Page 143 of The First Gentleman

CHAPTER 139

The White House

T hree days later, once Maddy and Cole have shared sighs of relief, tears of joy, and their determination to make the state of their union unbreakable, the president delivers a speech to Congress.

“Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Members of Congress, my fellow Americans: I want to speak to you today about trust.”

Maddy faces the full Congress, the members of her cabinet, the Supreme Court justices, and the guests in the gallery, all arrayed before her.

And through the TV cameras placed strategically around the chamber, she faces the entire country as well.

All are waiting and wondering what she will say.

She knows she has to nail this one.

In preparing what she would say and how she would say it, she researched FDR presenting the New Deal and Social Security to the country in the wake of the Great Depression, and LBJ presenting Medicare while the country still mourned the assassination of President Kennedy.

She knew she’d have everyone’s attention and only one chance to get it right.

“For most of the last year, my husband and I leaned hard on trust. Some days it seemed trust was all we had. And as you can imagine, it was sorely tested.

“We trusted the justice system, that it would eventually discover the truth and find the First Gentleman innocent of all the charges against him.

We trusted the men and women who pursue and dispense justice every day of their working lives.

“In the end, our faith was justified, and we are both profoundly grateful for that.

“During that ordeal, I loved and trusted my husband, a man I’ve known since I was a college student and with whom I’ve built a life—lately one in which my responsibilities are immense and the time we can spend together limited and so all the more precious.

“My faith in him was justified. He’s the same good man I’ve always known. Like all of us, not perfect but working every day to do better—not only for me but for our country.”

So far, Maddy has avoided looking at Cole so she can be sure to keep her voice strong and firm.

But she steals a quick glance.

Tears are streaming down his face.

“Throughout this administration I have trusted and deeply respected our vice president and am grateful for the care given to him by his incredible team at Walter Reed. My faith in his strength, wisdom, and tenacity was justified, and there’s nobody I’d rather have behind me”—she turns around and grins at the man sitting behind her—“including right this moment, come to think of it, than Ransom Faulkner. Welcome back, Mr. Vice President.”

The entire floor explodes in applause, and Faulkner, clearly moved, rises to his feet, bows slightly, and sits back down with the air of a judge who wants to calm the court.

But the ovation lasts minutes, and Maddy lets it go on as long as she can before putting on a graver air.

“And I also trusted my chief of staff, a man I’ve known—or thought I knew—for decades. To say that I was shocked and horrified by his crimes is a profound understatement. To the family of Suzanne Bonanno, words cannot convey my sympathies for your loss, for the years of uncertainty about Suzanne’s fate, and for the pain caused by these past months of public spectacle, orchestrated so deviously by Burton Pearce. Let me assure you that the entire country shares your grief and outrage and hopes that with the truth known, as painful as it is, her memory can be a blessing.

“Yes, I trusted my chief of staff, but he deceived me and in doing so put the country in danger.

He arranged or approved the deaths of innocent people who might have imperiled his plot and nearly sent my husband to jail for a long time.

His cleverly concealed actions also misled the prosecutors and jury in Cole’s case, who did what they thought was right based on what they knew.

The sole blame is on Burton Pearce and those whose criminal conduct enabled him, especially the mobster who killed Suzanne Bonanno and continued to kill to cover it up and shift the blame.

“We’ll never know when the dam of decency broke in Burton Pearce. I just thank God he didn’t succeed.

“As stressful as the past few months have been, the American people have trusted me with a job that doesn’t allow me to take time off.

So I’ve been working every day.

But, like Cole and all of you, I’m only human, so that work has been done with a hurting heart and a divided mind, still trusting and believing in justice and in people, still working hard to do the job you gave me, and still trying always to remember why I asked for it.

“I had a lot of help. During the worst days of his ordeal, Cole took me aside and reminded me of an agreement we’d made when I decided to run for president. He told me, ‘You promised me that if you were elected to the most important job in the world, you wouldn’t major in the minors but have the strength and determination to do big things.’”

She glances back at Cole.

He is beaming at her now and, like the jock he was and always will be, pumps his fist in front of his chest. Her heart beats a bit faster.

“The American people put me here and trusted me—as they did all of you—not to play petty politics with every issue but to do big things.

“This is a trust I hold sacred, as I believe you all do as well.

To fulfill it, we must overcome our differences and solve the problems that sometimes seem unsurmountable.

We must come together, trust each other to do the right thing, and do just that.

”

Maddy knows the next few words could put it over the top.

She looks out at the assembled men and women and pauses.

In the silence, with what seems like the whole world waiting on her, a confidence blossoms in her chest. They can do this, they really can.

“So, as I said, trust is why I’m here today. Mine has been, with one terrible exception, justified. But now I’m going to ask for yours. To trust me and my administration with your support for a Grand Bargain, one that will, at long last, let us face up to a catastrophe we’ve allowed to creep up to our very doorstep and vanquish it.”

She takes another long pause and then, clearly and confidently, makes her case.

“Here’s what I propose. It’s not my own idea but a series of proposals crafted by the best minds in the country.”

Over the next forty minutes, President Madeline Wright tells the entire country the truth about what is facing them and how they can turn it around, how they can save Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the economy with new revenues, new savings, and, if they don’t work, changes in the entitlement programs to extend the lives of their trust funds to thirty years out and keep them there while gradually lowering the national debt as a percentage of annual income.

Many see these same details spool out on their laptops and phones.

Jessica Martin’s Washington Post exclusive has been released to coincide with her speech, as has an entire administration website devoted to describing the effort in terms ordinary Americans can grasp.

Toward the end of her speech, Maddy recaps the important points.

“To raise more money, the United States will increase the legal immigration quota by a million people per year for a decade; the immigrants who pass a thorough vet will be given immediate work permits and go only to states that welcome them. All their federal taxes will go into a lockbox for a decade, with total tax revenue divided equally between Social Security and Medicare until both are sustainable for thirty years.

“The United States will pass a fifteen percent global corporate tax rate, so even companies that put their profits in tax shelters will pay that.

The increased revenue will also go into the lockbox to pay for entitlements, along with new revenue from repealing the carried interest tax rate, which currently taxes the fees fund managers automatically earn, usually two percent, whether they make or lose money or don’t invest at all.

“The carried-interest funds can also be used to incentivize the owners of office buildings with lots of empty space to convert them into energy-efficient, multipurpose structures housing offices, shops, and apartments, including affordable apartments for those with modest incomes, with all the new taxes these activities produce going into the lockbox or a revolving fund to pay for more conversions. This program will create good jobs in all states, raise revenue for state and local governments, and reduce the harmful emissions from the built environment that account for most of the emissions in cities—seventy percent in New York City, for example.

“If these efforts don’t produce enough money in the short run, Congress will be authorized to raise the cap for Social Security taxes for people with incomes above three hundred thousand per year.

“To save money, the government will be able to bargain for lower prices for all the drugs it buys in bulk, building on the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which permits it for the ten most expensive drugs in common use. The government will also replace the costly student loan system with a direct loan program, which in the 1990s saved both students and taxpayers billions with lower costs and fewer defaults, thanks to an income-based repayment system.

“The program will be available to all student borrowers for legitimate colleges and community colleges and other skills-based training.

The Grand Bargain will also bring back Al Gore’s Reinventing Government initiative from the 1990s, which made government function better and at lower costs, with the federal workforce at its lowest level since 1960.

“Finally, our future growth rate will be enhanced by creating a National Economic Investment Fund to more adequately fund the ARPA agencies, including DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which gave us the internet and GPS; and the ARPA-H agency, which supports transformative biomedical and health breakthroughs, including further advances in the Human Genome Project, which has already given us a return on investment of more than one hundred and forty-one to one.

“The National Investment Fund will operate the way university research programs that produce commercially valuable results have functioned for more than forty years.

Universities can license their discoveries to the private sector in return for up-front payments or for stakes in new companies as long as all profits go back into further research efforts.

“For example, MIT charges nothing on the front end for the use of its taxpayer-funded research but takes a modest ownership position. New York University has earned a lot of money from contributing its discoveries to new companies. So has the University of Central Florida. Based in Orlando, its campus is now the third largest in the United States after the University of Michigan and Ohio State. UCF’s creative software developments have been used by NASA, Disney World, video-game companies, and others.

“In addition to selling the software technology, UCF gives faculty members leaves of absence to help start-ups deploy new technologies and established companies integrate their advances into ongoing operations.

This system has enabled taxpayer-funded creativity to generate an enormous number of new jobs that make America more competitive, and it provides money to the university to keep expanding its software work.

It’s time to take a system that works well with university-funded research and apply it to other taxpayer-funded R and D efforts, increasing government revenues and reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio without raising taxes above what’s outlined in the plan.

”

Then Maddy says, “We know that big investment programs produce more tax revenues than they cost. But if we’re short of our goal after five years, the Reinventing Government board will be empowered to make more recommendations on savings, beginning with a review of the recommendations in the Simpson-Bowles budget report from 2010 and a rigorous effort to bring health-care costs in Medicare and Social Security Parts C and D into line with inflation. The board’s decisions, after public hearings, can be implemented unless they’re blocked by Congress.”

When she gets to that point, Maddy realizes that while she has been delving deeply into specifics, into policy and politics, the entire chamber has been silent.

Unlike at the State of the Union, her Democratic colleagues haven’t jumped up in applause to show support for certain line items, and the people on the other side of the aisle haven’t murmured or blurted out opposing sound bites.

It unnerves her, but she finishes the details of the programs and pauses, preparing to deliver some rhetorical flourishes meant to convey solidarity and trust.

She doesn’t get the chance.

The chamber explodes with applause, and after many minutes waiting for it to subside, she gives up.

She leans forward and says, simply, “Thank you.”