Bert and Jimmy
MARGOLIS, RICHARD J.
States of the Union BERT AND JIMMY BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS Pride goeth after a fall. The President said, "Bert, I'm proud of you." Bert's wife, LaBelle, said, "We are proud to walk in the way of...
...The two had made quite a team: Bert was warm and easy-going, a big St...
...The newspapers had gotten wind of some of his down-home shenanigans-the big loans, the startling overdrafts-and they were having a field day...
...In December 1976, Bert finally made the real bigtime when his friend, Jimmy, appointed him budget director of the United States of America...
...In the campaign, Jimmy had said help for New York City was one of his top priorities...
...Bert told the senators he was totally innocent of any wrongdoing...
...Jimmy and Bert-the engineer and the entrepreneur-would do it together, just as they had done it six years ago, when Jimmy was governor of Georgia and Bert ran the state Department of Transportation...
...The Comptroller of Currency began an investigation...
...It had to be businesslike...
...Moreover, the business of the country was business...
...When he got to the White House he and Bert proposed a budget (for fiscal '78) that would erase 300 workers from the already depleted rolls of the Farmers Home Administration, the only agency left in Washington that takes a continuing interest in the rural poor citizenry...
...For his part, Bert made it clear to the senators that in taking the job he was sacrificing an awful lot...
...Long live the Balanced Budget...
...Well, we won't have Bert Lance to kick around any more...
...He had wanted to work so many miracles for his friend in the White House-to introduce zero-based budgeting, to banish waste, to reorganize the government, to balance the budget by 1981...
...In April, Senator George McGovern (D.-So.D...
...suggested that the Administration was trying to balance the budget "on the backs of the poor and the jobless...
...In the campaign, Jimmy had said he felt a special empathy for the rural poor, particularly for those who still lived in the South's Black Belt, and he promised to help them...
...Proximire said he had nothing personal against Bert Lance, only that his record didn't show much promise for such a responsible position...
...Bert called the accusation "unfortunate...
...When he got to the White House he threatened to veto a bill providing precisely such supports and succeeded in jawboning Congress into writing in lower subsidies...
...He said it bordered on "demagoguery...
...America's unemployment rate seemed frozen at more than 7 per cent-up to 40 per cent in the central cities-but Jimmy and Bert were not alarmed...
...Jimmy had to let him go, and maybe that was the hardest thing Jimmy ever had to do...
...their wives exchanged gifts and trinkets...
...In the campaign, Jimmy had pledged to trim the Pentagon budget by as much as $15 million...
...In July, Vernon Jordan of the Urban League accused the President of breaking his promises to black Americans...
...when he talked, his lips barely moved...
...Jimmy was a friend in need...
...Instead of lending their support from the outset to the Humphrey-Hawkins full employment bill, they pushed through Congress a timid "emergency" program that offered some jobs to some of the unemployed (less than 5 per cent) some of the time...
...Back in Georgia Bert had been thriving on borrowed money, but that was different...
...He promised to reform it forthwith...
...He ran them high enough-up to $450,000-to engage the curiosity of the U.S...
...They played tennis together...
...Bert will do all right in Calhoun...
...Bert and Jimmy laughed all the way to the bank, notably Bert's own National Bank of Georgia, fifth largest in the state, which extended a $3.6 million line of credit to Jimmy's peanut warehouse...
...As director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) he would be earning only about one-third of his banker's salary...
...chairman of the Banking and Currency Committee...
...He's a natural born salesman...
...they supped together (sans booze...
...Subsequently, all except one of the senators on the committee approved Bert's appointment...
...Efficiency was the second god he worshipped...
...That was the year Bert tried to get elected governor, with Jimmy's blessing...
...Whatever the challenge, he managed...
...Everybody knew that...
...Bert, meanwhile, was having troubles of his own...
...The men were constant companions...
...Not everyone went along with Bert and Jimmy...
...Reporters hadn't had so much fun since Watergate...
...When he got to the White House he said universal health insurance would have to wait: It was "too inflationary...
...Bert won that battle-the TV audience thought he was great-but he lost the war...
...A lot of liberal campaign promises were put on the back burner...
...he'd told the Southern Governors Conference last August...
...The folks in Calhoun, Georgia, said, "Bert, we're proud to have you back...
...Bernard of a man, always ready with a quip and a helping hand...
...Yet nothing ventured, nothing gained-so Bert borrowed some more money, $2.6 million from a bank in New York, and used it to buy control of the National Bank of Georgia...
...Comptroller, without bothering to tell anyone on the Senate committee charged with evaluating Bert Lance's nomination, quietly dropped the Calhoun investigation...
...He's back in Calhoun, recouping his fortune, helping himself-as he might put it-through his own dynamics...
...The Federal government couldn't afford that luxury...
...they joked and guffawed together...
...Besides, in order to avoid even "a suspicion of impropriety" (Jimmy Carter's campaign promise), he would have to sell his stock in the National Bank of Georgia, and the stock was plummeting...
...That same week the U.S...
...He bought a big house and a big car...
...He was a big man in Gordon County-worth about $3.5 million by 1973...
...He was a big man in the stale now, but he owed a lot of money and he was paying out a lot of interest, and that investigation of the Calhoun bank was still going on...
...You had to admire Bert Lance...
...Bert Lance, apostle of the Balanced Budget, is gone...
...Jimmy replied that McGovern's charge was "premature...
...He'd married the banker's daughter in his hometown and within a decade had risen to the presidency of his father-in-law's modest institution, the Calhoun First National Bank of Georgia...
...Jimmy was slight of build and parsimonious by training...
...In the campaign, Jimmy had called the present tax system, with its many loopholes for the rich, "a disgrace to the nation...
...Bert didn't go so far as to say, with Charles Colson, that he would run over his own grandmother if he thought it might help the President, but his thoughts seemed to be drifting that way...
...So right off the bat Bert and Jimmy went out of their way to reassure the nation's business leaders...
...When he got to the White House he discovered that the problem was more complex than he had thought...
...Well, they didn't actually bounce, because Bert's bank in Calhoun agreed to wink at his overdrafts...
...He hired a smart Washington lawyer, Clark Clifford, and went up to the Hill to give his side of the story...
...Bert said, "I'm proud to be here...
...He lost-it wasn't even close-but in the meantime he had spent a lot of cash on the campaign, falling into debt and bouncing checks...
...But Bert hung tough...
...When he got to the White House he announced that the blackout in New York did not entitle the city to disaster relief funds, even though Federal law would have permitted it...
...his behavior, he said, had been consonant with the manners and morals of the banking industry...
...When he got to the White House he increased military appropriations $11 million...
...Everyone agreed it was a brilliant speech and that Clifford had probably written it...
...Bert's wife, LaBelle, said, "We are proud to walk in the way of Christ" (who threw the money-changers out of the Temple...
...Jimmy answered that such criticism could hurt the very people Jordan was trying to help...
...Tax reform has had to wait until now and is not quite what had been promised...
...whatever the danger, he lucked out...
...The lone dissenter was William Proxmire (D.-Wis...
...In the campaign, Jimmy had called for "a universal system of comprehensive health insurance...
...Wheeling and dealing, taking risks, he turned a marginal country bank into a highly profitable business...
...Let the spender beware...
...Bert never questioned Jimmy's obsession with a balanced budget...
...That was one man-just a country boy, actually-trying to parlay a little cash into a solid fortune...
...As Bert spoke, the urbane Clifford, sitting behind him, could be seen silently mouthing the words...
...My conscience is clear...
...Not one more dollar than is necessary to help our country, through its own dynamics, help itself...
...In the campaign, Jimmy had promised farmers "maximum price supports at least equal to the costs of agricultural production...
...President Carter will not tolerate the spending of one more dollar than he feels the taxpayer should tolerate...
...Treasury Department...
...Under the Georgia Constitution, Jimmy couldn't succeed himself...
...that was all he knew and all he needed to know...
Vol. 60 • October 1977 • No. 21
