DeConcini was my only hope. I had had the others to dinner, met with and called them, and had their closest friends in the administration lobby them, to no avail. If DeConcini didn’t change, we were beat.
The next day, he did, saying he would vote yes because of the trust fund. Now, if Bob Kerrey stayed with us we would get fifty votes in the Senate, and Al Gore could break the tie again. But before we got there, the budget first had to pass the House. We had one more day to find a majority of 218 votes, and we still weren’t there. More than thirty Democrats were wavering. They were afraid of the taxes, though we had done printouts for each of the members showing how many people in their districts would get a tax cut under the EITC, as compared with those who would get an income tax increase. In many cases, the ratio was ten to one or better, and in barely more than a dozen were their constituents so well off that the district would see more tax increases than decreases. Still, they were all worried about the gas tax. I could have passed the plan easily had I dropped the gas tax and offset the loss by abandoning the EITC tax cut. It would have been far less politically damaging. Poor working people had no lobbyists in Washington; they would never have known. But I would have. Besides, if we were going to soak the rich, the bond market wanted us to spray the middle class with a little bit of pain. That afternoon, Leon Panetta and House majority leader, Dick Gephardt, who was working tirelessly for the budget, had struck a deal with Congressman Tim Penny of Minnesota, the leader of a group of conservative Democrats who wanted more spending cuts, promising the budget cutters another vote during the fall appropriations process to cut spending even more. Penny was satisfied, and his approval brought us seven or eight more votes.
We lost two of our earlier yes votes when Billy Tauzin of Louisiana, who later became a Republican, and Charlie Stenholm of Texas, who represented a district where most of the voters were Republican, said they would vote no. They hated the gas tax and said the unified Republican opposition to the plan had convinced their constituents that it was nothing but a tax increase. Less than an hour before the vote, I spoke with Congressman Bill Sarpalius from Amarillo, Texas, who had voted against the plan in May. In our fourth phone conversation of the day, Bill said he had decided to vote for the plan, because so many more of his constituents would get tax cuts than tax increases, and because Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary had pledged to shift more government work to the Pantex plant in his district. We made many commitments like that. Someone once said that the two things people should never watch being made are sausages and laws. It was ugly, and uncertain. When the voting began, I still didn’t know whether we were going to win or lose. After David Minge, who represented a rural district in Minnesota, said he would vote no, it all came down to three people: Pat Williams of Montana, Ray Thornton of Arkansas, and Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky of Pennsylvania. I really didn’t want Margolies-Mezvinsky to have to vote with us. She was one of the very few Democrats who represented a district with more constituents who’d get tax hikes than tax cuts, and in her campaign she had promised not to vote for any tax increases. It was a tough vote for Pat Williams, too. Far more of his constituents would get tax cuts than tax increases, but Montana was a huge, sparsely populated state where people had to drive long distances, so the gas tax would hit them harder than most Americans. But Pat Williams was a good politician and a tough populist who deplored what trickledown economics had done to his people. There was at least a chance that he could survive the vote. Compared with Williams and Margolies-Mezvinsky, Thornton had an easy vote. He represented central Arkansas, where there were far more people who would get a tax cut than a tax increase. He was popular and could not have been blown out of his seat with a stick of dynamite. He was my congressman, and my presidency was on the line. And he had lots of cover: both Arkansas senators, David Pryor and Dale Bumpers, were strong supporters of the plan. But in the end Thornton said no. He had never voted for a gas tax before and he wouldn’t start now, not to get the deficit down, not to revive the economy, not to save my presidency or the career of Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky.
Finally, Pat Williams and Margolies-Mezvinsky came down the aisle and voted yes, giving us a onevote victory. The Democrats cheered their courage and the Republicans jeered. They were especially cruel to Margolies-Mezvinsky, waving and singing, “Good-bye, Margie.” She had earned an honored place in history, with a vote she shouldn’t have had to cast. Dan Rostenkowski was so happy he had tears in his eyes. Back in the White House, I let out a whoop of joy, and relief. The next day, the drama moved to the Senate. Thanks to George Mitchell and his leadership team, and our lobbying, we had held all the senators from the first vote except David Boren. Dennis DeConcini had bravely stepped into his place, but the outcome was still in doubt, because Bob Kerrey remained uncommitted. On Friday he met with me for ninety minutes, then, about an hour and a half before the vote, he spoke on the Senate floor, saying directly to me, “I could not and should not cast a vote that brings down your presidency.” While he would vote yes, he said I would have to do more to control entitlement spending. I agreed to work with him on this. He was pleased with that, as well as with my acceptance of Tim Penny’s proposal for an October vote on more cuts.
Kerrey’s vote made it a 50–50 tie. Then, just as he had in the first vote on June 25, Al Gore, as president of the Senate, cast the tie-breaking vote. In a statement after the vote, I thanked George Mitchell and all the senators who “voted for change,” and Al Gore for “his unwavering contribution in the landslide.” Al loved to joke that whenever he voted, we always won.
I signed the legislation on August 10. It reversed twelve years in which the national debt had quadrupled with deficits built on overly optimistic revenue numbers and an almost theological belief that low taxes and high levels of spending would somehow bring enough growth to balance the budget. At the ceremony I specifically acknowledged those senators and representatives whose support never wavered from beginning to end, and who therefore were never mentioned in the news stories. Every yes voter in both houses of the Congress could rightfully say that, but for him or her, we would not be here today. We had come a long way since those heated debates around the dining-room table in Little Rock the previous December. All by themselves, the Democrats had replaced a wrongheaded but deeply embedded economic theory with a sensible one. Our new economic idea had become reality. Unfortunately, the Republicans, whose policies had created the problem in the first place, had done a good job portraying the plan as nothing but a tax increase. It was true that most of the spending cuts kicked in later than the tax increases, but that was also true of the alternative budget offered by Senator Dole. In fact, Dole’s plan had an even higher percentage of its cuts in the last two years of the five-year budget than mine did. It simply takes time to reduce defense and health spending; you can’t slash it all at once. Moreover, our “future” investments in education, training, research, technology, and the environment were already at unacceptably low levels, having been held down in the eighties as tax cuts, defense appropriations, and health costs soared. My budget began to reverse that trend. Predictably, the Republicans said my economic plan would cause the sky to fall in, calling it a “job killer” and a “one-way ticket to recession.” They were wrong. Our bond market gambit would work beyond our wildest dreams, bringing lower interest rates, a soaring stock market, and a booming economy. Just as Lloyd Bentsen had predicted, the wealthiest Americans would get their tax money back, and more, in investment income. The middle class would get their gas-tax money back many times over, in lower home mortgage rates and lower interest costs for car payments, student loans, and credit card purchases. Working families with modest incomes benefited from the Earned Income Tax Credit right away.
In later years I was often asked what great new idea my economic team and I brought to economic policy making. Rather than give a complicated explanation of the bond market/deficit-reduction strategy, I always gave a one-word answer: “arithmetic.” The American people had been told for more than a decade that their government was a gluttonous leviathan swallowing their hard-earned tax dollars to no good end. Then the same politicians who told them that, and served up tax cuts to starve the evil beast, would turn right around and spend themselves to reelection, leaving the false impression that the voters could have programs they didn’t pay for, and that the only reason we had big deficits was wasteful spending on foreign aid, welfare, and other programs for poor people, a tiny fraction of the budget. Spending on “them” was bad; spending and tax cuts for “us” were good. As my fiscally conservative friend Senator Dale Bumpers used to say: “You let me write $200 billion a year in hot checks and I’ll show you a good time, too.”
We had brought arithmetic back to the budget, and broken America of a bad habit. Unfortunately, though the benefits began to accrue right away, the people wouldn’t feel them for some time. In the meantime, my fellow Democrats and I bore the brunt of the public’s withdrawal pains. I couldn’t expect gratitude. Even with an abscessed tooth, nobody likes to go to the dentist.
THIRTY-FIVE
After the budget passed, Congress went on its August recess and I was eager to take my
