Free Republic

The weirdest and most unpredictable turn of the great budget war has been the emergence of Bob Woodward as flashpoint, news-driver, and sudden Republican hero. Woodward published an op-ed last weekend asserting that the Obama administration was “moving the goalposts” from its 2011 debt deal with the Republican House. Woodward now reports that he was threatened by an administration staffer, who turns out to be Economic Council director Gene Sperling. “I think you will regret staking out that claim,” said Sperling. In interviews with CNN and Politico, Woodward portrays this dark warning in sinister terms: Woodward repeated the last sentence,...

The White House is denying reports an adviser threatened famed Watergate journalist Bob Woodward after the Washington Post reporter challenged President Obama's version of events on the looming sequester. Woodward claimed Wednesday night that a White House aide sent him an email saying he would "regret" his comments. The aide was not identified, but an official familiar with the exchange told Fox News it was National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling. That was after Woodward wrote a column this past weekend claiming Obama was trying to re-write history -- regarding not only whose idea the sequester was, but also how...

Exclusive: The Woodward, Sperling emails revealed By: Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei February 28, 2013 08:30 AM EST POLITICO’s “Behind the Curtain” column last night quoted Bob Woodward as saying that a senior White House official has told him in an email he would “regret” questioning White House statements on the origins of sequestration. The official in question is Gene Sperling, economic adviser to the president. The White House has since pushed back, saying the exchange was far more innocuous than Woodward claims. We have obtained, exclusively, the exchange. Here it is: From Gene Sperling to Bob Woodward on Feb....

Bob Woodward called a senior White House official last week to tell him that in a piece in that weekend’s Washington Post, he was going to question President Barack Obama’s account of how sequestration came about - and got a major-league brushback. The Obama aide “yelled at me for about a half hour,” Woodward told us in an hour-long interview yesterday around the Georgetown dining room table where so many generations of Washington’s powerful have spilled their secrets. Digging into one of his famous folders, Woodward said the tirade was followed by a page-long email from the aide, one of...

BOB WOODWARD: A 'Very Senior' White House Person Warned Me I'd 'Regret' What I'm Doing Brett LoGiuratoFebruary 27, 2013, 6:53 PMWikimedia/Bektour Bob Woodward said this evening on CNN that a "very senior person" at the White House warned him in an email that he would "regret doing this," the same day he has continued to slam President Barack Obama over the looming forced cuts known as the sequester. CNN host Wolf Blitzer said that the network invited a White House official to debate Woodward on-air, but the White House declined. "It makes me very uncomfortable to have the White House...

The White House official whom Bob Woodward charged had crosssed a line by saying he would "regret" printing his version of a set of Washington negotiations was Gene Sperling, the director of the White House Economic Council, a source familiar with the exchange told BuzzFeed Wednesday. The email from Sperling to Woodward, which Woodward read to Politico Wednesday, has transfixed Washington, with Republicans and some in the press charging that it embodies a White House lording it over a cowed press corps. Woodward, Politico reported, called the top official — identified to BuzzFeed as Sperling — to tell him that...

White House Economic Adviser: 'We Need a Global Minimum Tax' Daniel Halper February 13, 2012 2:41 PM Gene Sperling, director of the White House's national economic council, said today at an official meeting that "we need a global minimum tax": “He supports corporate tax reform that would reduce expenditures and loopholes, lower rates for people investing and creating jobs in the U.S., due so further for manufacturing, and that we need to, as we have the Buffett Rule and the individual tax reform, we need a global minimum tax so that people have the assurance that nobody is escaping doing...

Give Gene Sperling credit--he managed to keep a straight face. Sent out onto the White House lawn to explain away the horrendous jobs report showing that the economy created no new jobs in August, the director of the White House National Economic Council actually resorted to blaming the economy inherited from George W. Bush, then making the mind-boggling boast that the failed Obama stimulus program somehow made an 11-million job difference. Sperling was speaking with Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post, guest hosting for Chuck Todd on MSNBC's Daily Rundown. View video here.

The Talk Shows Sunday, January 15th, 2006 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Reps. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., John Boehner, R-Ohio, and John Shadegg, R-Ariz., candidates in the upcoming House majority leader race; Harry Johnson, president, Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation. MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Paul Bremer, former U.S. administrator in Iraq; Taylor Branch, civil rights author and historian; Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow John McWhorter; Children's Defense Fund President Marian Wright Edelman. FACE THE NATION (CBS): Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and...

It's no surprise that John Kerry's plan to punish ``Benedict Arnold'' companies and create 10 million U.S. jobs in the process is reminiscent of former President Bill Clinton - a pair of his top economic aides helped come up with it. Among advisers who reportedly helped craft the Kerry plan are ex-Clinton aides Roger Altman and Gene Sperling. Altman, chairman of New York investment firm Evercore Partners, served as Deputy Treasury Secretary and Resolution Trust Corp. under Clinton. He also was president of First American Bankshares when it was sold to the notorious Bank of Commerce and Credit International, or...

Yet another poll is out showing that the public would support delaying or canceling President Bush's tax cuts, but Democrats remain scared to recommend it. Before the Congressional recess, Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee approved a more modest proposal that would not extend the Bush cuts after 2010, but indications are that the Democratic budget won't even be voted on by the full Senate because leaders fear it can't pass. So here's another idea, recommended by former President Bill Clinton's White House economic adviser Gene Sperling: freeze further tax cuts for the top 2 percent of taxpayers and use...