The Price of Politics (53 page)

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) As the Obama administration prepared its first full-year budget in late 2009, National Economic Council Director Larry Summers, left, urged the rest of the economic team, including Treasury Secretary Geithner, center, and Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag, right, to “just gimmick it up,” because any long-range spending cuts passed into law could be changed by a future Congress.

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) “Our internal process is a fucking debating society,” complained White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel—the man in charge of that process—in a February 8, 2010, email. President Obama’s fellow Chicagoan left the House leadership to help guide the relatively inexperienced president through the intricacies of Washington politics, and his aggressive approach to dealing with congressional Republicans in the early years of Obama’s first term was: “We have the votes. Fuck ’em.”

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) Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat from North Dakota who chairs the Budget Committee, created a precedent for the debt limit crisis of 2011 when he told President Obama that he would block a vote on the increase of the federal debt limit unless the White House backed a fiscal commission with extraordinary power to cut spending.

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) Vice President Biden, pictured here on May 24, 2011, was called on to negotiate through back channels with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on sensitive budget and tax issues. In the West Wing, he was called “the McConnell whisperer” because he knew the right combination of sympathy and gentleness, never force, needed to work with the minority leader.

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) Erskine Bowles, left, former White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, and retired Senator Alan Simpson, center, a Wyoming Republican, were tapped to chair a bipartisan fiscal commission that would seek ways to reduce the federal deficit. In announcing their appointment, President Obama said the two were “taking on the impossible.”

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) President Obama calls future speaker John Boehner on election night, November 3, 2010, after the Republicans won 63 seats in the House, giving them the majority. White House staff at first couldn’t find a phone number for Boehner, but Obama eventually reached him and said he was “looking forward to working with him and the Republicans to find common ground, move the country forward, and get things done for the American people.”

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) “I haven’t reached out as effectively as I should have,” President Obama told House Republicans in a meeting November 30, 2010, after the election. “Let’s have honest cooperation, not just photo ops.” From left, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, just outside the door; Virginia Republican Eric Cantor, the incoming House majority leader; Obama; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky; Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona; and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

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) “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said. Often forgotten is what he said later in that interview: “If President Obama does a Clintonian backflip, if he’s willing to meet us halfway on some of the biggest issues, it’s not inappropriate for us to do business with him. . . . I don’t want the president to fail; I want him to change.”

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) “My guys don’t even believe default is a problem,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor explained to Democrats. Cantor, closely connected to the more extreme conservative Tea Party wing of the House Republicans, was skeptical of a $3–$4 trillion grand bargain to reduce the deficit with entitlement reform and a tax increase.

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) Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan, left, took over as chairman of the House Budget Committee in 2011. His April 2011 budget proposal, “The Path to Prosperity,” was designed to slash the federal deficit, but drastically reduce benefits for people on Medicare and Medicaid. After President Obama publicly criticized what he called Ryan’s “dark view of America” in a speech when Ryan was in the audience, Ryan told White House staff, “I can’t believe you poisoned the well like that.”

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) House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, left, and Vice President Biden on May 5, 2011, the opening day of initial talks to address the federal deficit and raise the debt ceiling. The two forged a close working relationship but Cantor opposed any tax increases and Biden said they had been sent on “Mission: Impossible.”