camp was humanely administered by the ins but the special war division for the department of state used it as roosevelt primary prisoner exchange. it was the center of roosevelt prisoner exchange program. >> sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on "q&a." >> next on "the presidency," members of president clinton's foreign policy cabinet discussed rwanda, the middle east, and the search for osama bin laden. this is a portion of a symposium on the clinton administration hopes of it -- hosted by the clinton administration. >> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome editor and chief and copresident of the "atlantic,"

23 million jobs created in millions moved out of poverty and the narrowing of the income inequality cap and the first legit surpluses in generations. how did it happen? how did the 1993 legit to that reduce the deficit get done? . for the 1997 budget deal that

balanced the budget unsecured historic surpluses westmark how to the earned income tax credit and the child's program that helps the poor and the working class families and pulled will millions into the middle class get done? jean spurling and erskine roles are the perfect people to answer these questions. erskine bowles is to my left and joined the clinton administration in 1993 as the administrator of the small business administration and then moved to the white house as deputy chief of staff in 1994 and then chief of staff at the start of the clinton administration in 1997 until october, 1998.

to keep them honest, and to add context to their consequential work is the associate professor of political science at the united states naval academy where he teaches about the residency, congress, campaigns and elections. professor doherty worked with the miller center to home

transcript to get a deeper insight into the environment and discussion that led to the incredible economic record under president clinton. to get things started, we will spend five minutes of peace expiring their roles in the administration and a professor doherty will give us his commentary then we will have a discussion up hair and while we are having our discussion, i encourage you and implore you to send us your questions on note cards that will be passed around. this way you can give me questions i can pepper the panel with during their question and answer later on. to start mr. boles as you talk about your role in the administration and also for eugene, talk about how you first met president clinton as other panelists did in the previous panel and worked that into your

discussion of your role in the administration. that's >> pretty boring. mr. clinton had more magnetism than any politician i have ever met. from time to time, 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 come it rips your heart out.

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 you look kind of lou today. i said i am. he said tell me why. i told him about sam having this load load sugar seizure. -- low blood sugar seizure. i said i was president of the juvenile diabetes research foundation. the scientists have told me that the best hope for a cure for my son and all the other people who have this disease is tissue research. i said it just passed in the senate. i said george bush just vetoed it. i swear, expected him to respond

because here is a guy who's supposed to be so empathetic. not a word. nothing, like i was talking to the windshield wiper. a couple of weeks later, he made his major health care speech at merck. 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. he has convinced me that we should take the politics out of scientific research and if i'm elected president, i will let the ban on fetal tissue research. diabetes, parkinson's, als communities went crazy and everybody thought it was great and everyone figured out it must be me. he never said a word to me. after he was elected and as a north carolina democrat i never voted for anyone who actually won anything. [laughter] after he was elected he asked

me to come up to washington. he was having a group of business people into the white house. he asked if i would like to come and i said it would be great to go to the white house. i went up there in the business people went through and afterwards, he said come down to the oval office. we went down to the oval office and he took a pen out and sign something. he came over to me and handed me the pen. he said, erskine, this is the pen i used to sign the executive order lifting the ban on needle tissue research pretty set i want you to take this pen home to your son sam and say he has hope, hope for a cure. [applause] i still get chills. i thought to myself, gosh, what character, what strength. i told my wife i want to work for this guy and i will take any job he will give me and i called them up and set i will take any job you will give me and sure enough, he sent me to the sba.

[laughter] >> gene? >> i had been working for someone who is considered more likely to be president in that cycle which was mario cuomo who decided not to run. i was as prepared for the presidential campaign of 1992 as anyone could be and i thought i would be sitting on the sidelines. fortunately, i had wrens like george stephanopoulos and bob wright and others who convinced the governor to hire me. i came down here and 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. they said we just a the president a day off.

we gave the governor a day off so unless you are 100% sure -- this is my first hour -- unless you're 100% sure of the comments he will make in the evening news, we're not commenting. i could not believe it. i said i am pretty much 100% sure this is a bad number. we have to get out there. they bring me there and he's got the day off and they are pulling him out and dressing him up so he can make a statement. he was wondering who's ideal as was. [laughter] at that point, george stephanopoulos said we should introduce you to your new economic policy director, gene sperling. the interesting thing was -- i am staying now in the marriott excelsior. i walked in and the president and george and then set we want an economic plan now. i was told not to even get an apartment or anything.

i just lived at the excelsior for a month and we went into just this hyper rapid desire to put together which ended up putting people first. that was an amazing introduction to bill clinton. anybody who works for a president knows you get a little bit of a honeymoon and the new guy is a little smart. we were stuck -- we had promised to balance the budget. i am coming in and i am almost like the auditor looking through the books. i kind of said to him, you cannot balance the budget area you cannot cut the deficit in half and you cannot do both the child tax credit and the tax cut but you can give people a choice. they could have a payroll tax cut or a child tax credit. this is the moment you expect the president or a political leader to be unhappy not telling

them what they want. he looked and said that makes perfect sense for it's credible it's more believable. we went out there and we put out putting people first. for me, it was so amazing to see what i ended up seeing all that time which was the intensity and focus on i he is policies. -- on idea policies. he starts with policy and stars with what's best and the political antenna come in not to figure out what you are for about how you can figure out what you can explain and shape what you want to do. there are politics but they are in the shaping and the marketing and the selling as opposed to what you are actually four. that was an extraordinary introduction. i was in heaven. for those of us who are back, i have seen so many, heidi

chapman, the office director -- it was a magical time for us. i don't know that anybody will ever get that type of experience. we were a band from little rock. we had no senior staff meetings. everyone into the war room at 7:00 a.m.. can you imagine a campaign with 150 people crammed into the room? feeling like you're in third place and going to first place and to see is a democrat that you are suddenly working for the guys doing every thing right you've got a candid date who is so smart and savvy and his team is working so well. and then the focus and's deed and the execution, the feeling of confidence-as we started bruce wanted me to repeat this and i will tell this story -- as we started to look like we were going to win, they started doing a lot of stories on george stephanopoulos.

they became like celebrities paris when they got a little bored of them, they started writing stories about roos. my team would say that sooner or later they have to write something about you. [laughter] i finally write the first profile on me. it's not about the stories about george bruce about how cute they are and how they are wrote scholars. he gets in at 6:00 a.m. he leaves at 2:00 a.m., he works all the time, he's just all work come and nothing else, no, smith, nothing. [laughter] people said that is the first story for the second story they are going around pulling people on how much coffee i drink. [laughter] what people estimate my sleep pattern is. a guy in our staff named paul put both stories on my desk and then put a sign over that said " sperling, he is not particularly good but he is here a lot." [laughter] that became bruce and my anthem

or eight years. -- for eight years. we were both deputy economic advisers. he was a domestic advisor. one thing i will say in this goes to a question that was asked to how we started-i ought the thing that he came in with such smarts about is the that process mattered. process was not boring. it was about whether your team actually trusted each other and work together. he would say to us that aced on his experience, as governor, he had seen all policies happen or not happen but whether two or three different cabinet members got along. when he saw the bush team fighting with each other, he actually felt that for bush. he thought it was so disloyal. he constructed this i you of the national economic council, that there would be an honest broker is to represent the best of the

council and you have this kind of fairness of process and this belief that everybody, once you're at the table, had an equal opinion. your job was to organize that and he would say to you all the time -- there was note tolerance for henry kissinger in a role that sandy or bruce r i had. you were there to give your opinion and you were there fundamentally to make sure there was a fair process. i think that served us so well. it was the kind of constant narrowing the choices, the back end forth in the open presentation in front of him with everything being weighed and that insight he had. if you do not have that from the top, it does not work. they cabinet member thanks they can influence the president i just pulling them aside at a state than ever getting on air force one, they will do that. if they think he will not tolerate that and that you have to go through the process and everybody has to be at the table

equally, that's what the process people did. the fact that he created that national economic council and it survived now through two different presidents and i think it will survive always is very important. i think the ethic of creating trust at the table, trust in process, trust that nobody is getting an advantage or whispering in his ear is incredibly important. i wish of the age of artie three i would have thought that. i lived it and i'd so what difference it made -- i wish at the age of 303i would have thought that. it is not as exciting as the substantive debates between parties. >> set the table for us, professor doherty. you have gone through all of these transcripts of their colleagues through the miller center which will be released later this afternoon. what did you learn? >> i have only met president

clinton once. it was a fleeting handshake after his presidency. what i have to offer is months and months spent poring over dozens of oral histories and reading over 1000 pages to dive into the treasure trove of memories accumulated. i would like to thank the miller center and the library for jointly putting together the oral history project and hosting us here today. [applause] i would like to set the stage -- for the discussion of economic policy making in the clinton administration -- political science is in terms of commitment and constrained. what were the president's priorities in the economic and political realities that limited and shaped his abilities to accomplish this? when you think about president

clinton's economic commitment, it goes back to a speech made in the fall of 1991 at georgetown university. mickey kantor said if you look back at the speeches in georgetown that all can i believe you will agree that in the history of modern politics, he is more consistent with what he laid out that almost anyone. made a difference in the campaign. everyone who came and understand 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. governor clinton promised -- released what he termed the forgotten middle class. it was things like education job training and more. he promised to cut the deficit in half in four years. we know that was gene sperling's idea which is great. when you think about constraint- the economic constraint that

clinton faced was a duty. january 6, 1993, two weeks before he is inaugurated as the 42nd president, the outgoing budget director for president bush releases new deficit projections that are starkly different from those he had released the previous summer. the projected abhisit for the next fiscal year -- the projected deficit would be $20 billion higher. it was a five-year estimate in the projection for fiscal year 1997 was 68 billion dollars higher than forecast. when you're a president of candidate promises to cut the deficit in half and the deficit is now larger, that changes things. president clinton has said he brought risk protection back to budgeting and the arithmetic of budgeting meant he could not do everything he promised. it was not possible. alice rivlin said some aides

said wait a mac, we've got to deliver on these promises we made in the campaign. if you're doing all the deficit reduction come you cannot do that. that was the fight. leon panetta who was budget director recounted what he said to robert reisch after the election. he said if you want to fulfill the agenda, you have to " walk through the deficit fire." that was not unappealing process. alan blinder called it root canal politics. he said it was a question of whose axe you were going to gore. there were substantial economic restraints. now let's turn to the political. once the president had chosen the path he wanted to pursue, he had to work the congress. when president a clinton became president, he was blessed to have overwhelming democratic

majority in both chambers of congress. it sounds like a golden opportunity for productive policymaking right? not exactly. democrats were not in the habit of taking the lead from it resident of their own party. they had spent the past 12 years working with republican presidents, reagan and bush, in 20 of the past 24 years. when you look at the members of congress on the democratic side, 2/3 of house democrats and one half of seven -- senate democrats had never served with a democratic resident. there were not in the habit of looking down pennsylvania avenue and looking to the president for direction on what they wanted to do. democrats had held the house for 38 years. republicans had been born and

died without seeing their party control the speakership in the house of representatives. it was 32 of the last 38 years and that senate. alan winder called it an unruly majority. tom daschle from south dakota said when it came to the residence at gender, he said congress is likely to listen but not necessarily comply. that was an understatement. that was just the democrats. turning to the republicans, were they eager to cooperate? they were not. they did not look at resident clinton's 370 votes he won in the electoral college. they did not look at the fact that he had beaten a sitting resident by over 5% in the popular vote. they looked at the three-way race with george bush and ross perot. they said almost 57% of the people voted not bill clinton. they said they would represent those voters and stand for a

different economic agenda. the president would focus on deficit reduction which would involve tax increases per the 1990 to deal at made the republican party more anti-tax. the deputy treasury secretary summed it up like saying most republicans take the view they would rather die than vote for a tax increase. i think he might've meant that literally. the stage was set for contentious economic policymaking. >> incredible presentation, thank you very much. erskine and jean, can you react to what the professor just laid out? does that jive with your recollections? did you have fun with that unruly majority? >> i will always remember january 6 because i had the pleasure of telling vice president and president elect

that our numbers had changed her medically. -- had changed dramatically. you have to understand what this was like. we were in an and 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 sitting 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. at that point -- 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. we called it our 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 physical discipline -- 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. no parent who works full-time should have to raise their child in poverty. you cannot cut short on that. 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. we ended up passing that. 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 , $15 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 double it -- 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 his belief -- 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 or the eitc he did, or the legacy that followed from nancy pelosi to barack obama. when you put them all together, 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. you know the story there right -- marjorie ms. inskeep cast the deciding vote, and it cost her the 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. a 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. the 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. when people talk 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 united states 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. 218 is the number of votes you need for a simple majority in the house of representatives. she proceeded to remember a great deal about that day. the vote did come down to senator kerry and congresswoman ms. pinsk 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 look to their religious faith. he told the story of this odd combination of these factors. it was a democratic house member from detroit who 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 approved in detroit. [laughter] there were many votes that were hard to get and some that were a little bit more unorthodox. >> i was laughing before you got through the story, because you told me before. erskine, you didn't come into the white house until after the 1993 deal was done. 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 to 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. [laughter] so 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 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 the 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 did not 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 stephanie street a minute ago, and i can remember when we were working on hope scholarship and 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 -- enormously 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 could not push him. he would not 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, -- 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 out. i could go on and on, but the key part was, what actually triggers the moment was medicaid. take army -- take army -- dick 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%. it was 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 and lamented. >> 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 did, i think you can't be any

-- 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 himself, but it was over 10 years instead of five years, and there was -- there had been efforts to do that. the gingrich story was that he complained that the president had made him not go out the front of air force one and he had not 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 dole 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, nothing.

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 to 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 in 1997. >> 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. [laughter] 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 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 proudest of, 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 -- 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 get, if you own an insurance companies to be able to play on a level playing field. 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 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 -- that middle-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 deal. you might think there is 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 for it. daschle is saying strike this budget deal with the republicans. on the house side, get barred is -- richard gephardt 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 we 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 literally no support. i remember richard cap heart had our phones torn out of our office, he was so mad. people would go crazy. after it happened, 75% of the democrats in the house and the senate -- 75% 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 our skin took -- erskine took over the ball from there and it 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.

the real question you saw there was not that people were less divided, 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 so much fear that you will look 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. >> it did not just happen. when people asked me be different in the real world and the difference in washington and i say it that way because

human -- hubert humphrey described washington asked what he six miles surrounded by reality. -- 26 miles surrounded by reality. 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. 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. that's what he cared about. 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 could not get, either in the 1993 deal or the 1997 deal? let's turn to the professor, he 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. nobody cared. 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 increase 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 have been more bold. our success is that the last four years, we fought like crazy through the appropriations process. you build $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.

this president focuses so much on reducing inequality that existed in the country and still exists today. 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 find. those over $400 million that has now to a lot more to provide access to financing for people who lived in distressed areas. the 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 -- i'm going to be 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 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 meeting the magnitudes you envision at the start. >> can you 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 -- one of the things that jumps off page, what is in account after account is the level of detail and passion for policy that president clinton displayed. if impressed astonishment 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 gut.

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, you have to walk through the deficit fire. >> was president clinton just lucky to have been president during the tech boom? at least -- and that leads to my question about the surpluses. did you think, in your wildest dream, that you would actually -- that president clinton would govern with surpluses? >> no, not in your wildest dreams. like all of us, we wondered if the deficit whatever come down. -- would ever come down.

partisans can argue on either side. the correct view to look at the 1990'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 the 1993 debt

reduction, the economic decisions, the decision to help save mexico when 85% of the save mexico 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 that bruce 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. 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. 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 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. that's what matters most. he led the foundation for those other things to happen.

>> i agree with 90% of what gene said. none of us saw that last saw four straight years of debt reduction of $453 billion with the biggest concern when 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 balanced

budget. the fiscal measures he put in place would have enabled us without that great of economy to be able to balance the budget by the year 2002. he balanced it in the right way. >> alice rifkin 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 do to facilitate it. the central gamble of the 1993 economic budget -- the reason the president focused on deficit reduction was because of soaring interest rates. the idea was that deficit reduction would lead to lower

interest rates, certainly in the bond market. not a sure deal at the time that 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 alice rifkin said 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 a the tech boom. there were other factors that

came into play. >> 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, i'm using. 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] i do not know if this is the most interesting thing, but if you want to look at president clinton's legacy, what comes through in oral history is the point i made earlier, we have a narrative of what happened, it was not guaranteed to happen.

leon panetta said that he was willing to do it, knowing all the risks involved, that panetta says led to economic growth. we talked a lot about economic policy, but another insight in the all history is party politics. the democrats, before brooklyn's policy, had not been known for fiscal discipline. it was known as a revolutionary 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.

i do not know if that satisfactorily answers your question. >> gene sperling , what is your proudest moment? >> proudest is getting the earned income tax increase in the 1993 deficit reduction. i was his campaign conscience and it was hard to fight for that and see him go long and take 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 values, his management.

there is no reason bruce reed and i should have been friends we should have been competitors. there was an ethic about the policy that mattered, and sometimes those little things matter and sometimes i think about my first year as deputy, i made a mistake that hadn't gotten to a particular senator on time who was going to cut $20 million of the head start budget, because i had not quite communicated what the president wanted. i did not know what to do, do you knock on the door of the oval and in -- interrupt the president to say can you call somebody in a half hour? i did. he says, that's a lot of kids, of course you should interrupt me. >> most people think my proudest moment should be the first balanced budget in generation.

it is not. visiting health insurance for those kids. >> thank you. [applause] >> here are some of our featured programs for this weekend on the c-span network. this morning, starting at 10 a.m. eastern, live on c-span, our nation's governors get together to discuss issues affecting their states, guests include danny meyer ceo of union square hospitality group, and maria both aroma of fox business news. sunday morning at 11:00, we continue our live coverage of the national governors association meeting, features beakers include homeland security secretary jeh johnson and epa administrator gina

mccarthy. on c-span, today, at noon, the tv is on the road experiencing the literary life of greensboro, north carolina. heart of the to 15 c-span cities tour. -- part of the 2015 c-span cities tour. on american history tv on c-span3, tonight after 7:00, the 1963 interview of former nation of islam minister malcolm x, discussing race relations. sunday at 6:30 p.m. eastern, former cia chief of disguise jonna mendes tells the story of a husband and wife agb spy team that infiltrated the cia through the use of sex in the 1970's. i'd our complete television schedule at c-span.org.

-- find our complete television schedule. send us a tweet at. join the conversation, like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. >> the guard towers are gone but the memories come flooding back for so many people who until today, have lost such a big part of their childhood. released after the war, some buried the memories, and with it , the history of this camp. now, more than 60 years later -- this sunday, on the only family internment camp during world war ii at crystal city, texas, at what she says is the real reason for this camp. >> the government comes and says we have a deal for you. we will reunite you with your

family and the crystal city internment camp, if you will agree to go voluntarily and then, i discovered what the real secret of the camp was. what. they also had to agree to voluntarily repatriate to germany and japan if the government decided they needed to be repatriated. so the truth of the matter is the crystal city camp was humanely administered, but the special ward divisions and department of state used it as roosevelt's primary prisoner exchange and was the center of the prisoner exchange program. lack of a knife at 8:00 eastern -- sunday night at 8:00 eastern and pacific. >> each week american history tv american artifacts is it