The ultimate insider: the 71-year-old Senate Finance Committee chair reassures business and Wall Street and boosts Clinton’s maturity quotient. Lobbyists love him; he once sold seats at a monthly breakfast-with-Bentsen table for $10,000 a head. A booster of investment tax breaks. But critics say his sympathy for big oil and gas Interests could clash with Clinton’s antipoverty goals.
A man who knows how to say no. As much of a deficit hawk as Perot, the House Budget Committee chair, 54, understands the ins and outs of the budget. He also knows all the tricks on Capitol Hill. Occupies ideological center of Democratic Party and is seen by colleagues as an honest broker.
An investment banker with a heart? With an income of maybe $15 million this year, the 54-year-old investment banker took time out to chair a New York commission on poverty. His experience balancing delicate egos at Goldman, Sachs & Co. will help him coordinate economic policy. The Democrats’ biggest presidential fund raiser on the East Coast certainly knows how to network.
The total expert. Panetta’s deputy is Panetta, only more so. The 61-year-old think-tank veteran knows every comma in the 1,700-page budget and is so anti-deficit that she endorsed Perot’s plan. Author of “Reviving the American Dream,” a book recommending a decentralized approach to government that Clinton read on the campaign plane.
Altman, 46, has experience both in Washington and on Wall Street. A Treasury number-cruncher under Jimmy Carter, Altman is currently vice chairman of The Blackstone Group, and has a banker’s nitty-gritty expertise with finance that Bentsen lacks. Believes that any economic stimulus must be applied with caution.
The only surprise on the economic team, the 45-year-old Berkeley economist is also the only real liberal. She got the post with Al Gore’s blessing after he vetoed Harvard’s Lawrence Summers. She supports government intervention to steady some industries, prompting some economists to label her a radical.
A major FOB (Friend of Bill) since Oxford, the 46-year-old author may be Clinton’s closest adviser and wrote much of Clinton’s economic plan. Advocates megaprograms to train and retrain workers to win the competitive wars in foreign trade. But what will labor leaders think of the Harvard intellectual at their annual Bal Harbour meetings?
