We all went to Little Rock for Vince’s funeral at St. Andrew’s Catholic Cathedral, then drove home to Hope, to lay Vince to rest in the cemetery where my grandparents and father were buried. Many people with whom we’d gone to kindergarten and grade school were there. By then, I had given up trying to understand Vince’s depression and suicide in favor of accepting them and being grateful for his life. In my eulogy at the funeral, I tried to capture all of Vince’s wonderful qualities, what he meant to all of us, how much good he’d done at the White House, and how profoundly honorable he was. I quoted from Leon Russell’s moving “A Song for You”: “I love you in a place where there’s no space or time. I love you for in my life you are a friend of mine.”
It was summertime, and the watermelon crop had begun to come in. Before I left town, I stopped at Carter Russell’s place and sampled both the red-and yellow-meated ones. Then I discussed the finer points of Hope’s main product with the traveling press, who knew I needed a respite from the pain and were uncommonly kind to me that day. I flew back to Washington thinking Vince was home, where he belonged, and thanking God that so many people cared about him.
The next day, July 24, I welcomed the current class of American Legion Boys Nation senators to the White House, on the thirtieth anniversary of my coming to the Rose Garden to meet President Kennedy. A number of my fellow delegates were also there for the reunion. Al Gore was lobbying hard for our economic plan, but he broke away for a couple of minutes to tell the boys, “I have only one word of advice. If you can manage somehow to get a picture of you shaking hands with President Clinton, it might come in handy later on.” I shook hands and posed for pictures with all of them, as I would do in six of my eight years in the White House, for both Boys and Girls Nation. I hope some of those photos turn up in campaign ads one day.
I spent the rest of the month and the early days of August lobbying individual representatives and senators on the economic plan. Roger Altman’s war room was working the public side, having me do telephone press conferences in states whose members of Congress could go either way. Al Gore and the cabinet were making literally hundreds of calls and visits. The outcome was uncertain, and tilting away from us, for two reasons. The first was Senator David Boren’s proposal to scrap any energy tax; keep most, but not all, of the taxes on the high-income Americans, and make up the difference by eliminating much of the Earned Income Tax Credit; reduce the cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security and military and civilian pensions; and cap expenditures for Medicare and Medicaid below the projected requirements for new recipients and cost increases. Boren couldn’t pass his proposal out of committee, but he gave Democrats from conservative states a place to go. It was also endorsed by Democratic senator Bennett Johnston of Louisiana and Republican senators John Danforth of Missouri and Bill Cohen of Maine.
When the budget had first passed, 50–49, with Al Gore breaking the tie, Bennett Johnston had voted against it, along with Sam Nunn, Dennis DeConcini of Arizona, Richard Shelby of Alabama, Richard Bryan of Nevada, and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. Shelby was already drifting toward the Republican Party in an increasingly Republican state; Sam Nunn was a hard no; DeConcini, Bryan, and Lautenberg were worried about the anti-tax mood in their states. As I’ve said, I had made it the first time without them because two senators, one Republican and one Democrat, didn’t vote. The next time, they would all show up. With all the Republicans against us, if Boren voted no and none of the others changed, I would lose 51–49. Besides those six, Senator Bob Kerrey was also saying he might vote against the program. Our relationship had been strained by the presidential campaign, and Nebraska was a heavily Republican state. Still, I was optimistic about Kerrey because he was genuinely committed to reducing the deficit, and he was very close to the Senate Finance Committee chairman, Pat Moynihan, who was strongly supporting my plan.
