Page 13 of The First Gentleman

CHAPTER 9

A fter Cole leaves, Maddy rests her elbows on top of the Resolute desk in the Oval Office.

She’s thinking.

About the Grand Bargain.

The plan, she hoped, would ensure that the US government could meet its ongoing obligations to the people, seize future opportunities, and maintain the capacity to address any threats.

Right after the midterm elections, Maddy had called a fifteen-minute meeting with the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

It turned into what was essentially a two-hour TED Talk.

The director’s message became Maddy’s obsession:

“Madam President, a character in a Hemingway novel said that you go bankrupt two ways—gradually, then suddenly.

“Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid—America’s entitlement programs—have grown to consume half the federal budget as people live longer and health costs rise.

Those programs, along with Social Security’s disability benefits, make life bearable for millions of people.

But they aren’t sustainable in a country that strongly opposes both cutting benefits and raising taxes enough to pay for them.

“The required spending to preserve the economy and get people through COVID on top of big tax cuts has increased the national debt to ninety-eight percent of the national income. It is projected to reach one hundred and thirteen percent in ten years. Without prompt action, the government will be paying so much interest on the debt, there’ll be little left for anything else.

“Madam President, the latest quantum computers at MIT’s Sloan School are producing numbers that disprove our long-held assumptions about how much time we have to make tough national-finance decisions.

We don’t have years.

We might not even have months.

We’re going under, and quickly.

”

It was a wake-up call.

The dire warning prompted Maddy to begin work on legislation that same afternoon.

She called on experts and out-of-the-box thinkers to come up with proposals, and eventually they hammered out a plan that saved entitlements, reduced the debt, and might get through Congress.

Though there have been rumors in Washington of something big afoot, none of the details have been leaked, because only the president and her most trusted advisers have copies of the final plan.

The members of Congress have been shown only an outline, but the document contained enough key details to convince them not to discuss it.

Once the plan was developed, the real hard work began for Maddy.

First, she had to secure pledges from leaders in the Senate and House that they wouldn’t derail her efforts.

Then came the long behind-the-scenes battle to line up the necessary votes to get it passed without amendments, lengthy floor speeches, or blockades from various lobbying groups.

As soon as it was passed and signed, they could offer ideas to amend it, understanding that Maddy would almost certainly veto those.

So far, they were inching forward on something no one would have thought possible in this era of extreme partisanship.

This, Maddy thinks, is our last chance to turn lemons into lemonade.

If we don’t, we’ll all be sucking lemons .

Burton Pearce has been with her through every challenging step.

Her chief of staff enters the Oval Office now and takes a seat across from her.

“Well?” Maddy says, her fatigue and impatience showing.

“Here’s some unexpected good news,” Pearce says.

“Put Congressman Monroe from Florida’s Twenty-Sixth in the yes column.”

“I thought he was a bitter-ender,” says Maddy.

“He was,” says Pearce, “but I dug deep.”

Maddy stretches her arms above her head and yawns.

“Where’s Cole?”

“He’s taking a jog on the Mall.”