"the widow lincoln." find out complete television schedule at c-span.org, let us know what you think about the programs you are watching. call us or e-mail us at c-span.org, or send us a tweet at c-span hashtag comments. follow us on facebook. like us on twitter. keep track of the republican-led congress and follow its new members through its first session. new congress, best access, on seas and he's been to, c-span radio, and c-span.org. up next on american history tv, former members of president clinton's administration discusses economic strategy and achievements, examining health care reforms, budget surplus and welfare tax credits. this is a portion of the

symposium hosted by the clinton foundation and miller center. it is a little over one hour. >> please welcome msnbc contributor jonathan k parks and the economic policy panel. [applause] >> thank you very much. as the voice of god said, i am john [indiscernible] from "the washington post." when president clinton took office on january 20, 19 93, the american economy was in bad shape. unemployment is high. the deficit is high. the national debt was climbing even higher. the man who campaigned on cutting the deficit in half had a seemingly impossible task. the longest economic expansion in u.s. history a narrowing of

the income inequality gap in the first budget surplus in generations. how did it happen? how did the budget deal of 1993 get done or the 1997 budget deal that balance the budget and secured these historic surpluses? how did the child health insurance program that helped the poor and working-class families and untold millions fold into the middle class and get done? gene sperling and erskine bowles are the perfect people to answer those questions. bowles joined in 1993 as the administer of the small business administration and then moved over to the white house as deputy of staff in 1994, and then chief of staff at the start

the second administration in 1997. as chief of staff served as a member of the president's cabinet and on the national security council and national economic council. at the direction of president clinton he worked with republicans in the house and senate to negotiate that landmark balance budgeting deal. gene sperling was also in the thick of it as the deputy director and then director of the national economic council, designing and passing the 93 deficit reduction act, a principal negotiator of the 1997 bipartisan balanced budget act and a key architect of the dramatic increase in the earned income tax credit. that is just a small portion of both of these men's resumes. to keep them honest and to add context and texture to their consequential work is brendan

doherty, associate professor of political science at the u.s. naval academy, where he teaches about the presidency, congress, campaigns, and elections. he's the author of "the rise of the permanent presidential campaign." most importantly for this discussion, he has already worked with the miller center to comb transcripts and get a deeper insight into the environments and discussions that led to the incredible economic record under president clinton. to get things started they will each spend about five minutes explaining their roles in the administration. then professor doherty will give us his commentary. then we will have a discussion of here. while we are having our discussion i encourage, i implore you, actually, to send us your questions. no pants and pens will be passed around if they have not already so that you can give me questions to pepper the panel

with during q&a later on. mr. bowles, talk about your role in the administration. for you, jean, talk about how you first met president clinton as the other panelists did in their previous panels, and work that into your discussion of your role in the administration. >> yeah, all of that is pretty boring. [laughter] i will tell you the story of why i ended up going in the administration. i had met president clinton, or governor clinton, when he came to north carolina for a fundraiser. i had spent my life messing around with politicians and had never met one that i would hire. here was a guy who was fiscally conservative, socially progressive and had more personal magnetism than anyone i

had ever met and i thought -- wow. from time to time after that he would call me and ask me to meet with him. one of those days happened to be when my oldest son, sam, had a low blood sugar seizure from his diabetes. any of you who have seen that, it just rips out your heart. after my wife and i got him stable and he was ok, i went and met the governor. the governor looked at me and said that he looked blue and i said i was and he said -- tell me why. i told him about sam having this low blood sugar seizure. [loud noise] that does that bother me. [laughter] i was the president of a juvenile diabetes research foundation and i said -- look, they have told me that the best hope for a cure for my son and all the other children like him who have this terrible disease

is fetal tissue research. i said -- it just past the senate 86 to 10 with the and revolves voting for it and that on george bush vetoed it. i swear i expected him to respond, supposed to be so empathetic, but not a word, nothing, it was like i was talking to a windshield wiper. a couple of weeks later he made his major health care's beach and in that speech he said -- i have a friend of mine who is a conservative businessman in north carolina who has a son he loves more than life who has diabetes and he has me that we ought to take the politics out of scientific research and if i am elected president i will lift the ban on fetal tissue research. of course, diabetes, parkinson's , als communities all went crazy, thought it was great --

someone figured out that the conservative businessman was me. but he never said a word to me. after he was elected, as a north carolina democrat i have never voted for anyone in an election who won anything. but after he was elected he asked me to come to washington he was having a group of business people at the white house and he asked if i would like to come and i said that are you kidding? i have never been to the white house. he asked me afterwards if i would come down to the oval office and i said -- short. we went down to the oval office he took out a pen in he signed something. he came over to me and handed me the pen. he said that this is the pen that i used to sign the executive order lifting the ban on fetal tissue research. i want you to take his own to your son and tell him that today he has hope for a cure. [applause]

i still get chills. i thought to myself -- what character, what strength. i went home and told my wife that i wanted to work for the sky and i would take any job he would give me. i called him up and said that ensure enough he sent me to the sba. [laughter] >> gene? >> i had been working for someone who was considered more likely to be president in that cycle, which was mario cuomo who decided not to run. i you know, was prepared for the presidential campaign of 92 as about anyone could be, figuring out be sitting on the sidelines. fortunately i had friends like george stephanopoulos and others who convinced governor clinton

to hire me. so, i came down here and you know, normally you would think you would come down and settle in a little. i came in and pretty much the first day i was there the unemployment number had come out and they said -- we just give the president a day off, gave the governor a day off. unless you are 100% sure -- these are my first hours -- unless you are 100% sure that he will make evening news without commenting. i said it was a bad number and we had to get out there. so, they like ring me there and he has got the day off and they are pulling them out and dressing him up to make a statement and he is like -- whose idea is this? [laughter] at that point stephanopoulos

says that they should now introduce into his new economic director. the interesting thing was -- i am staying now in the marriott which at the time was the excelsior. i walked in and basically the president said -- new one and economic plan right now. i was told not to even get an apartment or anything. i just lived at the excelsior for a month. we went into this hyper put together that wound up putting people first. that was an amazing introduction to bill clinton. anyone who works for president knows that you get a little bit of a honeymoon when you first arrive. we were stuck on how to -- we have promised to balance the budget, so i was coming in and i was like the auditor looking to the books. i can use it to him -- you cannot balance the budget.

we can aim for cutting the deficit in half, but you cannot do both the tax credit and tax cut, but you could give people a choice. i think that this was the moment that you expect the president or a political leader to be unhappy that you are not telling them what they want and he looked and said -- that makes perfect sense, is credible, is more believable. we went out there and we put out putting people first. but for me it was just so amazing to see what i saw the whole time the intensity and the focus on idea policy. the fact that he starts with policy, starts with what's best. of course, the political intention comes in. not to figure out what you are for, but how you will explain what you are for and how you will shape it. there is a lot of politics, but the politics are in the shaping

marketing, and selling. it was an extraordinary introduction and for a policy wonk i was in heaven. i would see so many, like bruce and heidi chapman. it was a magical time for us. i don't know that anyone will ever get that type of the. . we had no senior staff meetings. everyone went in at 7 a.m. can you imagine in a campaign? with all those secrets, 150 people and in the room every time? to have that feeling of going to first place, to see it as a democrat and you are suddenly working for the guys who are doing everything right? you have got a candidate that is so smart, so savvy, his team is

working so well, the focus, the speed, the execution, the feeling of confidence. bruce wanted me to repeat this, i will tell the story, which is that as we started to look like we would win they started doing a flood of stories on stephanopoulos and cardwell. they became like liberties. when they became bored of that they started writing about bruce. my team came to me and said -- sooner or later they would -- they have got to write something about you. they kindly write my first profile. it is not like the stories about george and bruce about how cute they are or how they are scholars. it is just -- he gets in at 6 a.m., leaves at 2 a.m., it is all work. people said -- that is just the first story. the second story they are going around polling people about how much coffee i drink.

what people estimate is my amount of sleep. paul jamieson put both stories on my desk and then put a stein over it and said -- sperling, he's not particularly good, but he's here a lot. [laughter] so, that became our anthem for like eight years. bruce and icon a deputy economic it visor and deputy domestic advisor. one thing i will say that goes to the question about the experience as governor and how we started i thought that the thing he came in with such smarts about was that process mattered. that process was not boring, it was about whether your team trust each other and work together. he would say to us that based on his experience as governor he had seen whole policies happen or not happen just i whether or

not to different cabinet members get along and when he saw the bush team fighting with each other he felt had for him thinking it was so disloyal. he constructed this idea of a national economic council, that there would be an honest broker for the council and that you would have this kind of fairness process in this belief that everybody at the table had an equal opinion. he would say to you all the time -- there was no tolerance for kissinger in our world. you were of course there to give your opinion and fundamentally to make sure that there was a fair process. i think it served us so well the constant narrowing of the choices, the vigorous back-and-forth and open presentation in front of him with everything being weighed. i think that the insight that he

had, as important as he is, without that from the top it does not work. if a cabinet member thinks that they can influence the president by pulling him aside at a state dinner, they will do that. if they think that he will not tolerate that, that you have to go through the table and be at the process equally, that is what he did. he created a national economic council but has survived through two different presidents and i think will survive always and i think of that is important, but the ethic of creating trust in the process, creating trust that no one is getting an advantage or whispering in the -- in their year that is incredibly important. i lived it and i saw what a difference it made in the public policy outcomes. even if they are not as exciting as the substantive debates

between the warring parties in your administration. >> professor, set the table for us. you have gone through all of these transcripts. the colleagues in the miller center, these will be released this afternoon, so what did you learn? >> i only met the president once after his presidency at a fleeting memorial, but i do have to offer months and months spent going to dozens of world history's, reading over 1000 pages in order to dive into the treasure trove of accumulated memory. i would like to thank the clinton library and foundation for joining me in putting this project together and for hosting us all here today. i would like to show miss johnson.

[laughter] [applause] -- johnson. [applause] political scientists often like to think about commitments and constraints. what were the economic and political realities that he faced that limited and shaped his abilities to accomplish what he wanted? when you think about the president's economic commitments it comes back to a the fall of 1991, where he made three different speeches. mickey kantor in his oral history said that if you look at the speeches of georgetown you will agree with me that in the history of modern he was more consistent with what he laid out and throughout his policy that everyone. everyone that came in understood what he wanted to do and where he wanted to go. what did he want to do? we will get into that in a few minutes.

but governor clinton promised relief to what he termed the forgotten middle class. he invested in things like education, job training, and much more, promising to cut the deficit in half in four years. first let's talk about the economic and then the political. his economic constraints were a doozy. two weeks before being inaugurated as the 42nd president in the united states the outgoing budget director for president bush releases new deficit projections that are very different from those released the previous summer. with daily close to $20 million higher than previously forecast. a presidential candidate who has

promised to cut the deficit in half, but the deficit is larger than you believed it to be. that changes things. he brought arithmetic back to the process of budgeting. this meant that he could not do what he promised, not all of it it was impossible. someone else said -- hey, wait a minute, we have to deliver on these promises and if you are doing this deficit reduction you cannot do that. so that was the fight. leon panetta in his or -- oral history recounted this but did say afterwards -- look, if you want to fulfill this agenda, you have to walk through the deficit fire. that was not an appealing process. alan blinder called it cannot politics.

so, anything about economic constraint, there is an example. once the president chose his path he went to the congress. when he assumed the presidency he was last to have overwhelming democratic majorities in both houses of congress. sounds like a golden opportunity for productive policy, right? not exactly. you see, democrats were not in the habit of taking the lead from the president of their own party. they had sent the last 12 years working with president reagan and president bush. when you look at the democratic side, two thirds of democrats

and one half of the senate had never even served with a democratic senate. they were not in the habit of looking down pennsylvania avenue and looking to the president for direction about what they wanted to do. on tap the -- on top of that democrats have been telling the house for years that the republicans would have died to see them leaving the senate in the house. alan blinder called it an unruly majority. tom daschle said that when it came to the president's agenda congress would not necessarily comply. i would argue that that was an understatement and that was just the democrats. were the republicans eager to cooperate? they were not. they did not look at his votes in the electoral college.

they did not look at the fact that he had beaten a sitting president by over 5% in the popular vote. instead they looked at the three-way race with george bush and ross perot and said -- look 57 percent of the people voted not bill clinton. they said they were going to represent those voters. standing for different economic agenda. the last point? president focused on deficit reduction and tax increases. the budget deal had made the republican party even more anti-tax. roger altman said that most republicans were of the view that they would rather die than vote for a tax increase and i think you might have met that literally. the stage was set for consequential economic policymaking. >> incredible presentation. erskin and gene, can you react

to what the professor laid out? does that jive with your recollection? did you have that unruly majority you had to deal with? >> i will always remember january 6. i had the pleasure of telling vice president and president-elect that our numbers have changed dramatically. having been through all of the budgets, you kind of are used to it at this point. we were in an intense amount of work to actually put together a budget. the president-elect wanted to announce a full budget in february. this is not what a president normally does. he wanted to announce the entire budget, and what president clinton ended up doing in these famous roosevelt room meetings was expediting the process by literally sifting through what

would have normally been seeing as director reviews at omb, and making line by line choices, so we were basically doing six months of work in six weeks. that started with an extraordinary six-hour meeting in the governor's mansion with the new economic team. it is true. bob wright and i were for the big investment package. to come back and say, everything we thought we have to throw out if we want to cut the deficit in half, everything is more difficult. you can't imagine how many arguments happened at that point. i think the important larger issue was that bill clinton was trying to carve something that was unique in a world where you are either a big investment democrat or a fiscal hawk. he was trying to construct what he thought was a progressive

vision of deficit reduction that you would look at not whether it was reducing the deficit but that it was an economic plan. deficit reduction would actually go along with increases in investments in head start, fully funding wic, doubling of the earned income tax credit. for a lot of people, that didn't make sense. that was the challenge that's expressed. he was doing something that some people were saying was too much spending or too much investment. to others, it was a betrayal of progressive values, but he had a vision that democrats could lay out a plan that could both be true to progressive investment agenda and to fiscal discipline. i think he carved that path, and that became a model for tony blair and others. at the time, it was unique. it was very difficult. the choices were very difficult.

one of the choices we are most proud of, i'm personally proud of, is the decision on the earned income tax credit. alice rivlin is right. we could into everything we wanted to do, but when we got to the earned income tax credit, we were, just like it is now relying on bob greenstein at the center for budget and policy. we came in and said, this is not an area we can cut back. you have to be at the full proposal. this would be adding an extra $5 billion, $6 billion. the question was why? this wasn't just an initiative. this was part of your basic value structure you were laying forward, which is the phrase he created. the only way we could do it was with a minimum wage increase and

the full earned income tax credit. he let us the debate it for a long time. in the end, he went ahead and stood by it. when people ask, does what you do in government matter, or can you do more outside of government? look at that one decision. a refundable tax credit at that time that he increased was $7 billion, $8 billion a year. over time, it became $10 billion a year. that tax cuts alone over 20 years now has given over a quarter $1 trillion to low income families. you can put warren buffett and bill gates' wealth together, and you couldn't do that much. in the 1997 agreement, we make sure those same families had increase when we did the child tax credit. bill clinton had created a new vision, which was -- this was

very much is the least -- that americans were not generous to people who were impoverished if they did not think they were sharing the same values, but he believed if they did, they would actually be quite generous. the earned income tax credit was more than a program. it was his view that if you could link up the principles of responsibility and work that the american people would be generous to low income and hard-pressed families. that ended up being the baton he passed on to democrats. now we can actually estimate what is the difference in refundable tax credits over the last 20 years the ones he has passed and the ones his legacy created? we can say definitively that there are 10 million americans who do not live in poverty because of either the refundable tax credits for the e itc -- or the eitc he did, or the legacy that followed from nancy pelosi

to barack obama. you are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. however much we face income inequality or stress, it is so much better because of the legacy that he created of linking tax credits to work and responsibility and that has been perhaps the major progressive achievement in that area in the last quarter century. >> you make it sound so easy. as the professor just said, you were dealing with majorities in congress. they didn't know how to work with you, didn't want to take orders from you, and it was alan binder was the one who called it an unruly majority. how did you get the unruly majority to do what you wanted them to do and barely? >> it was an eight-month blur.

that is all you did every day of your life, to try to pass that deficit reduction act. the 1993 economic plan was for us everything. if that failed, we really worried about the domestic legacy of the president. we worked as hard as the administration could work, all hands on deck, and with both houses of congress, it passed by one vote. marjorie ms. inskeep cast the deciding vote, and it cost her an election. the story will be, the president said, i will promise you my firstborn if you vote for that. [laughter] for those who don't get that chelsea ended up marrying her son. then we went through drama where we thought it was going to fail. bob kerrey was eventually convinced to go along. bob kerrey was unhappy for the

opposite reason. mostly we face the critique from progressives. bob kerrey didn't think we were going far enough. we created the forerunner to the bowles simpson commission, the kerrey entitlement commission. al gore cast the deciding vote. i president comes in with 370 electronic -- electoral votes has both houses, and does nothing but every single day press on this deficit reduction act, and it passes by one vote. however, it just shows how hard it is. it changed the world. it changed the world because people had expected at this point the deficit would go up enough and now the democrats controlled everything. markets completely expected that. when they saw there was tangible deficit reduction it had a

dramatic effect on long-term interest rates, the investment climate, and it triggered and started what became the greatest investment-led recovery and expansion our country had. it changed the face of fiscal policy in the united states. 20. about, was he just there for the ride, they didn't live through 1993 and the tangible impact that had on turning the entire investment climate in the u.s. around. >> some would argue that the 1993 deal turned the house from democrats to republicans because people were so angry. professor doherty, i think you had another story concerning this vote. >> the oral history is fascinating. it hundred 18 is the number of votes you need for a simple majority in the -- 218 is the

number of votes you need forcible majority in the house of representatives. she proceeded to remember a great deal about that day. as the vote did come down to senator kerry and congresswoman mizzen, they were the two last to decide, but since the bill passed by a single vote in each chamber, every vote was the deciding vote. there are all sorts of less heralded efforts to win votes. leon panetta told a story from his oral history that i thought was striking. some have substantive concerns about a bill. others might want to trade their vote for something, a road, a hospital in their district. members often vote on conviction. some vote on their religious faith. he told the story of this odd combination of these factors. it was a democratic house member from the trade that the administration thought would be a reliable vote for the

president, but she was on the fence and requested a meeting with panetta. she came in and told panetta that she had spoken with jesus the metaphor, and he was very -- the night before, and he was very curious to find out what jesus had said. she said quote jesus said i ought to support the president on this. i ought to support the president if i can get a casino in detroit. there were many votes that were hard to get and some that were a little bit more unorthodox. [laughter] >> i was laughing before you got through the story. erskine, you didn't come into the white house until after the 1993 deal was done. then you had -- once you were deputy chief of staff -- in 1995 and in 1996, there were two

government shutdowns that happened. one famously that put speaker newt gingrich on the front page, caricatured with the headline "crybaby." how do government shutdowns hurt or maybe help the economic plans that the president had started putting in place? of course, this was in the run-up to the big 1997 deal. >> gene can probably add a lot of this. if a president met you in a rope line in california, and he sees you in annapolis, he will remember meeting you at a rope line in california and exactly what you said and ask how your children are. don't worry about that. gene said, the eight months of

working on the 1993 plan was like a blur. working with gene, that was a blur. you've never seen anyone work the hours he worked day in and day out in order to get something positive accomplish. -- accomplished. his ability to make the process work is phenomenal. gene, i think you said, or maybe it was brendan, that the president talked about, no parent should have to raise a child in poverty. the great thing about working for president clinton was not only did he understand the analysis not only did he encourage us to each tell him what our opinion was you could give it to him bark on, bark off, nice, rough. he didn't care. he wanted to know what you really thought. at the end of the day, we could

and talked talk about red, yellow, and green. he would say orange, and we would say, wow. what he cared about was not just the policy or the arithmetic or the analysis. he could put somebody in arkansas's face behind every single issue he talked about. i was talking to set -- stephanie street a minute ago and i can remember when we were working on the lifelong learning scholarship. it was going to be difficult to get those into the budget. the president knew all of the reasons why it was important for every child to have a chance to get the education. he would quote the data. if you are born in the bottom fifth of the income, you had a three times greater chance of getting to a higher level if you had a college education, but he also could talk about janis kearney and her family in

arkansas who had 17 or 18 kids, all of which went on to be a normal sleep productive members of society, all who went to college, all who contributed in some anyways and use that over and over again as his example of why what we were doing was so important. the question you asked me about the shutdown -- i think the most important thing in my opinion that came out of the shutdown is that the congress saw that this president had a backbone, that if you challenged him, he would stand up. you couldn't push him. he wouldn't cave. he would stand on his principles, and not only did we survive the shutdown, but i think he came away with a great victory. it made all the things we did afterwards so much easier. >> i want to pick up on something you just mentioned about the president erskine. for every program he talked

about, there was someone in arkansas he could directly .2 but it makes me -- directly point to, but it makes me wonder, how much of the president's upbringing informed his economic policies? >> i will go to the shutdown. that was a hell of the day the government shutdown, and i will be honest, there was a lot of pressure on him to roll. if you were working there, the way you felt inside was amazing. in 1993, you felt like in a progressive way you have done deficit reduction. you had dramatically expanded opportunity and reduced poverty. in 1995, you thought maybe you would be in the white house when the new deal was repealed. this was a plan to eliminate the entitlement for food stamps, medicaid. most of the politics was over

medicare and the earned income tax credit. not only was everything we accomplished was about to be unraveled, but it was going to get worse. the power newt gingrich had at that moment was amazing. right after we were going to go into the present not going along with it, they called and asked to go back and have a final meeting. some of us were pretty worried about putting the president in that position, that he was going to be leading up to that spot. the president gets there, and the meeting starts off. the key part was, what actually triggers the moment was medicaid. deck army makes a comment about the president demagogue in on medicaid, and he's got a mother in a nursing home. the present turns around and says, i don't care what happens. i don't care if it comes down

around me. i don't care if i go to 5%. you are going to have to put someone else in this chair. i'm never going to go along with your medicaid cuts, and that's the end. i always felt in my heart, that was his mom. in arkansas, the poverty, the health care -- the one thing he wasn't going to do in his heart even though medicare was the great politics, was the medicaid cuts, and that led to what was a brave and great moment. when you think of all the things that happened, we were this far away from a decent amount of the great society being repealed at that moment, and i will tell you, anybody who tells you we had a master plan at that point is smoking something. [laughter] we were scared. we didn't know how it was going to turn out. we were lucky newt gingrich was a baby about being on the plane. we were lucky the american people went with us, that it turned against them, but it was a moment of real courage and

uncertainty. now when the president looks back, what he's most proud of the economic numbers are amazing. they are even more amazing than you mentioned. we had 43 months in a row in which the unemployment was in the 4%'s. the last four months, it was 3.9%. just extraordinary. the things i think he was most proud of was that, and all of the discussion we have on inequality today, the bottom 20% grew more than the top 20% in income. the bottom 20% grew the same as the top 5%. when you look at the poverty reductions, they were cut by a third. after -- these are huge shifts.

at the time, we didn't even know the effect. at the time, people didn't have a way of counting the impact of the earned income tax credit and medicaid. now that they do, people estimate the poverty actually went down over 30% at that point. that was a lot of the great things that happened in the economy, but it was also the things he implemented. >> erskine, were you scared? >> yeah, i think he has pulled it completely accurately. we were all scared. most of us thought it was the right thing to do. we all believed the president would stand firm, and when he did, i think you can't be any prouder of that. we knew he was doing the right thing. we knew he was putting his political future in doubt, but he didn't care about the politics. he was concerned about doing what was right. >> professor doherty, did you see anything in the oral history

about the shutdown? >> i did. one thing that i think is worth mentioning is we all know the clinton narrative. we know the first two years and the loss of congress, standing up to republicans, paving the way to reelection, and bipartisan progress in the second term. what this panel brings home is that it all wasn't necessarily destined to be that way. at the time when they were making these decisions, they didn't necessarily know exactly how it was going to turn out. and the government shutdown battle, president clinton won the public relations war. he was able to portray the republicans as being too extreme in their efforts to shut down the government. it wasn't clear he was going to win that. looking back, there were all sorts -- leon panetta said the fight helped to define him. he thinks it was key to winning

a second term. >> were you the one who talked about then speaker gingrich and the plane? for people who are watching this 50 years, 100 years from now if you could briefly, tell the story of the plane and why that became such a focal point in the shutdown story. >> first of all, one thing i think we did do right was that we did anticipate this would happen. there was a desire for us to make clear as the year went on that we were the ones who were willing to compromise, that the president had actually put out a balanced budget plan, that it was 10 years instead of five years. there had been efforts to do that. the gingrich story was that he complained the president made

him go out the front of air force one and he hadn't come back to visit him. unfortunately for the speaker there were pictures of the president back talking with him. things like that don't have a net effect if they are one-off but i think it actually played into the view that the president was the one trying to compromise and work together and that this was more about power. i think it did help turn things. i think it shifted the power in the party. the fact that gingrich didn't have a backup plan -- it shifted the power to dole, and one of the interesting issues that came out, dole and clinton are trying to work out a balanced budget agreement in february. they are meeting one-on-one. steve forbes makes a run at d

ole, which leads president clinton to basically tell us his number one goal -- i've never had such a clear direction. i can remember erskine, myself others there, and it was really simple. no politics. one goal. we are going to get a balanced budget agreement. the fact that he had done 1993 and defeated them was less of a great victory for him. he wanted to get that balanced budget agreement. he wanted a compromise. it was hard for some of our folks to understand why when we were riding high he was going to come back and do difficult things on medicare and other things. it did very much shape perhaps the presidential election and certainly shaped the direction of compromise in washington and what was going to happen. >> talk about the negotiations of that 1997 balanced budget

deal. >> i think it is important to point out -- i left the white house to go home for my son's last year in high school. i had hoped that that was the end of my public service career. the president managed to get me in the summer to set up this committee to think about what we wanted to accomplish in the second term. the president was very clear that he had four key areas of focus for the second term. this became my infamous to do list. everything we did was focus on those four areas. the first two are really related. the first one was that he wanted to make sure that we put our

nation's fiscal house in order and we balance the budget, but he always insisted that we balance it the right way. what he talked to me about, when i talked to him about the right way, he said, what i want to do is make sure that we grow the economy, that we create jobs, that we create opportunities for all americans. i want to make sure that we expand the middle class, that we reduce inequality, we reduce this widening gap between the rich and the poor. that is what he stayed focused on. one was the balance the budget but two, we were going to do it in the right way. the third thing was he wanted to expand trade. he wanted to open up markets for u.s. goods and services. why? it would create jobs in the u.s. they would be good jobs, high wage jobs, while he was also

protecting, as you pointed out labor and environmental standards. the last thing he made clear to me was that we were going to cooperate with this republican congress. if we were going to be able to get our agenda through the congress. it meant we were going to have to compromise. one thing he made clear was that we would never, ever compromise our principles. we set out on that journey working for the president. it was an extraordinary effort to say the least. the president was pretty clear about what he wanted done. we went about the negotiations with the congress to get an

agreement. i literally had to spend months and months locked up in conference rooms with newt gingrich. you all over me a lot for that. -- owe me a lot for that. in balancing the budget, we did cut spending by over $306 billion over a five-year period. 45% of that came in the discretionary budget. 77% of that -- $77 million was in the defense budget. we had to make a lot of really tough choices. we also cut health care. most of the cuts in health care came from the provider community, but we took $129 billion out of health care. we made a lot of tough, hard decisions you have to make to put the country's fiscal house in order. while we were making those cuts, we also got republicans to agree to suspending initiatives, and

the one i was personally promised one was we got $24 billion to invest in health care insurance for 5 million poor kids. we also made some tax cuts. $85 billion worth of tax cuts, meaning the total deficit reduction over a five-year period was $190 billion. we did make some compromises as the president said we would have to. we did give on lowering the capital gains tax rate. we took it from 28% to 20% for assets held for longer than 18 months, but we also got them agree -- then to agree to take it down for lower income brackets from 15% to 10%. in return, what did we get? we got that $24 billion in health care insurance for those poor kids. we got $1.5 billion to cover the increase in health care premiums for the truly disadvantaged.

we were able to get for small business owners the ability to deduct their health care insurance. a big g >> were able to improve access to higher education through scholarships which gave $1500 for the first year of a college education and $1500 for the second year and we turned around and got the lifelong learning scholarships they gave $1000 and year for years three and four. we got the child tax credit is $500 every child up to 16 years old which later became $1000. we got estate tax exemption for small business family farms so that small business owners and family farms to keep that. we were able to expand coverage and make healthy with -- penalty withdrawal for home purchases.

we got a chance so you could pass along your home to future families. we got a lot of things done. but really focused on making sure we not only balance the budget but we balanced in the right way. that we made sure that we took care of expanding that the class and reducing inequality. >> on the subject of the 97 budget -- 1997 budget, the white house was dealing not only with republican majorities in both chambers but also democratic members of congress, many of whom were hesitant about striking a deal that would meet the republicans in the middle. the lesson to take away from the oral histories is that, if you're are trying to understand legislative politics, you often cannot just look at the final vote. john hilley, who worked in the white house on legislative

affairs, said that the final vote in 1997, 75% of house democrats voted for the balance budget. there's over whelming support for it. you hear laughter because john hilley's said there were two approaches in congress. in the senate, senator daschle said, we did the heavy lifting in 1993 because you couldn't of got there without raising taxes therefore we ought to do the rest of the job. there is no sense in not completing this and we can take the credit. daschle is saying strike this budget deal with the republicans. on the house side, get barred is saying, we're not going to let them, the republicans get credit for completing the job. he worked against the deal. there was a lot of behind the

scenes to go sheeting that does not show up in the final tally. >> there probably weren't 20 people in washington when the president announced we were going to balance the budget, who believed were going to get it done. our member going on tim russert asked show and being -- tim russert's show and being questioned if this was remotely possible. there was a small group of blue dog democrats who were going to support it, maybe 20 or 30 people. we had no support. i remember minority leader get bird best he got so mad at us. you go to the meetings and people go crazy. 75% of the democrats in the house and the senate. said he 5% of the republicans in the senate all voted yes. when i hear people talk about how proud they were that they supported the balanced budget agreement, i think, where were

these people? [laughter] >> important lessons in terms of how something it's done. -- something gets done. you have to have a desire to do something. president clinton wanted it for the accomplishment for his economic management of the economy. there was this quiet conversation that erskine and hilley had. it was just enough. they just need to know, could we give them something that was huge for them like capital gains? we had to know even though they used to say no new entitlements, that we could get something on health care. one of the things was, we -- a lot of the egregious things in wealth here -- health-care reform were fixed of that bill.

they have hilley, frank dreams and i -- and he gets a real trust. people were locked in a room and really trusted each other after time. you had to go to the legislative side and erskine turgor the ball from their and went back-and-forth -- took over the ball from there and it went akin forth. -- went back and forth. how much more divided could you be then you were then? they impeached president and shut down the government. when you look at that kind of capital gains, the president did not decide he liked that. we were divided. we gave them something that was important to them, but look what happened in return. he got hope scholarship and lifelong text credit. you started something of higher

education tax credits the go on for 20 years. you started a legacy. the harm that was prevented by fixing some of the worst parts of the welfare reform -- welfare reform. they were willing to compromise and the second point bruce said that he is so important is, the thing i never saw from president clinton that i wish i could instill now, there was not this macho, did you kick there but? there are so much fear that you are so -- the jury took like a bad negotiator as opposed to did you get it done? we understood that if you were going to have a majority of the support the bill, they have to be able to go back with enough

wins. it was a more mature negotiation between two men and two sides that were divided. >> [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, the longer you stay there the more you believe that's true. i think in washington there is an absence of trust. what we did is we took the time and made the effort to build up that trust. during those months that i was locked up in those conference rooms with new gingrich -- with newt gingrich, i could've left any of those meetings and walked out and taking whatever gift he'd given me that day and used it for political purposes to win the day from a political viewpoint. we never did that.

he tested us a couple of times and we never violated that trust. this was a difficult time. people said, maybe it was not as partisan than. they were impeaching the president. [laughter] it was tough. but we have -- we had two people who wanted to put politics aside and do what they thought was right for the country. i can remember going back to president clinton on the night of july 30 and telling him we had a handshake deal with the leader and the speaker and the president said, tell me about it. i told him and he asked me one question. he said, did we get that health care insurance for those poor kids? and i said, yes sir. and did we get the scholarship money? and i said, yes sir. and he said, good job.

he wanted to balance the budget. he wanted to do the fiscally responsible thing. he wanted to put the nation's fiscal house in order. >> i have three questions. before i get to them, what was the one thing that president clinton wanted but couldn't get in either the 1993 deal or the 1997 deal? >> the professor might know. >> i think that he had greater ambitions on the public investment side. i think that while the -- while we hit certain goals and while it was admirable that you were taking the deficit into -- from

huge deficits to surpluses that you are doubling the income tax credit for families and we were starting early head start for the first time. we had the first education tax credits. the things we did for low income , we talked about the new markets tax credit, we passed that in the last year. now, $40 billion has gone out on that. the one thing about being old is you see that these smaller things, they don't get the attention in washington over a period of time. they have lasting power. i think that there were things he wishes he could have done more at the time. it was a lift for him to get any money from foreign development systems. head start, we increased by 2.5 billion over seven years.

he would have liked to the met in the first year. there were areas where we had to say we were going to rebuild trust in government. it is going to empower us more over time to do more. then, we had six years of republican government. i think the direction was excellent but i think in key areas of child poverty, development overseas, worker training, i think he wishes he could have done more, he could've been more bold. our success is that the last four years, we fought like crazy through the appropriations process. another 5 million. over four years, we've increased that by 2 billion, it was like old-style big 10 foot while -- big ten football.

>> there were a number of things on the list that we wanted that we didn't get, particularly related to school construction. i think jean always makes a great point, this president focuses so much on reducing inequality that existed in the country and still exists. we didn't talk about making pensions affordable and how important that was to benefiting , not only small business owners, but people who work there. what he did on welfare reform to increase the safety net for children to provide funding for not only training and transportation but for child care, but the new markets initiative. we got wage credits, capital gains exemptions, line financing to stimulate growth. the cdf i fund.

those over $400 million that has now to a lot more to provide access to financing for people who lived in distressed areas. community reinvestment act. that was about $800 billion which made a big difference for providing access to capital to people in distressed communities. it was all part of a picture. we got some of it in 1993 and some of it in 1997. he never once quit trying at working to do exactly what he said. fiscally responsible in the right way. i'm going to make sure we expand the middle class and that we grow the economy. >> i think mayor castro had that beautiful line in 2012 election about, you pass the baton. i think they were areas where the resident started something

new -- the president started something new, new markets tax credit, the education tax credits, early head start. all of those things, we would've liked to see those things more robust. when you see that the new markets tax credit -- if you can get something started and you could make it work and if it is a six out of 10 and you wish was a 10 out of 10, the importance of starting that legacy and having that go on so that when you look at the clinton economic legacy, when you ask about low income -- anything that is happening comes from that legacy. the great games and inequality come through -- great gains in inequality comes through. you take for granted that families get tax cuts for

sending their kids to college 15, 20 years level where these things last. they end up needing the magnitude -- meeting the magnitudes you envision at the start. >> k discussed the impact in paris and zones of the new market tax -- empowerment zones of the new market tax credit? i want to get to one of the other questions. >> i just wanted to say -- your question was about president clinton in come on things that jumps off page, what is in account after account is the level of detail and passion for policy that president clinton displayed. it -- if impressed astonishment could jump off the page, it does

in this area. stan greenberg is talking about these and these are these that were talked to campaign. greenberg said this was in his got. this is what his history was rooted in. he was not able to get all of it right away come: leon panetta says to get the investment agenda, yet the walk-through the and -- you have to walk through the fire. it was prophecy to a certain extent. >> was president clinton just lucky to have been president during the tech boom? at least my question about the surpluses. the hard part in 1993, you balance the budget 1997, did you think in your wildest dreams you would -- that president clinton

would govern with surpluses? >> not in your wildest dreams. in fact, you wondered what the deficit will -- with the deficit ever come down. it had been rising for 12 years. i think people bash partisans can argue on either side. the correct view to look at the 90's is, of course it is not everything that happened bash everything that happened there is not all due to president clinton. that would be an exaggeration. it will be equally flawed to suggest he was just along for the ride. there is no question that the 1993 debt reduction change the investment climate in our country. the seriousness of economic management, coming back with the balance budget agreement, the sense of having an efficient

team that was disciplined in communications, the fact that he looked like he was always willing to do the politically difficult thing to manage the economy. you may agree or disagree with some of these decisions, but 93 debt -- 1993 debt reduction, the economic decisions, the decision to help save mexico when 85% of the public, 85% of the public were against it. china wto access and, the way he managed in the asian financial crisis. what people saw was courageous decisions that were unpopular but they did create a degree of confidence. to go to this overall philosophy, the values as talked

about, work and responsibility, but also a general sense that a president could be progressive in his investments progressive in seeking to make sure the benefits are shared by the middle class, by the hard-working, low income families. that you could do that in a way in which you saw to shape markets, not stop markets. the fact that one of the great things with the internet giants at the time was, provide the president left the internet -- the development of the internet, the fact that in crate -- in trade he moved toward trying to have more labor standards. it was an understanding that you could be both pro-growth and progressive. that you to be reasonable and realistic about market and have they -- and how they develop.

i think this defines him and i think you would not have had the degree of growth and investment that you had without president clinton. i think everybody did their part. he did his part. that would matters most. >> i agree with 90% of what gene said. none of us saw that. none of us saw four straight years of debt reduction of $453 billion with the biggest concern we left office was armed going to pay off all of the treasury debt. none of us saw four consecutive surpluses for the first time in 70 years. what this guy did see, was he saw in 1993, with that budget

agreement, that we were able to cut the deficit in half. in february of 1997, when he submitted his first house legend -- his first balanced legend budget. the fiscal measures he put in place would have enabled us without that great of economy to enable to bell's the budget by the year 2002. he bounced it in the right way. >> alice rivkin is being -- is described as being nonpolitical she is given the economist take on this. she says the president did not create the tech boom, but you have to take into account what

they did to facilitate it. the central gamble of the 1993 economic legit deals. the reason the president chose to focus on deficit reduction because of soaring interest rates. the idea was that deficit reduction would leave to lower interest rates. hopefully in the bond markets because it was not a sure deal at the time that this was negotiated. in a multi-trillion dollar economy, lowering interest rates was the most stimulus action the administration could take for broad-based economic growth. what house rivlin says in her oral history is, she talks but the deficit coming down and that it was "taking pressure off the bond market." for noneconomists, the money

were not paying to interest rates, you can put to productive use in the economy. she and other economists say that lower interest rate held facilitate investments that led to the tech boom. there were other factors that came into play. most with credit the 19 a three budget deal with helping. >> i want to give each of you a last remark. since you have gone through all of these transcripts, what is the most interesting thing you learned about either president clinton, the administration, when it comes to economic policy? >> there is lot that is fascinating, amusing. bruce reed said the worst fear is that no one will read it. everyone, do your part to make sure that nightmare does not come true.

[laughter] >> if you want to look at resident clinton's -- president clinton's economic history, what comes through each economic history, now we have the narrative of what happened but it was not guaranteed to happen. we'll panetta said of president -- liam panetta said that of president clinton, he was willing to do it everything involved that led to unparalleled economic growth. another insight is what this meant for party politics. democrats before bill clinton's prosody had -- bill clinton residency had not been number fiscal responsibility. it was a shift in party roles and identities and a number of oral histories. roger altman says it may turn

out that bill clinton may have transformed the democratic party. the leadership in that area is substantial. >> these two guys are going to have to -- jean -- gene sperling , what is your proudest moment? >> proudest is getting the earned income tax increase in the 19 and three debt reduction. i was his campaign conscience and it was hard to fight for that and see him go long and picked that up and see the impact that made and how much it fit the values that bruce talked about. i would say, being there when he

stood up. i was just really proud to be part of a white house -- i am blessed to have this person is my chief of staff his management. there is no reason whose read and i should be close friends. we should of been perfect -- there is no reason bruce reed and i should be close friends. my first year as deputy, i made a mistake and got into -- have not gone to a particular senator at the time was not going to cut $20 million out of the head start what it because i had not quite communicated that the president wanted it. i don't know what you do, can you interrupt the president to say can you call somebody in a half hour? i did. a terrible moment.

he says, that's a lot of kids, of course you should interrupt me. >> most think my proudest moment should be the first balanced budget in generation. it is not. visiting health insurance for those kids. [applause] >> thank you. >> patrick all upon draws presidential caricatures. david mccullough discusses

residents and some of their most memorable qualities. >> the political landscape has changed with the 114th congress. not only other 43 new republicans in 15 new democrats in the house, there is also 108 women in congress, including the first african-american republican in the house in the first woman veteran in the senate. keep track of the members of congress on c-span.org. new congress, best access on c-span c-span two and c-span.org. each week, american history tv's american artifacts historic places.

the united states botanic garden is the oldest botanic garden in north america. next, we take a tour of the conservancy at the foot of capitol hill and learn about the collections of this plant museum, originally proposed by president washington in 1796. >> my name is ari novy. i'm the director here. the botanic garden is a wonderful place to learn about plants. our motto could be plants plants, plants. our official mission is to demonstrate the importance of plants and their values to humankind. today, we are going to take some time and i will show you the u.s. botanic gardens and introduce you to the stars. right now, we're standing in a room called the garden court. i always like to orient people to the garden court when we come in. one of the most important elements are the two's eye cats

that you see in the front. the first things you see when you walk inside the botanic gardens. they are important for us because they represent a part of our historical collection. the u.s. botanic garden came to existence as a permanent institution 1842 when united states exploring expedition returned from a four-year voyage in the pacific ocean at the behest of congress and picked up a bunch of natural science artifacts. in 1842, when the expedition returned, they had about 150 tropical and subtropical plant species, many of which had never been on the north american continent. this was very very valuable. his collection of plants was recognized by