The Price of Politics

Woodward pierces the secretive world of Washington policymaking once again, with a close-up story crafted from meeting notes, documents, working papers, and interviews with key players, including President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner. At the center of The Price of Politics is a high stakes personal and political struggle between the president and the speaker. The Price of Politics takes the reader through the electric forty four days during the summer of 2011 with day by day, often hour by hour, accounts as the two attempt a “grand bargain” to cut entitlement spending and increase tax revenue.

Spanning the first three and a half tumultuous years of Obama's presidency, The Price of Politics shows why the grand bargain was never reached, and how the president, the speaker, and the Congress settled for stopgap measures that delayed any serious deficit reduction until 2013.

With extensive documentation and firsthand accounts, Woodward reveals how the broken relationship between the White House and Capitol Hill drove the US economy to the edge of the fiscal cliff.