether Altman misled the committee when he first testified about it. The transactions were so complicated that anyone hearing about them could easily have been confused. Nonetheless, innuendos have been piled atop innuendos, all wrapped in vague accusations of wrongdoing, creating the overall impression of moral turpitude on Altman’s part. He had no choice but to resign.
I got to know Roger during the economic transition. He had taken leave from his Wall Street investment banking practice to volunteer his services. I found him to be able and talented and, surprisingly for a Wall Street banker, deeply committed to improving opportunities for the poor and the working class. And now he leaves Washington under a dark cloud, his reputation in ruins. He’s been treated despicably.
This town is as dangerous as was described by the friend who warned that if you prick your finger here, the sharks will bite off your arm. How can we attract good people to government if they’re treated like this? How can we expect anyone in government to be innovative when one false move can ruin a career? There are thorns everywhere. Fingers are easily pricked. I’m worried for my own safety.
Don Fehr is the head of the baseball players’ union. He’s a chubby man with small eyes and a perpetual scowl. He is also stubborn, pugnacious, distrustful, and very rich.
Bud Selig is the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, representing all twenty-eight club owners. He is slightly stooped and pale, with thinning hair and a perpetual scowl. He’s also stubborn, pugnacious, distrustful, and very rich.
Both men talk endlessly in monologues that never quite respond to questions asked or comments given. Each is convinced that the other is out to screw him. Neither will budge. If there is a hell, it is a small room in which one is trapped for eternity with both of these men.
I came to Washington to help Americans get good jobs. Instead, I’m spending countless hours trying to get multimillionaires to stop acting like two-year-olds in a sandbox. Meanwhile, others lurk on the edge of the sandbox.
A phone call: “Hello, Mr. Secretary, this is Jimmy Carter. I know you’re trying to resolve the baseball strike. We’ve had some success mediating conflicts abroad, and I just want you to know I’m available if you need me.” Translated: I’ve already shown America I’m better than Clinton at settling highly visible international conflicts. I’d like to show America that I’m better than he is at settling a highly visible domestic one as well.
Me: “Thank you so much, Mr. President. It’s thoughtful of you and I appreciate your offer. I’ll let you know how you might be of help.” Translated: Forget it.
Another call: “Bobby, this is Bill. How you doing on the strike?” Translated: What the hell’s going on? The World Series may be canceled for the first time in a century—and on my watch—unless you settle this thing soon.
Me: “We’re doing a lot of talking. Players want free agency, owners want a salary cap. The only way to give players free agency and not have the stars all end up with the wealthiest clubs is for the big clubs to share some of their revenues with the smaller ones, maybe through a tax on team payrolls. Each side would have to give a bit. That’s what we’re working on now.” Translated: I’m getting nowhere.
I’m imperial marshal of the Wausau Gala 1994 Labor Day Parade. Perched on top of the back seat of an open convertible—a bright-green 1958 Buick—I wave to the few people who sit in lawn chairs along Main Street. Behind the convertible is the Wausau High School Marching Band, and behind them the Wausau Fire Department. Then come several groups of men and women holding banners like “Local #311 SEIU” and “Proud to Be from Pipefitters Local #44” and “International Union of Electrical Workers Local #353.” Far more people are in the parade than are watching it. A block ago, I counted only six along the sidewalk.
I’m here because Congressman David Obey—guardian of the blood bank, owner of the vegetable garden, keeper of the appropriations lifeline—asked me to be. His wish is my command. Bespectacled and sharp-nosed, Obey looks like an owl. He’s perched next to me, waving at anything capable of waving back.
Its a bright, sun-drenched day with a hint of fall in the air. Between waves, Obey talks to me about November.
“I’m worried,” he says, then waves to a middle-aged woman in a lawn chair, who smiles and waves back.
“That bad?”
“I’ll do okay. But—geez—we’re gonna lose a lot of good people.” Another wave. He calls out, “Hiya, Gert!”
“Think we could lose the House?”
“Could be.” Obey waves to a bald man holding an American flag, and yells, “That-a-boy, Henry!”
“What’s the problem?”
“Don’ know exactly. A lot of things. NAFTA. Health care gone to hell. Gays in the military. Guns. Whitewater. This dame Paula Jones. Hillary. The baseball strike. No specific thing, just a lot of bad feeling. Working folks out here don’t much like your boss. ’Specially men. And they’re gonna take it out on us. Hey, Arch! How ya doin?”
“I think there’s a link.”
“Wha’?”
“The things you listed. I think they’re tied together.”
“What are you, a campaign consultant? Eileen! Lookin’ good!”
“How’s the job situation out here?”
“Jobs are coming back, but folks aren’t happy. Wages are stuck in the mud. Lotta layoffs, all over. Briggs and Stratton dumping two thousand in Milwaukee. You can feel it here. Guys are finding new jobs, but they pay shit. Hey, Tim!”
“That’s it. Emasculation.”
“I don’t follow you. You’ve been a professor too long. Ernie! How’s Ruth? G-o-o-o-d!”
“Listen, Dave. It all fits. Blue-collar men are losing good jobs or fear they will. Their wages are dropping, and they have to take women’s jobs in fast food, retail sales, hospitals, and hotels. Their wives have to work harder. They’re angry and humiliated and scared. They thought Clinton would change all that. But nothing happened. It only got worse. NAFTA and global trade scares the hell out of them. And then this guy wants to take away their guns. He wants to put gays in the army. He doesn’t stand up to a bitch from Arkansas who accuses him of hanky-panky. He puts his bossy wife in charge of health-care reform, which crashes. He handed over the family finances to her, and she wheeled-and-dealed in commodities and a land deal which went to hell. Get the picture?”
“Not sure. Hey, Emma!”
“Blue-collar men already lost one testicle before Clinton. Now they’re both gone, and they’re furious.”
Obey doesn’t respond for several minutes. He waves at the next person sitting in a lawn chair on the sidewalk. “Beatrice, you look beautiful!” Then he turns to me. “You’re either a genius or you’re nuts. If I were you, I wouldn’t share that theory with anyone else.”
I’ve been on the road for several days, and already my hand aches from shaking too many big blue-collar hands and my face hurts from maintaining a perpetual smile.
The view from the campaign trail isn’t exactly encouraging. Dems are running scared.
Members of the cabinet are expected to help in the campaigns. We’re called “presidential surrogates,” which sounds highfalutin but actually means that neither the President, the First Lady, Chelsea, the Vice President, Tipper Gore, Barbra Streisand, nor any other star could be bothered to appear. My marching orders come from a sleep-deprived campaign director residing in a rabbit warren of the Democratic National Committee headquarters, who tells Kitty which candidate needs me where and when. Kitty charges my travel and expenses to each campaign, but my time is assumed to be free, which may explain why the demand seems infinite. Campaigning is not a glamorous business: living-room fund-raisers featuring cucumber-and-cheese sandwiches; mildew-scented motel rooms in places known only by their all-night convenience stores across the road; phone banks staffed by old people who can’t read the numbers on the printouts and keep apologizing for misdialing; hours of travel in cramped vans; tiny propeller-driven connections from boonville to boonville. You have to want it bad to put up with this. Anyone who thinks members of Congress are in it for the money or the glory hasn’t campaigned with them. This much effort directed at earning money would yield vast riches in no time. And you can forget about the glory; this is shit work.
Today it’s Flint, for Congressman Dale Kildee, a mild-mannered fellow whose major distinction has been a singular attentiveness to getting federal money into his district, Kildee has been in Congress for eighteen years. He’s a close ally of Bill Ford and shares Ford’s animus toward NAFTA and global trade. He’s a charter member of the Keep the Jobs party.
I listen to Kildee deliver the same lines and tell the same stories fourteen times before small groups of supporters. I tell each of the groups he’s a fine fellow. I put a shovel in a hole in a field outside town to commemorate the beginning of construction on Flint’s new Job Corps center, and compliment Kildee on his tenaciousness in seeking funding for it. My total nutritional intake for the day is two Burger Kings.
Flint is bleak and boarded up, most of its manufacturing jobs having disappeared. Campaigning here is like staging a pep rally in a graveyard. Unemployment is in double digits. The economic recovery igniting the Midwest hasn’t reached Flint and may never reach it. A decade and a half ago, GM employed more than 70,000 people here, about a quarter of the entire adult population. Wages were good, and benefits—health and pension—were among the best in the country. Today a small fraction remains, and the company is planning more layoffs next year.
Kildee talks about jobs, but the ones he has in mind involve construction of federal projects like the Job Corps center. “This Job Corps center will mean two hundred more jobs right here in Flint!” he crows, without bothering to mention that Flint has been losing at least that many jobs every month for the last fifteen years.
Memorandum to the President [on blank stationery]
From: RBR
Re: The economy, politics, and message
We’re in danger of losing the House in November, maybe even the Senate.
Yes, the economic plan is paying off: More than four million new jobs have been added, paying better on average than the old; the economy is growing nicely. But there’s a huge amount of frustration and disillusionment in the land. Only a relatively few are sharing in the newfound prosperity. The 112 million old jobs continue their fifteen-year slide. Median wages dropped in 1993, and they’ve continued to drop this year. The middle class has become an anxious class.
Only the richest five percent of Americans are gaining much ground. In fact, their share of national income in 1993 (48.2 percent) is the highest on record, while the share going to the bottom three-fifths is the lowest on record. The gap is the widest since the Census began collecting the data almost thirty years ago.
Nor is the recovery improving the lives of a large group of American children: 22.7 percent of them were impoverished in 1993, a higher proportion than in 1992—in fact, the highest since 1964. In 1977, by contrast, only 16.2 percent of American children were in poverty.
In 1992, Americans voted for “change” because so many were losing ground. Your economic plan spurred the recovery, but didn’t stop the slide. As a result, these Americans feel betrayed. They’re likely to vote for “change” again in 1994.
Polls show that the voters who are most alienated from the administration are adults without college degrees, whose incomes have dropped the most. Many are “Reagan Democrats,” who were slowest to rally to you in 1992, are still distrustful of government, and are most likely to desert the Democrats this November. Others are the working poor, so disillusioned with politics that they’ve stopped voting.
The main economic strategies you’ve embarked on—deficit reduction and free trade—won’t, in and of themselves, reverse the slide.
Deficit reduction has added to national savings and initially reduced long-term interest rates, which has helped middle-class borrowers. But unless the nation embarks on a massive program of lifelong learning—beginning with preschoolers and extending through people’s working lives—there’s little hope of turning things around for the bottom half. Research shows that each year of additional schooling raises someone’s future wages by an average of 12 to 16 percent. Yet the nation can’t invest on the scale necessary to boost earnings and reduce inequality if we stay on the present course. Cutting the deficit—without raising taxes, slashing defense spending, and taking on sacred cows like Medicare—leaves no room. Besides, the deficit is now only 2.4 percent of the nation’s domestic product, its lowest in fifteen years. No reason to do more. Free trade is similarly good for the economy overall, but its benefits aren’t shared equally. The higher-skilled and better-educated gain a global market for their services, while those with low skills or no skills have to compete with lower-wage workers around the world. Here again, the main answer lies in better education and training. Otherwise, trade merely widens the gap between the two groups.
Another part of the answer requires that profitable companies share part of their burgeoning profits with their employees, instead of simply seeking to put a lid on wages. There was once an implicit social compact in this nation which dictated that as companies did better, so should their workers. That compact has come undone. What’s the answer here? Stronger unions; looser monetary policy (so interest rates fall and labor markets tighten); perhaps tax incentives to encourage companies to share profits and upgrade skills rather than keep a lid on wages or fire workers.
The most important thing you (and other Democrats) need to do between now and the midterm election is acknowledge the problem. Recognize the frustrations and fears of a large segment of the workforce. Talk about the challenge of widening inequality. Talk about the importance of education and training. Talk about the responsibilities of profitable corporations to share the good times with their employees.
Secondly, take some immediate steps to save your key investments in people: Fence them off within a separate trust fund immune to budget cuts, so you can start building them up again; propose giving families a tax deduction (or, better yet, a refundable tax credit) covering a portion of the costs of post-secondary education and training; propose consolidating all job-training programs and instead provide vouchers which unemployed can cash in at community colleges to get job counseling and new skills.
Finally, signal your clear intention to raise the minimum wage. It will help workers at the bottom (the average minimum-wage worker brings home half the family income), and have a “ripple effect” upward on working-class wages.
Forty people are gathered in the back room of a vegetarian restaurant here—mostly lawyers, professors, architects, and financial types from San Francisco—to contribute money to Dan Hamburg’s congressional race. The group is quiet, cordial, and professional: wine-sipping Democrats. Its 10 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, and I’m exhausted from campaigning for candidates up and down the California coast.
Hamburg has no distinguishing characteristics apart from the bolos he substitutes for neckties. He’s been in Congress two years, but I haven’t heard his name spoken once, and I haven’t seen anything about him in the papers. He tells me he favors legalizing marijuana and protecting redwood forests, but he hasn’t exactly crusaded for these causes. So far he has left no footprint in Washington.
I agree to say a few words on his behalf. I stand on a chair to address the group. “Your generosity is vitally important because we must keep …”
Suddenly I can’t remember his name. Jim? Think, damn it It’s a common name. Mike? Pete?
I stall for time. “… this good man in Congress.”
Maybe I can get away with calling him Congressman. But I can’t even remember his last name. Hotdog? Meatball? It’s a common snack food.
I pore frantically through my mental Rolodex—nothing. “… You need him there. America needs him there.” Taco? Sausage? Frankfurter? My mind reels.
“… I can’t tell you how important he is to me and to the President.” This is true. I will never intentionally lie to the public.
In desperation I pull him toward me, clasp his hand, and raise it skyward. “Let’s thank him for everything he’s done and everything he will do!”
Polite applause. I climb off the chair, perspiring.
Hamburg thanks me. “I’m really touched,” he whispers. “That was so thoughtful of you. It meant a lot.”
“It was nothing,” I say, truthfully, aiming for the door. “Good luck … er … Congressman.”
Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky is trying hard. She and I are standing at a factory gate just as the 4 p.m. shift is off. While the workers file by she grabs hands and repeats the tongue-twister, “I’m Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky and I hope you’ll vote for me.” Most of them stare at her for an instant and say nothing. But those who say “sure” or “yeah” or “count on me” are outnumbered two to one by those who grunt “nope” or “bullshit” or “hell no.”
I try to be helpful by squeezing all the hands she misses and introducing myself: “Hi, I’m the Secretary of Labor.” No one is impressed.
A television crew shows up to record the scene. MM-M is bright and perky, and was a television news reporter before she was elected to Congress two years ago, so she naturally glows under the camcorder’s spotlight. She works even harder, as if trying to show the viewing audience how many voters she’s converting. She grabs every single hand that goes by, and her voice rises and her words begin to blur.
“High-maj-ee-ma-go-lis-minskee-vot-er-mee.”
“High-maj-ee-ma-go-lis-minskee-vot-er-mee.”
“High-maj-ee-ma-go-lis-minskee-vot-er-mee.”
This incomprehensible yell causes several of the factory workers to pull their hands out of her way before she can get at them, and scowl at her as if she were insane. The TV crew gets all of it.
The end comes when a heavyset man whose hand she has grabbed stops dead in his tracks, puts his face into hers, and yells, “Fuck off, bitch. I wouldn’t vote for you if you were the last human being on the planet.”
The TV crew seem satisfied. “That’s all we need,” says one of them cheerfully. They quickly pack up their equipment and leave.
“You’re on Talk Radio 95! The Charles Walter Show! Where you hear the news when it’s news! Joining us this evening, the United States Secretary of Labor! Here to take y-o-o-o-u-u-u-r calls!… John from Garden Park. You’re on Talk Radio 95!”
“Hello?”
“You’re on the air, John. Do you have a question for the Secretary?”
“Yes. Mr. Secretary, have you ever held a real job in your entire life?”
“Well, John, I used to teach.”
“Just what I thought. You don’t know nothing.”
“Thank you, John! Diane from Oak Brook, you’re on the air.”
“Hi, Charlie.”
“Hi, Diane!”
“Love your show, Charlie.”
“Thanks, Diane! A question for the Labor Secretary?”
“Why does the Secretary think government has all the answers?”
“I don’t think government has all the answers, Diane.”
“Yes you do. You and all the other liberals in the Clinton administration. Ever hear of free enterprise? Socialism doesn’t work!”
“Thank you, Diane! Next up, Pete from Lakeview! Pete, you’re on the air!”
“Great show, Charlie.”
“Thanks, Pete! Your question?”
“I don’t understand something.”
“What is it you don’t understand, Pete?”
“I don’t understand where these guys get off.”
“Your question for the Labor Secretary, Pete?”
“Mr. Secretary, why do you think you have the right to tax honest hard-working people? It’s our money.”
“Pete, your federal taxes pay for national defense, Medicare, highways, environmental protection, air-traffic control, safe workplaces, all sorts of things you rely on.”
“It’s my money. I should decide what I need. You have no right.”
“Thank you, Pete! We’re cooking tonight, folks! The board’s all lit up! Ted from Orleyville, you’re on the air!”
“I really appreciate your show, Charles.”
“Thank you, Ted. Your question for the Secretary?”
“Yes. Mr. Secretary, you’re a fucking—”
“Michelle in Garden View! You’re on the air!”
“I’d like to know why we spend billions and billions of dollars on welfare for people who do nothing all day but sit around and watch TV.”
“Michelle, all welfare spending is less than three percent of the federal budget, and most people on welfare are off it and into jobs within two years.”
“You’re lying.”
“Tony in Lakeview! You’re on the air!”
“I just lost my job. My company went to Mexico. I want to ask the Labor Secretary how anybody can get a good job in America if we have to compete with Mexicans who are paid a nickel an hour?”
“Good question, Tony! Mr. Secretary?”
“Tony, I’m sorry you lost your job. But there are millions of good new jobs out there, some of them exporting to Mexico and other countries. You can get—”
“Good new jobs? Where? The new jobs pay nothing. They pay shit. You’re talking out of your asshole.”
“I’m afraid that’s all the time we have! Mr. Secretary, thanks so very much for being with us this evening! The United States Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich! Here on Talk Radio 95, the Charles Walter Show! Where you hear the news when it’s news! This is Charles Walter. Back after these messages.”
The cavernous Union Hall doesn’t seem to have been occupied since the late 1940s and is barely so this morning. Along the walls are photographs of FDR, Truman, Henry Wallace, the Democratic conventions of 1940, 1944, 1948, and 1952, George Meany, who in 1955 merged the AFL with the CIO and became its first president, and a large poster of a GI under the letters BUY WAR BONDS. I’m in a time warp.
Sitting next to me onstage is Greg Didinato, the candidate. The president of the Steubenville plumbers’ local introduces me. “Not all of you will agree with everything the Labor Secretary has done, particularly the North American Free Trade Agreement.…” He utters these words slowly, dwelling on each consonant. Didinato fidgets in his seat. “But I want you to give him a good, solid, Steubenville welcome.” Polite applause from the dozen or so elderly people in the audience. I can almost make out each individual clap.
I’ve known Didinato for all of ten minutes but the ritual requires that I say something nice. After what happened in California, I’ve made sure to practice his name several times in my head. “Greg Didinato believes in the values that have undergirded this Democratic party since FDR,” I say as forcefully as I can. “A vote for Greg Didinato is a vote to keep Democrats in control of the House, so that you don’t need to worry that your Social Security or your Medicare will be taken away.”
At this, the tiny geriatric audience gives me a standing ovation. A few of them have trouble standing, but they make the attempt. Woe be unto any politician who tinkers with Social Security or Medicare.
One of America’s proudest achievements in the last quarter century has been to reduce poverty among the elderly. Too bad we allowed it to increase among children. That’s the great trade-off we made, but it’s a taboo subject. After all, the elderly vote; kids don’t. The elderly also turn out for vacuous political meetings like this one.
Disaster looms, but you wouldn’t know it sitting here.
“The President will be traveling to Indonesia immediately after the election,” Panetta reports coolly, as if the pending calamity were irrelevant to the serious business at hand. “After that, we’ll be focusing on the Summit of the Americas, free trade with Chile, passage of GATT, maybe a free trade zone with Europe. Of course, we won’t let up on deficit reduction.”
“Good plan,” says Bentsen. His index finger strikes the table.
Sometimes, like today, I feel as though I’m on another planet, far out in the solar system, beyond Pluto, where it’s very cold and very dark and the air is very thin, where I’m weightless and alone, unable to make myself heard, barely able to see the tiny speck of light that I used to call the sun.
“What about good schools, tax credits for college, job training, a higher minimum wage, stronger unions? All this would help ease the anxiety, overcome inequality, give the little guys a chance to make it.” I speak the words, but they seem to hang in space and then disappear. My colleagues hear me say something else.
“I doubt we need to worry about union support in 1996,” Bentsen declares.
“That’s not the point, Lloyd.…” I grope for words.
“Let’s not mix things up,” says Leon, trying to be diplomatic. “We need to find out what the unions need and then get on with it.”
Not once in almost two years have I made a scene. Not once have I raised my voice. Never have I shown anger. To do so would be to reveal weakness, or to invite criticism that one is hot-tempered or ideological. This would mean no more invitations to meetings. Banishment from the loop.
So I hold my tongue. Instead, I stand and walk briskly to the large wooden door. I pull it wide open, step through, and yank it toward me. The door swings furiously. A split second before it slams shut, I catch it with my other hand and close it with a quiet, decorous click.
Pompeii after Vesuvius. Rome after the sacking. Richmond after Grant. Washington after yesterday’s vote.
Democrats are in ruins. The Republicans took the House, won the Senate, grabbed most governorships, claimed most state legislatures.
The city is quiet, as if the disaster had suddenly blown away its noisy pomposity. People are dazed. No one had expected quite this.
The anxious class has revolted.
Of the twenty or so candidates I campaigned for, all but three lost. Dan Hamburg (or was it Hotdog?) is now mincemeat. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky was sent packing. Greg Didinato didn’t have a prayer. Dan Rostenkowski was run out on a rail. Tom Foley, the Speaker, is no more. Mario Cuomo is now an ex-governor, as is Ann Richards. The list is long and pitiful. Some were undistinguished politicians whose defeats are irrelevant to the course of history. Several were unsung heroes who will be sorely missed.
Bill Ford is also gone. He saw it coming and wisely resigned before the storm hit. All the other Democratic barons of the House and Senate have lost their chairmanships as well, even if they survived the election. Gingrich and Bob Dole will now put their people in charge.
The Labor Department is in a state of quiet panic. The career staff know what’s coming because they’ve seen it before. Our programs are among the first to be killed when Republicans are free to fire their guns. This time it could be far worse. Gingrich’s gang call themselves “revolutionaries” and are loaded for bear.
“This is very bad news, Mr. Secretary,” says Darla. She looks like she hasn’t slept. “Gingrich hates you. He really does. I heard him giving a speech the other day … and … he … said …” Her voice trails off.
Kitty joins us in the corridor outside my office. “We’re in deep shit,” she says with conviction.
Tom appears but doesn’t speak. His lips are pressed so tightly together they’ve turned purple.
One by one they gather in my office—Maria, Joe, other assistant secretaries—drawn by invisible threads of commiseration and fear.
I want to reassure them. I want to tell them that everything will be fine, that we’re doing important work and that the public appreciates what we do and will back us. But I’m as anxious and confused as anyone. I want to rise to the occasion with ringing rhetoric. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.… We have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. Instead, I say, “Let’s meet tomorrow after I get more information.”
Later I wander over to the White House, drawn by the same invisible force that drew my staff to me. I want to see B.
The West Wing is eerily quiet. B isn’t in the Oval. He’s back in the Residence with Hillary and apparently doesn’t want to be disturbed. Leon is home. George’s cubbyhole is empty. The only person I find is Gene Sperling, who is standing in the corridor outside Leon’s office, eyes glazed, looking even more disheveled than usual.
“So what’s the spin on this one, Herr Spinmeister?” I ask.
“We’re in deep shit,” he mutters. Kitty must have told him.
“You’re sure that’s the message we want to transmit to the American people? Sounds a little downbeat to me.”
Gene doesn’t smile. “You have a better idea?”
A political disaster like this gains significance not simply by virtue of who won or lost but through how the election is interpreted. This is known as the Lesson of the election. The Lesson explains what happened and why. It deciphers the public’s mood, values, and thoughts. It attributes credit and blame. And therein lies its power. When the Lesson of the election becomes accepted wisdom—when most of the pundits and politicians come to believe it—it shapes the future. It guides how politicians will behave until the next election.
Of course, the public doesn’t have a single mood or a single set of values. The public doesn’t “think” at all. Hundreds of millions of people carry around in their heads all sorts of half-baked and quarter-baked opinions, in constant flux. Credit or blame for the outcome of an election can be attributed in different ways. Yet inevitably, one Lesson begins to predominate.
Whatever it is, the Lesson of the 1994 election is assumed to be a very important one. The election itself is being described as a total repudiation of Bill Clinton and the Democrats, a “fundamental realignment.” Never mind that few voters turned out—somewhat more than a third of those registered—and that only slightly over half of them voted Republican. It’s punishment, all right—the anxious class did revolt—but hardly the end of the Democratic party as we know it. Yet precisely because the election is perceived as such a big-time backlash, the Lesson is so potent. The prevailing version will set the course for the next two years. Two very different versions of the Lesson of the 1994 election are vying for the lead:
(1) Clinton was just too liberal. He presented an overly ambitious health-care plan, increased taxes, and allowed gays into the military. Obvious lesson: Clinton should move right.
This lesson doesn’t hold water. Polls show that most of the public still wants national health insurance. Taxes went up only on people at the very top (oil prices dropped, so the fuel tax had no real effect). The issue of gays in the military wasn’t central to any campaign. Most important, B has already moved to the right. After all, the two biggest things B accomplished over the last two years fulfilled the Republicans’ own unfinished agenda: cutting the deficit and signing NAFTA.
(2) Clinton ignored the “anxious class” of voters whose wages have been dropping. Obvious lesson: Clinton should fight harder for working people.
The evidence here is striking. Exit polls gave Democrats a two-to-one advantage among voters who said their personal standard of living was rising, but a two-to-one disadvantage among those who said it was falling. The largest defections from the Democratic party were men without college degrees—nearly three out of four working men—whose wages have been dropping for a decade and a half. They tilted to Republicans sixty-three to thirty-seven percent. Non-college women also deserted the Democrats by staying home on election day. On the other hand, most voters with four-year college degrees—both male and female—voted Democratic. These are the people whose wages have been rising the fastest.
So which will it be? Move right? Or fight? The first lesson will be pushed by right-wing Republicans to justify their victory. It will also be promoted by conservative Dems—in Congress and inside the White House. That’s a hell of a coalition. Who will advance the second lesson?
I’ve come to pay a courtesy call on Lane—to commiserate, maybe even begin thinking about a strategy for 1996.
Even under normal times the eighth floor of AFL-CIO headquarters on 16th Street resembles a funeral parlor. Lane’s vast offices are dark—paneled in wood, heavily curtained and carpeted. But the carpets are threadbare around the edges, the curtains are missing some hooks, and the paneling is cracked. The air is musty and still. Today, two days after the disaster, the place is a virtual morgue.
Lane is standing alone in the far corner of his large conference room, smoking a cigarette. He appears older and grayer than I’ve seen him before.
“Pretty bad, heh?” I volunteer as we shake hands.
“Fuckers.”
“So … What do you make of it?”
Lane looks past me, taking a long draw on his cigarette. He slowly exhales, squinting his eyes. I’m enveloped in smoke. He swears again.
When I’m at a loss for words, I offer data. “We lost about forty percent of the union vote, according to the exit polls.”
“God-damn exit polls. You know what polls are worth? Shit.” Lane takes another long draw on his cigarette.
Silence. There’s no sound in this mortuary. I have a sudden sense of the entire labor movement having died and been buried right here under our feet.
Lane’s eyes are puffy. “Anyway,” he says after an interminable pause, “what did you expect? At least forty percent of union people got fucked.” His glassy eyes finally focus on mine. “Clinton didn’t protect their jobs.”
Of course. Lane’s bile isn’t directed only at Republicans; it’s directed at us too. The Save the Jobs party has taken a worse beating than the Democrats. It got clobbered by NAFTA and it lost striker replacement. The election is only the most recent defeat.
Lane takes another long draw on his cigarette. “Let me tell you something, my friend,” he says into a billow of smoke. “Education and job training won’t pay the rent if there are no good jobs.”
I won’t find an ally here. Lane will want B to fight, all right—but fight to preserve things as they are. There’s no point in prolonging this conversation. “Well, Lane …,” I say, extending my hand. “I guess we have our work cut out for us.”
He shakes it limply, lost in thought. “We do. Yes, we do.”
I move toward the door, but Lane doesn’t follow me. As I turn to say good-bye, I see him standing exactly as I found him minutes ago when I first entered—ashen-faced, shoulders stooped, very much alone.
“Mr. Sec-re-tary,” he says softly. “Beware treachery. It lurks everywhere.”
Treachery? Everywhere? What the hell is he talking about?
“The radical center—that’s where we’re heading,” Leon Panetta tells me with absolute certainty. We’re in the executive parking lot between the Old Executive Office Building and the West Wing. This is where I’ve stationed myself to get the latest gossip. It’s part of my loop. Panetta ran directly into it.
He’s rushing to a meeting, but I don’t let go. “Radical center? What d’ya mean?” I ask.
“The center. The middle. The President’s got to move there.” Panetta is a tactician, not a strategist. What appears obvious to him is the next move in a parlor game rather than the choice of game itself.
Every politician in America wants to be perceived to be at the center. Who wants to be on the fringe? Political careers are imperiled by labels like “right-winger” or “left-winger.” The public feels safer with people who proclaim total commitment to moderation. This is especially true of presidents. FDR always sought to position himself as a centrist. So did Nixon. Barry Goldwater’s “extremism in defense of liberty” helped cost him the White House.
But this is just positioning. The visionary leaders of America have always understood that the “center” is a fictitious place, lying somewhere south of thoughtless adherence to the status quo. Virtually any attempt to lead—to summon forth the energies and commitments of Americans—will be unconventional at the time the challenge is first sounded. Teddy Roosevelt didn’t discover the evils of industrial concentration at the political center. FDR didn’t knit a safety net for the poor and dispossessed, or take the nation into the Second World War, from the center. Kennedy and Johnson didn’t locate the cause of civil rights at the center. Nixon didn’t find support for recognizing China in the center. Nor did even Reagan find his mandate for a smaller government at the center. Leadership, by definition, does not cater to the center. If it did, there would be no need to lead. The nation is already there.
A president will exert some influence on where the “center” is at any given time simply by virtue of the office and the pulpit that comes with it. If he moves toward where he thinks the center is, the center itself will shift ground; the field of acceptable public debate will narrow. Were B to advocate a balanced budget in ten years, for example, the debate over whether to balance the budget would be silenced. The new debate would be around the narrower question of whether to balance in five, seven, or ten years. The center, accordingly, would move to the right.
There’s been much talk at the White House in recent days about the so-called “swing” voter. Where is this elusive voter to be found? Where else? At the center. Not in the traditional “Democratic base,” which is assumed to be left of center, nor in the “Republican base,” to the right, but in between. And where does this “swing” voter presumably live? In the American suburbs, we’re told. Not the close-in suburbs of blue-collar, semidetached aluminum sidings or the farther-out suburbs of manicured lawns and underground telephone wires, but somewhere in between.
The center? The base? The swing? The suburbs? Pollsters and political consultants are reaping fortunes out of such amorphous bullshit. The words substitute for thought. Tactics emerge from thin air.
There is a simpler way: Look at who’s losing ground in the economy. They are the ones who are giving up on us. Lead them by giving them hope, a means to do better, a reason to stay engaged.
“Bob, I gotta go.” Leon begins moving off.
“Wait, Leon. I need one favor.”
It’s about thirty-five degrees out here—not conducive to a long conversation—and besides, Leon is eager to get to his next meeting. Ideal conditions to ask for something that might not be granted with more time to ponder.
“Shoot.”
“I need a half hour on the President’s calendar. Soon. I want to talk strategy, where we go in light of the election.”
Leon hesitates for a moment. “He’s awfully busy, Bob.”
“No problem.” I wave Leon on. “I’ll just give him a call.” Translated: I can get to him one way or the other. If you don’t arrange this meeting, you’ll lose control. You won’t know what I suggest to him, or what he decides.
“Let me take a look at his schedule. I’ll try to fit it in.” Translated: You got it.
It’s my day in court. In the Oval Office, to be more precise. I’m presenting my version of the Lesson.
“Mr. President, the real story of this election is that working people abandoned the Democrats because workers are hurting and we haven’t done enough for them.” I say this in a slow, matter-of-fact way, trying not to display any passion. Cool analysis is always more credible. I hand B a chart I’ve made showing who voted which way, categorized by income and education. “As you can see, there’s a direct relationship between voters who abandoned us and those who continue to lose ground in this economy. Many of our traditional constituents simply didn’t vote.”
I hand a copy of the chart to Gore. He and B sit next to one another in high white armchairs facing outward from the fireplace. Then copies to Rubin, Leon, and George. Rubin sits next to me on the low couch to the left of B and Al, Leon and George opposite us. This administration is characterized by informality in every respect except where people sit.
B is in one of his mulling moods. He’s still trying to figure out the Lesson of November 5. As he looks at the chart he nods, lips drawn tightly together. Then he asks me what I suggest.
This is my moment. It’s one thing for B to ask my opinion privately, but for him to do so in front of the others is a virtual mandate. They know that he knows what I’m about to say. It’s probably no accident this meeting is happening now, when Lloyd is out of town. B has decided to put my ideas squarely on the table.
“The economic recovery we’re in may bail you out by the 1996 election if it keeps up, and if some of the losers can be persuaded they’re doing a bit better,” I say. “But it’s a risk. And it won’t be permanent in any event. When the business cycle turns down again, the long-term problem will reemerge. So you need to show you’re on the side of working people. Tax breaks for college and job training. Skill vouchers for the unemployed. A higher minimum wage.”
B nods in seeming agreement. I become more animated. “If you can’t do universal health care now, at least seek the next step toward it. Emphasize pension security. These are all bread-and-butter issues.” I lean in toward him. “And attack Republicans for seeking a capital-gains tax cut and corporate tax cuts, which mainly help the rich. Contrast your plan for expanding middle-class security with the Republicans’ plan for padding the nests of people at the top. You’re on the side of working people; they aren’t.”
B nods again. Rubin sits motionless, looking a bit pale. Leon crosses and uncrosses his legs. George says nothing. Al Gore coughs. This isn’t exactly a standing ovation.
“And there’s more,” I continue. B’s attentiveness has made me foolhardy, like someone about to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. “Use your bully pulpit. Let the people know that income and wealth are becoming more concentrated than at any time since the nineteen-twenties, the top five percent taking home almost half of the nation’s income, the top ten percent owning almost seventy percent of the value of all the stocks and bonds, including pensions.”
I’m over the brink. There’s no stopping now. “Condemn big, profitable companies that are laying off thousands of employees just to jack up their share prices in the short term. This is what the current Republican party is built on. Openly support unions. Condemn companies that fire workers who go on strike. Say publicly that the Fed should keep interest rates low and create tight labor markets where almost everyone can get a job and where productivity gains are passed along as higher wages.”
Rubin blanches.
“Blast Republicans for being captives of wealthy special interests. Propose tough campaign finance reform. And while you’re at it, take on corporate welfare—all those special subsidies and tax breaks. That’s where we can save hundreds of billions of dollars.…”
B continues to nod. He smiles. The others look panicked.
“Whoa there,” says Gore. He often uses equestrian metaphors when he’s afraid things are getting out of control. “Hold your horses.”
“Mr. President,” Rubin jumps in. His voice is calm and measured. “You’ve got to be aw-ful-ly careful to maintain the confidence of the financial markets. You don’t want to sound as if you’re blaming corporations.”
“Mr. President,” says Leon. “We need to examine each of these ideas in detail and then bring you back a plan with options for what you might want to do.” Translated: Don’t decide anything now. Give me a chance to bury all this.
B nods his head. But the smile is gone and his lips are pursed tight again. He looks around the room. “Okay,” he says.
Gore, Rubin, Panetta, and George are up in a flash and on their way out the door. The meeting is evidently over. As we move out of the Oval, B puts his arm around my shoulder. “Thanks, friend,” is all he says.
“You’re very welcome, Mr. President.” I beam.
My speech today to the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) is the first administration statement since the debacle. CNN is here, along with C-Span. If they’re expecting a major announcement, they’ll be disappointed. I won’t comment on the election or the lesson to be drawn from it.
I did add two sentences which may raise a few eyebrows: “Since we are committed to moving the disadvantaged from welfare to work, why not target corporate welfare as well and use the savings to help all Americans get better work? Ending corporate welfare is a worthy goal, made all the worthier if it frees funds for investments in workers.” These are fighting words, but I doubt anyone will pay much notice. They come at the end of a long speech. And they shouldn’t cause problems in the White House. After all, B seemed to nod approvingly yesterday when I suggested attacking “corporate welfare.” I rather like my neologism.
Besides, the DLC is about as conservative a group as you can find and still be within the Democratic party, and they agree. They’ve just published a list of unwarranted tax breaks and subsidies for particular companies and industries, totaling more than $100 billion a year. That’s no small chunk of change. The list contains all sorts of breathlessly ridiculous items, like $2 billion a year going to oil, gas, and mining companies for no reason whatsoever, $4 billion a year to pharmaceutical companies that create offices in Puerto Rico, $400 million to Christmas-tree growers, windmill makers, and shipbuilders, and $500 million a year to corn-based-ethanol refiners.
Also on the DLC fist is the $2-billion-a-year tax break for life insurance companies, $900 million for timber companies, $700 million for the dairy industry, and $100 million a year to companies like Sunkist, Gallo, M&M, McDonald’s, and Campbell Soup to advertise abroad. On top of that are billions of dollars of special breaks for multinationals that make their products outside the United States. Some well-connected companies like Archer-Daniel-Midland (ADM, a giant Midwestern corn processor) triple-dip: ADM benefits from a sugar program that bars imports and sets sugar prices higher than world levels (so ADM can sell its high-cost sugar substitute), a tax break for corn-based ethanol, and the direct subsidy to ethanol refiners. Taxpayers and consumers pay dearly for the welfare flowing to this single company.
And that’s just the beginning: If TV networks had to bid for extra space on the broadcast spectrum instead of getting it free, they’d pay $4 billion a year. If private corporate jets had to pay landing fees at airports as commercial jets have to do, they’d pay $200 million a year. If wealthy ranchers had to pay the full cost of grazing their cattle on public lands, they’d pony up $55 million a year. If corporations couldn’t deduct the costs of entertaining their clients—skyboxes at sports arenas, theater and concerts, golf resorts—they’d pay $2 billion more each year in taxes. The list goes on.
Imagine if even a portion of this money could be used instead for education, job training, and helping the poor and near-poor get the jobs they need. We could cut the budget deficit and still have enough money to invest in our people. If B won’t trim defense or Medicare, this stuff is probably the last best hope for real money.
Calling this largesse “corporate welfare” seems apt. It is a form of welfare: aid for dependent corporations (AFDC). In fact, it’s worse than real welfare, because at least welfare moms and their kids need the help. Recipients of corporate welfare get it only because they’re rich enough to make big campaign contributions and hire platoons of Washington lobbyists to buy it for them.
Of course, whenever any of this surfaces, the recipients of corporate welfare claim they’re “saving jobs.” When slurping from the public trough, even the most reactionary CEO or rabid Republican lobbyist becomes a born-again member of the Save the Jobs party. But their real motive isn’t to save the jobs of their employees, who’d be far better off if they could get new jobs that were economically justifiable. It’s to feather their own well-appointed nests.
I won’t say any of this in the speech. I won’t even mention any of the specific examples the DLC has fisted. That would cause too much of a stir. I’ll merely refer to the phenomenon in two sentences of this ten-page speech. Can’t hurt. If it induces a single member of the press to do a bit of digging on the subject, it might actually do some good. If conservative Dems are willing to take on corporate welfare, maybe we have the beginnings of a real coalition.
I underestimated the electric charge in the phrase “corporate welfare.” At least ten thousand volts.
Immediately after the speech, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer corners Commerce Secretary Ron Brown coming out of a meeting and asks if he agrees with me that American corporations are being unfairly subsidized. Poor Ron doesn’t know what hit him. “I haven’t seen Secretary Reich’s speech, but clearly some subsidies are warranted,” says Ron, barely catching his breath.
Within minutes:
“Headline News—Dispute in the cabinet. Good afternoon. Today it was Old Democrat against New Democrat as a fight broke out in the President’s cabinet over whether corporations should be subsidized. The Labor Secretary, apparently without clearance, began the attack. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown punched back. More evidence of disarray in the Clinton White House.”
Hours later, at B’s White House news conference on aid to Ukraine:
REPORTER: Mr. President, what do you think of Secretary Reich’s idea to end corporate welfare?
THE PRESIDENT (pausing, caught unawares, grasping for the right words): Conceptually, it’s an attractive idea. I have to have time to review the details in the context of our budget.
REPORTER: What sorts of corporate welfare would you eliminate?
THE PRESIDENT: I haven’t made up my mind on any of the specifics.
That evening:
Crossfire—“The debate over corporate welfare.”
MICHAEL KINSLEY (to Jerry Jasinowski, president of the National Association of Manufacturers): Don’t you think it’s unfair of corporate America to collect what Secretary Reich calls “corporate welfare” totaling tens of billions of dollars a year, at a time when we’re trying to cut the budget deficit?
JASINOWSKI: I resent Secretary Reich’s use of the term “corporate welfare.” It’s demeaning and irresponsible.
KINSLEY: But isn’t that the right term for it?
JASINOWSKI: No. Corporations aren’t like welfare mothers. The Secretary has no right to criticize American companies this way.
This morning:
USA Today’s lead headline—“Reich: Cut Corporate Welfare.”
Editorials all over the country are calling for an end to “corporate welfare.”
The phones here at the department haven’t stopped ringing. Letters and faxes are pouring in, mostly favorable. I’m mystified. Tom and Kitty are worried.
“You need to be more careful,” Kitty warns.
“But it was only two sentences, tucked into the end of a speech, for Chrissake.”
“It was more than that, and you know it. You were intentionally trying to be provocative.”
“True, but not this provocative.”
“What did you expect?” She waves her arms. “Democrats are licking their wounds. Republicans are crowing about their win. The media are waiting for any signal from the White House of which direction the President will be moving in. And you come along and put up the biggest lightning rod in town.” She shakes her head. “You should be thankful you’re still standing. People have been electrocuted for less.”
Tom nods in agreement and bites his lower lip.
This afternoon’s economic meeting at the White House is tense. No one mentions the speech directly, but the electricity is in the air. Bob Rubin is visibly upset.
Rubin and I generally get along well. I’ve admired his ability to maintain harmony among the economic advisers, and I respect his intelligence. We first met during the presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis in 1988, and became fast friends even though we see the world quite differently. He sees it through the prism of corporate America and high finance; I, through my own prism of progressive liberalism. I remember our very first conversation. My reputation evidently had preceded me, because Rubin ended our meeting by saying, “You’re not nearly as bad as I thought you’d be.”
Prior to joining the Clinton administration, Rubin spent almost his entire working life, twenty-five years, at Goldman, Sachs Co. in New York. Goldman, Sachs is one of the nation’s largest and most profitable investment banks. It’s a place of giant egos and sharp deal makers. Through a combination of intelligence and diplomacy, Rubin gradually worked his way up to co-chairman of the firm. He is fabulously wealthy. He maintains rooms in the Jefferson Hotel and commutes from and to his home in New York by way of a private jet. He is not particularly sympathetic toward working people whose wages have been under great stress, yet he expresses deep concern about the plight of the very poor. During his time as chairman of the National Economic Council, Rubin has demonstrated the same keen intelligence and diplomacy he brought to bear at Goldman, Sachs.
Sometimes, as now, our worldviews clash. Rubin recoils from any criticism of large American corporations. My speech angered him. The tension is broken when he asks George if the President has made any formal comments about my remarks.
“Yes,” says George. “He said Reich is fired.”
I do my best to join in the laughter.
After the meeting George ambles up. “Your speech yesterday sure got a lot of press,” he says offhandedly.
“Guess so. Surprised me.”
“You know,” George says gently, “you’re not a private person anymore.”
“Whaddya mean?”
“You can’t just go off and say whatever’s on your mind. You could do that before. You can’t do it now.”
“I really had no idea …”
“Everything you say is assumed to be coming from the President.
You’re part of the Presidents team.” George isn’t condescending. He’s a sharp young pistol giving friendly advice to a middle-aged loose cannon. “You’ve got to watch what you say.”
Bentsen returned last night from abroad. He’ll be interviewed on Face the Nation this morning. I phone him beforehand to warn him, so he doesn’t get tripped up on a question about corporate welfare.
“Welcome back, Lloyd.”
“Thanks, Bob.” Am I imagining it, or is there a distinct coolness in his voice?
“Look, while you were gone I gave a speech that attracted a lot more attention than I counted on.”
“ ’Sthat right?” The fox is feigning ignorance.
“I was speaking before the DLC. You may know that the DLC recommends eliminating a long list of special tax breaks and subsidies going to particular industries and companies. Well, I didn’t endorse the list or single out any items, of course. That wouldn’t have been proper.”
“Of course not.”
“But I did suggest that we take a hard look at whether any of these might be unjustified. That’s obviously something we ought to be doing as part of our budget process. You agree?”
“Sure.”
“I just wanted to give you a heads-up, because the speech caused a stir and you may be asked about it this morning.”
“Thanks, Bob.” Click.
“Today on Face the Nation, Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen.”
BOB SCHIEFFER (host): Thank you for joining us today, Mr. Secretary. Several days ago the Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, called for cuts in what he termed “corporate welfare.” Do you agree?
BENTSEN (curtly): No decisions have been made on any of this.
SCHIEFFER: What about Secretary Reich’s general idea for reducing corporate tax breaks and subsidies?
BENTSEN (shaking his head): I don’t find myself very excited about it. No, I don’t.
SCHIEFFER (thirty minutes later, summing up the interview): One of today’s headlines—Secretary Reich was speaking out of school.
Imagine what Bentsen would have said if I hadn’t called.
What did I expect, a declaration of eternal love and devotion? When he chaired the Senate Finance Committee, Bentsen single-handedly created many of these special tax breaks. He’s the sugar daddy of oil and gas. I’m lucky I got off with only a mild kick in the ass.
B tells me he’s intrigued by the theme of corporate welfare and the possibility of saving billions of dollars a year that could be used for new investments. But my colleagues are less than enthusiastic. At today’s budget meeting I suggest to them we finance the education and training tax break by closing some tax loopholes. In deference to Bentsen, I avoid any mention of oil and gas. What about the tax breaks for the insurance industry?
BENTSEN: That would be very unwise, politically.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Republicans would accuse us of raising taxes.
PANETTA: The insurers would be on top of us.
RUBIN: The financial markets would take it badly.
BENTSEN: Don’t even think about it.
I gingerly offer up another one: The advertising industry claims that advertising builds up a company’s goodwill with customers for years, right? So take them at their word. Prevent companies from deducting the entire cost of their advertising right away. Make them treat advertising like any other investment and deduct its cost over several years. This would save the Treasury billions.
PANETTA: Advertisers? Are you kidding? We’d have the media all over us.
BENTSEN: A nonstarter.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Forget that one. And don’t repeat it outside this room. [Laughter.]
RUBIN: The financial markets would take it very badly.
I make a third try: It’s not exactly a subsidy to corporations, but it’s a huge windfall to the very rich. Why not close the loophole that allows wealthy people to avoid paying capital-gains taxes on their estates? When they die and the estate passes to their children, its taxable base instantly rises to its current market value. The children sell the estate and—presto—they avoid paying any capital gains. Even if you exempt estates under, say, $2 million, the Treasury would still save a bundle.
BENTSEN (after a long instant of staring at me): That, my friend, would be con-fis-catory! Death is an involuntary conversion.
[Laughter.]
Maybe B is starting to understand the Lesson as I do. He phoned today. “I’ve been thinking that the ’ninety-four election is a lot like nineteen-eighty,” he says. “Of course, there’s a lot more interest in moving from old government to new. But the wealthy and the powerful are once again trying to convince the middle class that their enemy is the poor.… Can you get me data on executive salaries, how they’ve changed over the years relative to the median wage, the allocation of wealth in America and how that’s changed over the last twenty years, and the ownership of stocks and bonds?”
I tell him I’ll get right on it.
It’s a cold, dreary Saturday morning. I had promised Sam help with some homework, but B has just called another meeting to talk about which way he should move.
I drive the family Jeep to the southwest gate of the White House. Most mortals have to show identification at this point, but members of the cabinet are excused from this minor indignity. The White House guards are supposed to recognize us.
“Hello,” I greet the guard breezily. “I’m here for a meeting with the President.”
“Name?”
He’d probably recognize the Secretary of Defense. Maybe even the Secretary of the Interior. But I’m a nobody.
“Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor,” I stammer, trying not to show my hurt.
“Identification?”
I’m not even a credible nobody.
I reach for my wallet, but it’s not there. I left it at home, “I … I … don’t have any on me.”
“Sorry. You can’t enter.”
What to do? The President of the United States expects me at a meeting in two minutes. If I storm the gate, I’ll be shot.
“Listen,” I say impatiently. “Maybe you could just phone ahead. One of the security guards inside the White House would probably recognize me.”
“Just a moment.” He turns away and mumbles into his cell phone.
“Yeah. Yeah. That’s him,” a voice booms over the transmitter. “Beard. Barely sees over the steering wheel. You can let him through.”
He waves me on. It occurs to me that any exceedingly short bearded terrorist claiming to be Robert Reich would have direct access to the President.
We meet in the Roosevelt Room for two hours. The debate swirls around whether B should propose a tax cut. The deficit hawks are against it, but B wants to match the five-hundred-dollar per child tax credit the Republicans are offering, and also seems to be leaning toward a tax credit or deduction for family educational expenses. I’m delighted. I’ve been trying to get Bentsen to support this idea for over a year, without success.
With the tax cut still unresolved, the discussion turns toward a broader range of issues. “Mr. President, you can cut taxes and cut the deficit only if you slow the growth of Medicare.”
“Mr. President, it would be unwise to touch Medicare.”
“Mr. President, you can get the savings by delivering on your pledge to end welfare.”
“Mr. President, there aren’t any savings there. It will cost a bundle to make sure welfare mothers get jobs and keep them.”
“You should get tough on crime. More money for police officers and prisons.”
“Stop illegal immigration. More money for border patrols.”
“There’s no money for these things if you want to cut the deficit.”
The conversation circles like a vulture over the carcass of domestic discretionary spending, but it never lands anywhere.
The meeting is coming to a close. So what is it going to be? B looks around the table and quietly summarizes what he wants to do:
“It’s not a choice between going right and going back to our base. We have to take our base into the future. It’s the difference between a base that’s concerned with yesterday and one concerned with tomorrow. We should shrink yesterday’s government. We have to engage the Republicans in welfare reform and a middle-class tax cut and crime. We’ll need an approach to Medicare. We’ll have to do something about immigration. I want a tax cut for education and training. We ought to look into how we can get the money.” Everyone nods in agreement.
“Okay,” he says, earnestly. “I think we’ve made real progress today. Thanks.”
B doesn’t want to wait until the State of the Union in late January to unveil his new strategy. That would give Gingrich a platform all his own until then. Gingrich is already claiming that the election gave him a mandate to implement his so-called “Contract with America.” B wants to go public in a few days, with a TV address from the Oval. This has only intensified the debate among his advisers.
At this moment B is alone in the Oval, mulling. His advisers are here in the Roosevelt Room, disputing whether he should offer a tax break and what kind.
“Mr. Secretary, you have a phone call,” whispers a staffer.
I excuse myself from the ruckus and take the call from a phone in the far corner of the room. The others continue to debate.
“Hello? Bob?” It’s B. I quickly turn my face toward the wall so the others won’t hear.
“Er … hello,” I say. “We’re just … ah … debating here, in the Roosevelt.”
“I’ve been thinking I should raise the income limit on eligibility for the education and training tax deduction and lower it for the child tax credit, and make the child credit bigger,” he says. “That will help working families, and the better-off won’t care. They want help with college. What do you think?”
“Sounds … good.” I have to stick my index finger into my ear so that I can hear him over the din of Panetta, Bentsen, Rubin, Rivlin, Tyson, and George, who are locked in vigorous debate over the very same things.
“I don’t know exactly what to do about the deficit,” B continues. “The public doesn’t give me any credit for cutting it. I’m thinking about a commission on health-care costs.”
“Presidential commissions can get out of control,” I warn, glancing back to make sure the others are still preoccupied.
“That’s true.”
This is absurd. I’m advising the President of the United States by phone from his own conference room, filled with his other advisers, who are debating what to advise him and who don’t have a clue I’m on the phone with him, advising him. I’ve finally discovered the loop, and for this one brief moment I’m the only one in it.
“I’m trying to work on this speech,” he continues. “Let me read what I’ve got so far.” He reads me several paragraphs.
“Sounds good,” I say breathlessly. I’m beginning to worry that the others are wondering why I’ve been on the phone so long. “Maybe it could use more explanation about the growing stresses on the middle class.”
“Can you get me some paragraphs?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. Bye.”
I hang up and return to the table, where the debate continues to rage. I sit quietly, feeling flattered but also a bit guilty. I can’t very well let my colleagues know, can I?
B doesn’t give a fig for formal lines of authority. He’ll seek advice from anyone he wants to hear it from, for as long as he thinks he’s getting what he needs. Right now, he wants to hear it from me. But how long will this last? And who else is he secretly talking with?
The President’s Oval Office Address to the Nation. I watch through a crack in the door. B is sitting at his desk, looking solemnly into the TV monitor. The speech has been through a dozen rewrites. Even now I’m not entirely sure what he’s going to say.
“This is a great country with a lot to be proud of, but everybody knows that all is not well with America, that millions of Americans are hurting, frustrated, disappointed, even angry.… For too long, too many Americans have worked longer for stagnant wages and less security.… Even though the economic statistics are moving up, most of our living standards are not. It is almost as if Americans are being punished for their productivity in the new economy.… We have to change that. More jobs aren’t enough. We need to raise incomes.”
I can’t contain a grin. This is a big victory. The lesson is clear: The reason Democrats lost in November wasn’t because B is too liberal. It was because working people are anxious about their incomes. The economy is doing fine, but the only ones doing very well are the people at the top.
“Fifty years ago, an American president proposed the GI Bill of Rights to help returning veterans from World War Two go on to college, buy a home, and raise their children. That built this country. Tonight I want to propose a Middle Class Bill of Rights.… I propose that all tuition for college, community college, graduate school, professional school, vocational education, or worker retraining after high school be fully deductible, phased up to $10,000 a year for families making up to $120,000 a year. Education has a bigger impact on earnings and job security than ever before.”
Another victory. The tax break isn’t huge, and it won’t solve the problems of the poor or near-poor, but at least it’s a start.
“We should take billions of dollars the government now spends on dozens of different training programs and give it directly to you to pay for training if you lose your job or want a better one.”
Good.
“We can pay for all these ideals by continuing to reduce government spending, including subsidies to powerful interests based more on influence than need.”
Wonderful! He didn’t use the term “corporate welfare,” but he said as much.
“I know some people just want to cut government blindly. And that might be popular. But I won’t do it. I want a leaner, not a meaner, government that’s back on the side of hard-working Americans.”
He won’t ax the budget more than he has done already.
“Believe you me, the special interests have not gone into hiding because there was an election in November. As a matter of fact, they are up here stronger than ever. That’s why, more than ever, we need lobby reform, campaign finance reform.…”
He didn’t say the Republican Congress is in the pockets of the rich and of corporate America, but there’s no mistaking the implication.
“My test will be: Does an idea expand middle-class incomes and opportunities?”
Not exactly fighting words, but at least focused squarely on the wage problem rather than the deficit.
No mention of a higher minimum wage, though. No outright rejection of a capital-gains tax cut either. No mention of corporate downsizing and oversized pay for top executives. No recognition of the widening gap in incomes. Nothing combative or indignant about it.
Still, a win for the home team. For now at least—until he changes his mind, until he recalculates, until he loses faith—B won’t become Republican Lite. His central goal, for now, is to raise the incomes and alleviate the anxieties of hard-working Americans.
I walk into the Oval.
“How was it?” B asks.
“Terrific.”
“Yeah. I thought so too. And under twelve minutes.” He chuckles.
Then he reaches down and puts both his arms around my shoulders. I reach up and hug his chest.
We must look odd, this huge panda bear of a president locked in an embrace with this organ-grinder’s monkey of a labor secretary. But for this one brief moment—the first time in two years, perhaps the only time in our tour of duty together—I feel as though we’re on exactly the same track, the one we should be on.