The Price of Politics (7 page)

“That’s it,” Obama said around midnight. “Stop this bullshit.” We’re all Democrats, and we’ve all agreed to do this. “But you won’t come to an agreement. I’m happy to stay here all night to help you, but none of you are listening.” He was close to losing his temper. “It’s very clear that there’s nothing I can do to help you. So I’m leaving. You can call an end to this or you can figure out how to do this. I’m going upstairs and going to bed.” He stood up and walked out.

Pelosi stood and began to gather her papers, as did the others.

“Nancy, sit down for a minute,” Emanuel said. “Let’s go through these numbers one more time.” The real differences, as always, were about money, in this case a difference of about $26 billion between what the House and Senate wanted. Everyone returned to their seats.

“Humor me,” Emanuel said. “You have this number two here,” he said, referring to one House item for $2 billion. “You have this number four,” he continued for the Senate, which wanted $4 billion. “What’s the number between two and four?”

“Three,” somebody said, falling for his question.

“Okay, three,” he said.

“I’m not going to do three!” someone shouted. Others protested.

“I didn’t say you were going to do three,” Emanuel said. “I didn’t say that at all. I just wanted to know what was between two and four. It’s three. Okay, we all agree. Three.”

It was juvenile and insulting, but they were all tired.

Emanuel found another number where the middle ground was eight. “Now,” he continued, “what’s three plus eight?”

Another explosion. “I never said we’d do eight!” More protests and head shaking all around.

“I didn’t say you’d do eight,” Emanuel said. “But I just want to know, what’s three plus eight? It’s 11.” He continued through the list amid growing protests and derisive comments. “This is not an attempt to forge an agreement,” he said. “I’m just playing with numbers here. Just humor me. No one’s bound by this. I’m not even saying anyone should do it.”

By about 1 a.m. he had gone through the list and found the middle.

Everyone pretty much said they had not agreed at all, not to any of these arbitrary numbers or alleged compromises.

“I didn’t say you did,” Emanuel replied. “But come back tomorrow morning and we’ll talk about it.”

The next morning the president was back in the chairman’s seat.

“Okay,” said Pelosi, “we can do those numbers Rahm wrote down last night.”

“We can do that,” Reid said.

• • •

The Democrats’ filibuster-proof 60-vote hold on the Senate was in jeopardy as a result of the death of Ted Kennedy the previous August. Under Senate rules, 60 votes were required to end debates, so a 41-vote minority could block almost any legislation. Kennedy had been replaced by a temporary Democratic appointee, but Republican Massachusetts State Senator Scott Brown was campaigning for the seat. Brown promised that he would become the GOP’s critical 41st vote, making it possible to sustain a filibuster of Democratic initiatives, especially the health care plan. He often signed his autograph “Scott 41.”

On January 19, 2010, he won 52 percent of the vote to become the first Republican senator from Massachusetts in 36 years.
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Brown was sworn in on February 4.
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Even with the agreement over money, there
was no way Democrats had time to get a new version of the 2,700-page health care reform law through the Senate before he was sworn in.

• • •

For weeks, Biden had been slowly building consensus on how to structure Conrad’s fiscal commission. By late January, a plan had emerged with support from Democrats and Republicans. The proposed commission had been granted extraordinary power—so much power that Biden worried the White House might lose control of the process.

He failed to persuade Max Baucus, the Senate Finance Committee chairman, but he did get Harry Reid to bring the commission up for a vote in the Senate on January 26. It needed 60 votes to overcome a potential filibuster, but just before the vote, six Republican co-sponsors withdrew their support and it failed 53–46.
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What a wonderful late Christmas present, Biden thought. Whew.

See? he told Conrad. The Republicans screwed you. You can’t trust them. They talk tough about deficit reduction, but then vote against any real effort to fix the problem.

In an interview, President Obama later recalled the Republican decision to abandon the fiscal commission.
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“At that point we’d already got a hint of things to come when the sponsors of that commission, including Mitch McConnell and John McCain, as soon as I say this is a great idea and we should do it, decide to vote against it.”

But Conrad and his group would not go away. They wanted the president to appoint a deficit commission through an executive order. Biden promised to keep working.

• • •

Obama unveiled his budget proposal in a speech at the White House on February 1, 2010.
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He called for $3.8 trillion in spending, which would add about $1.3 trillion to the deficit. He said he hoped to save more than $1 trillion, chiefly through revenue brought in by ending the Bush tax cuts for the top two tax brackets.

He blamed the meagerness of the effort on decisions made during
the former administration. “We’re at war,” he said. “Our economy has lost 7 million jobs over the last two years. And our government is deeply in debt after what can only be described as a decade of profligacy.

“Previous Congresses created an expensive new drug program [for seniors], passed massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and funded two wars without paying for any of it.” He presented a laundry list of modest proposals—tax cuts for investors in small businesses, clean energy, some commonsense cuts and efficiencies, new fees on big banks. He also formally laid out his plan for a bipartisan fiscal commission, which he would set up with an executive order.

As a measure of the problem, he opened the national suggestion box, saying, “I welcome any idea, from Democrats and Republicans.”

Few were impressed. The president had put off anything that would seriously address the problem. Senator Orrin Hatch, 75, the Utah Republican who had served 32 years in the Senate and made many deals with Democrats, scoffed publicly, “They are sending a toy fire truck to combat a five-alarm fire.”
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• • •

A fiscal commission set up by executive order would not have the force of law, but it would be symbolically important. Biden was assigned the task of recruiting a Republican co-chairman for the fiscal commission. They needed a rare bird—a Republican who would go along with tax increases in some form. Biden went after the rarest bird of all, former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson.

Colorful and outspoken at 78 years old, Simpson was a natural showman who routinely shocked whatever audience he faced. He liked to call others—senators, friends, reporters—“rascals.” But he was the genuine rascal, albeit a good-government rascal, who would not and could not hold his tongue. A critic was a “banjo-ass.”

Simpson had served in the Senate for 18 years with Biden. They didn’t agree on much, but as full-fledged members of the Senate club, they knew how to live in that chummy world, where even the starkest policy differences were not to be taken personally.

“We’ve got a tough one here,” Biden said in a call to Simpson. After
explaining that the commission would be tasked with essentially fixing the federal budget, Biden offered him the co-chairmanship.

“Boy,” Simpson replied, chuckling, “that doesn’t sound like anything I want to do.”

“The president wants you,” Biden said, knowing that left Simpson little choice. He explained that Congress had been expected to set up the commission itself, giving its recommendations the full force of law, but a group of Republicans revoked their support, joining to scuttle the effort.

Yeah, Simpson knew. “It was just ‘let’s stick it to Obama’ day.”

So a presidential commission, Biden said, is the only option left. Simpson knew a commission appointed by the president would not have the legal heft of one created by Congress—so Obama’s personal commitment would be key to its success.

“I’d sure want to visit with the president first,” Simpson said. “Everything has to be on the table, or it’s just a feckless cause.”

Okay, Biden agreed.

Simpson talked with Erskine Bowles, the former Clinton White House chief of staff, who would serve as the Democratic co-chair.

He met with Obama’s economic brain trust, Summers and Orszag. “You know this is a suicide mission,” Simpson reminded them. He would be pilloried by his fellow Republicans for supporting Obama’s effort. “Everything has to be on the table including Obamacare, as they call it. I say you can call it anything you want. Call it Elvis Presley–care, call it care-care. It’s totally unsustainable.” Obamacare can’t work, he said, even though it had not yet passed.

Simpson dropped in on his former colleague Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Simpson knew too well that the dour McConnell wasn’t one for heart-to-heart talks, but he wanted to sound him out. He didn’t ask for McConnell’s support, because at this point the commission was so nebulous that no one could know what sacred cows it was going to hit.

“Good luck,” McConnell said. “It’s a tough one.”

Three senators from McConnell’s side of the aisle would sit on the commission.

“I’ll tell you one thing, Mitch,” Simpson said. “I know you pretty well. You know how to keep your troops together. And that’s the awesome strength of your leadership. I don’t know how you do it, what various methods you use, but you’re a remarkable leader because you’ve got them together.”

Of course, Simpson did know how McConnell managed his caucus. He made threats and promises, used fear and cajoling. Take one tough vote for me, he’d say, take two, and we’ll eventually win the majority and I’ll get you a committee chairmanship.

“So,” Simpson said, “we know that whatever happens here, you’re going to call the shots and that’ll be the way that is.”

McConnell didn’t agree or disagree.

• • •

These machinations did not meet Rahm Emanuel’s standards. There was no agility in the White House, no ability to get organized and move fast on critical issues like the fiscal commission. He emailed Summers and others on February 8, 2010:
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“This does piss me off that we have debated this internally for months ad nauseam and we are a day and a half before the announcement and just now reaching out to a Republican senator.” Emanuel did not see the appeal of Simpson. “He’s going to be a headache. Our internal process is a fucking debating society.”

• • •

Obama had Simpson and Bowles to the Oval Office on February 18, the day he would sign the order creating the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

Simpson sat down in the front chair, which was normally reserved for the vice president, who hadn’t arrived yet. When he realized, he apologized and started to move.

No, no, Obama said, you stay there.

After some preliminaries, Simpson stretched out his 6-foot-7 frame and turned to Obama. “Mr. President, I want to make sure you’re serious about this, because my Republican friends are going to
take my head off.” The commission would have to consider everything, all spending, all taxes. “Everything has to be on the table, including all health care spending and reforms.”

Everyone knew this would include Obamacare.

“Is it all on the table?” Simpson asked.

“Yes,” the president said.

“Rush Limbaugh, he’s just going to say I’m sleeping with the enemy,” Simpson added. “Mr. President,” he continued, “that reminds me of a joke. A guy goes and buys a really expensive car, but takes it back to the dealer and says, ‘God damn it, I just spent $300,000 on this car and the radio doesn’t even work.’ And the dealer says, ‘No, no, you have to understand, you bought such an advanced car that your radio is the newest. Just say what you want to hear and it comes on the radio. You say jazz, and on comes jazz. You say country, and on comes the country station.’ The guy, once again really proud of his new purchase, drives off the lot and gets cut off by another driver. ‘Asshole!’ he yells, and Rush Limbaugh comes on the radio.”

The Obamaites were used to profanity—they worked with Rahm Emanuel—but this was new. An extremely tall Republican was telling Rush Limbaugh jokes in the Oval Office. And they had worked hard to get him there.

Bowles said it wasn’t good enough that he and Simpson knew that no policy or program was off-limits. Everyone on the commission needed to hear it, and they needed to hear it from the president.

In April, before the 18-member committee held its first meeting, the members gathered in the Roosevelt Room in the White House, and Obama obliged. He came into the meeting and said, “Everything is on the table. Wish you well.”

Later, in the public signing ceremony, Obama introduced Simpson and Bowles, saying they “are taking on the impossible.
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They’re going to try to restore reason to the fiscal debate.”