Senate club rule: You get some, I get some.
Biden enlisted his chief of staff, Ron Klain. Klain had been an editor of the Harvard Law Review three years before Obama became the Review ’s first black president. Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law professor, said Obama and Klain were two of the most brilliant students he had taught.
Klain, 49, saw the president’s economic philosophy as technocratic. It seemed to him at times that Obama was seeking mathematical answers to questions that did not always have them. The president was a progressive but clearly had a Blue Dog streak. He saw the perils of unsustainable federal spending.
Losing the House, Klain thought, put them in uncharted territory.At times like this, Klain would say, “Scary Jaws music was playing in the background.”
McConnell and his top domestic policy aide were direct with Biden and Klain.
You’ve got a problem here, Joe, McConnell said. There are things you want, like the START treaty, and for that to pass, you’re going to need some Republicans. You don’t want a party-line vote, so the anti-START people need five, six, seven days of Senate floor debate. If you don’t give them a fair hearing, I have to round up the Republicans to vote down START to validate their procedural rights. As their leader, my job is to protect their right to be heard on this. McConnell said he would order a filibuster if necessary.
Fine, Biden said. The START treaty would be held hostage until the Republicans got their debate.
And there was another problem, McConnell explained. We can’t even do the START treaty until this tax thing gets done. Because for my guys, getting the tax thing done is the most important matter. If you guys drag out this tax thing, I can’t get anybody to focus on anything else. “For us, taxes is the thing.”
The “tax thing” meant the extension of the Bush tax cuts for everyone. McConnell said that the tax thing was so important that he would consider anything that Obama and Biden might want in exchange.
Okay, Biden said. A door had opened.
The vice president and Klain weighed the realities of late 2010. Larry Summers and Biden’s own economic advisers said that raising income tax rates while the recovery was still shaky would hurt the economy, and failure to extend the tax cuts before the Christmas season could ruin it. Even prolonged uncertainty would have a negative impact. And Biden realized that the Republicans were more adamant in their position—no one’s taxes should go up, especially in a down economy—than Democrats were about ending cuts to the upper-income brackets.
Although raising taxes on just the upper brackets remained White House doctrine—the president had reiterated the pledge before the2010 congressional elections—Biden was sure the Democrats would cave. “Our guys will blink,” he said. If they didn’t get a tax deal in the 30-day lame duck, everyone’s taxes would go up and the economy would likely take a hit. Republicans would quickly pass an extension of all Bush tax cuts. In the Senate, a lot of Democrats would fold quickly. So, as long as there was going to be a deal, Biden said, strike it now. Get that done and they could get the START treaty ratified.
The president didn’t want to give up that easily. I still want to extend the tax cuts for everyone but the wealthy, he told Biden.
Biden told him it wouldn’t sell to McConnell.
Let’s try, Obama said.
Biden tried, and McConnell repeated that it was not going to happen. He wouldn’t budge on the tax thing. His feet were in cement. But, tell me what else you want.
Biden wanted START. He wanted help for working people to send their kids to college, help for the working poor, the very poor, the unemployed. And he wanted to extend Making Work Pay, a program of $400-a-year income tax cuts from the president’s original 2009 stimulus program. The cost would be about $60 billion a year.
No way can I sell that, McConnell said. Making Work Pay was
Biden enlisted his chief of staff, Ron Klain. Klain had been an editor of the Harvard Law Review three years before Obama became the Review ’s first black president. Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law professor, said Obama and Klain were two of the most brilliant students he had taught.
Klain, 49, saw the president’s economic philosophy as technocratic. It seemed to him at times that Obama was seeking mathematical answers to questions that did not always have them. The president was a progressive but clearly had a Blue Dog streak. He saw the perils of unsustainable federal spending.
Losing the House, Klain thought, put them in uncharted territory.At times like this, Klain would say, “Scary Jaws music was playing in the background.”
McConnell and his top domestic policy aide were direct with Biden and Klain.
You’ve got a problem here, Joe, McConnell said. There are things you want, like the START treaty, and for that to pass, you’re going to need some Republicans. You don’t want a party-line vote, so the anti-START people need five, six, seven days of Senate floor debate. If you don’t give them a fair hearing, I have to round up the Republicans to vote down START to validate their procedural rights. As their leader, my job is to protect their right to be heard on this. McConnell said he would order a filibuster if necessary.
Fine, Biden said. The START treaty would be held hostage until the Republicans got their debate.
And there was another problem, McConnell explained. We can’t even do the START treaty until this tax thing gets done. Because for my guys, getting the tax thing done is the most important matter. If you guys drag out this tax thing, I can’t get anybody to focus on anything else. “For us, taxes is the thing.”
The “tax thing” meant the extension of the Bush tax cuts for everyone. McConnell said that the tax thing was so important that he would consider anything that Obama and Biden might want in exchange.
Okay, Biden said. A door had opened.
The vice president and Klain weighed the realities of late 2010. Larry Summers and Biden’s own economic advisers said that raising income tax rates while the recovery was still shaky would hurt the economy, and failure to extend the tax cuts before the Christmas season could ruin it. Even prolonged uncertainty would have a negative impact. And Biden realized that the Republicans were more adamant in their position—no one’s taxes should go up, especially in a down economy—than Democrats were about ending cuts to the upper-income brackets.
Although raising taxes on just the upper brackets remained White House doctrine—the president had reiterated the pledge before the2010 congressional elections—Biden was sure the Democrats would cave. “Our guys will blink,” he said. If they didn’t get a tax deal in the 30-day lame duck, everyone’s taxes would go up and the economy would likely take a hit. Republicans would quickly pass an extension of all Bush tax cuts. In the Senate, a lot of Democrats would fold quickly. So, as long as there was going to be a deal, Biden said, strike it now. Get that done and they could get the START treaty ratified.
The president didn’t want to give up that easily. I still want to extend the tax cuts for everyone but the wealthy, he told Biden.
Biden told him it wouldn’t sell to McConnell.
Let’s try, Obama said.
Biden tried, and McConnell repeated that it was not going to happen. He wouldn’t budge on the tax thing. His feet were in cement. But, tell me what else you want.
Biden wanted START. He wanted help for working people to send their kids to college, help for the working poor, the very poor, the unemployed. And he wanted to extend Making Work Pay, a program of $400-a-year income tax cuts from the president’s original 2009 stimulus program. The cost would be about $60 billion a year.
No way can I sell that, McConnell said. Making Work Pay was
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