Living History by Unknown (best non fiction books of all time .txt) 📕

tribute was the most personal. Rabin’s granddaughter Noa Ben Artzi-Pelossof spoke to her beloved grandfather: “Grandpa, you were the pillar of fire before the camp, and now we’re just a camp left alone in the dark, and we’re so cold.”

For security reasons, Arafat did not attend the funeral, but Bill met with Mubarak, Hussein and Shimon Peres, the acting Prime Minister, who had negotiated the Oslo Accords and shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Arafat and Rabin in 1994. As Rabin’s granddaughter eloquently reminded us, peace is like a fragile hearth fire that has to be constantly tended or it will die.

On the long flight back to Washington, Bill invited Presidents Carter and Bush to join him in the Air Force One conference room to reminisce about Rabin and to discuss the status of the Middle East peace process. Carter had successfully overseen the Camp David Agreement between Israel and Egypt, and Bush had convened the Madrid Conference, which brought all the parties in the Middle East together for peace talks for the first time. When we finally decided to get some rest, Bill and I headed to the private presidential quarters at the front of the plane, which include an office, a bathroom and a compartment with two sofa beds. Bill and I weren’t sure how to accommodate two ex-Presidents, so we offered them the pull-down beds in the comfortable and relatively spacious doctors’ and nurses’ room. The rest of our invited guests stretched out on couches or in their seats in the VIP cabins at the back of the plane. A few days later we learned that Newt Gingrich was resentful over his accommodations and what he viewed as the unceremonious back-stair exit offered him and other guests when the plane arrived at Andrews Air Force Base.

A showdown had been brewing on the federal budget since the prior spring, when the Republicans who controlled Congress started drafting funding bills to reflect the principles of their Contract with America. They called for both a huge tax cut and a balanced budget in seven years, a combination that defied the laws of arithmetic and could be achieved only with deep reductions in education, environmental protection and health care programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. They proposed a welfare reform package that included draconian social-engineering ideas such as denying welfare payments-for life-to single mothers under eighteen. They vowed to cancel a scheduled decrease in Medicare premiums, effectively raising rates for seniors.

Bill was always willing to work with the Republicans, but their budget was unacceptable.

He signaled that he would veto any bill that weakened Medicare, hurt children and left the poor without a safety net. And he announced that he would offer his own balanced budget, without the cruel cuts and phony numbers of the Gingrich plan. By the end of the summer recess, the Republicans still didn’t have a budget agreement, and at the close of the federal fiscal year on September 30, the government ran out of operating funds. Congress and the President agreed on a “continuing resolution” or CR―a temporary budget extension―that authorized the Treasury to issue checks while negotiations continued. But this stopgap resolution was due to expire at midnight, November 13, and there was neither a new budget nor an agreement on extending the CR.

As the budget deadline approached, I was trying to meet my own publishing deadline for my unfinished book, madly drafting and redrafting chapters in longhand. But I weighed in directly and through my staff about how crucial I thought it was for Bill to stand against the budget priorities articulated by Gingrich.

Despite Republican threats to shut down the government, Bill rejected the new resolution sent to him after Rabin’s funeral, which was even harsher. Gingrich seemed to be playing a game of political “chicken,” but he had misjudged his adversary. Bill vetoed this resolution too.

While Bill was engaged in roundthe-clock negotiations in the West Wing, he checked in often to ask what I thought about a particular issue. He knew I was concerned about the Republican proposals on Medicare and Medicaid, and I asked him if one of my staff members, Jennifer Klein, could participate in the negotiations and help analyze and document exactly how the Republican proposals would endanger Medicare and dismantle Medicaid. On these sensitive topics I wanted a direct channel to Bill’s staff. He agreed, and for the duration of the budget battles, Jen helped Chris Jennings―the President’s top health care adviser and someone I relied on for his expertise throughout my time at the White House―lead the Administration’s effort to protect these and other health care programs.

On November 13, the government ran out of money to spend, and the President under the law had to shut it down. This was an excruciating decision for Bill, and it showed. He worried about the effects of closing the government’s doors and furloughing 500,000 federal workers. Only employees deemed “essential” could legally remain on the job, working without pay. A program like Meals on Wheels was not funded, putting at risk about six hundred thousand of the elderly who depended on it. The Federal Housing Administration couldn’t process thousands of home sales. The Department of Veterans Affairs stopped paying widows and other beneficiaries their due proceeds from veterans’ life insurance policies.

The national monuments on the Mall closed their doors. Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Canyon turned away visitors. Two truckloads of Christmas trees destined for the annual Pageant of Peace in Washington were stranded somewhere east of Ohio because the National Park Service couldn’t unload them or plant them for the ceremony.

A peculiar quiet settled over the White House. Most of the employees in the residence and East Wing were sent home. The Secret Service was considered essential; clerks and florists were not. The West Wing staff was reduced from 430 to about go; my official staff was cut to 4. Volunteers filled in to try to manage the work that didn’t stop under any circumstances. But these were small inconveniences.