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34 Reducing the Deficit A telephone call from Nancy Pelosi is not unusual. But when I answered her April 11, 2011, call her salutation was very formal and businesslike. I knew right away that this was not an ordinary call. Unless she is asking for money, Nancy seldom goes directly to the point, but this time she did. When Nancy said that she was appointing me to the so-called Biden Group, I was glad we were not in a face-to-face meeting. It was all that I could do to contain my glee, and I couldn’t wait for the call to end so I could share the news. I immediately called my chief of staff, Yebbie Watkins, and my personal and political confidant, Bennie Thompson, with the news. Later I called Emily, my most severe outside-the-Beltway critic. But I was cautious with all of them. I told them that there was a good possibility I would be appointed to the much-talked-about group to study and make recommendations to Congress as to how to confront the country’s debt and deficits. I felt that this was too good to be true, that something could still go terribly wrong. In his 2011 State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama called on Congress to create a sixteen-member committee of four Democrats and four Republicans from the Senate, and four Democrats and four Republicans from the House. Their job would be to fashion a plan to address our nation’s debt and deficits. The president named Vice President Joe Biden to chair the committee. Immediately after the president’s speech that night, I started receiving e-mails and texts from colleagues, staffers, and former staffers suggesting that I make a push for a seat on the proposed committee. Although I did not think about it during the speech, these messages started me to giving it some thought. Republicans, being much less diverse and a little more “clubbie” than us Democrats , criticized the size of the proposed committee as being too large to be effective. Subsequently Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell announced that he was going to appoint only one senator, Republican whip John Kyl. Speaker of the House John Boehner followed suit and announced that he would appoint only one congressman , House Republican leader Eric Cantor. I thought that I could probably land one of the four House Democratic seats, but if Democratic leaders Reid and Pelosi followed the Republicans lead and appointed only one from each body, there was absolutely no chance that I would be 306 The Age of Obama the one House member. It would go to Chris Van Hollen, the ranking member on the House Budget Committee. Although I had not made many public comments about our deficits and debt and not said a whole lot about the debt-ceiling debate that was raging, I had internalized some lessons from my blessed experiences. I had been taught from childhood to live within my means and keep my credit clean. Those teachings had profound impacts on me. Throughout my adult life I have never had a problem waiting until I could afford a purchase before making one. Consequently there has never been a day in my life when I have fretted over being able to pay a bill that is due. I took this lesson to Congress, much to the chagrin of the Christian Coalition. In their heyday, the Christian Coalition was the premier political organization of evangelical Christians and faith voters, highly respected in some quarters and greatly feared in others. Every election cycle they published their little voter guides, scoring five or six issues they claimed were important to people of faith and distributed them in churches two or three Sundays before an election. Most Democrats seemed to fear those little palm cards, but I was never fazed by them and was never shy about expressing the low esteem I held for the group. My state Democratic Party chairman once cautioned me to tone down my criticism of the Christian Coalition because it might hurt my future in politics. I listened to him respectfully, but I could not wait for the next opportunity to level criticism against that crowd. I always treated the Christian Coalition as what I thought they were—an arm of the Republican Party. With Congressmen Bennie Thompson and Cedric Richmond on the first day of the One Hundred Thirteenth Congress, January 3, 2013 [3.12.41...

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