December 4, 2028 · 3:35 p.m. · Washington, D.C.
“Tell me something you believe that most people in Washington don't.”
Michael Grant had been on Susan Whitfield's short list for Director of the Office of Management and Budget almost from the moment she won the election.
On paper, he was exactly what she was looking for. But Susan wasn't interviewing résumés. She wanted to know how he thought.
Now Grant looked across the table at the President-elect.
He had prepared for questions about deficits, agency budgets, regulation and the size of the federal government.
He had not prepared for that one.
“About what?”
“Anything.”
Grant smiled. “That's a dangerous question.”
“That's why I asked it.”
Before Grant arrived, an aide had asked Susan how much time she wanted for the interview.
“Give me an hour,” she had said. “I’ll know how he thinks by then.”
Grant had already been asked how he would reduce a multi-trillion-dollar deficit, what programs he would cut first, and what he would do if she asked him to make numbers say something he knew wasn't true.
His answer to the last question had been simple.
“I'd resign.”
Susan had written something on her yellow legal pad.
Grant still wasn't sure whether that had helped him.
Now she was waiting.
“All right,” he said. “I think we tax the wrong thing.”
Susan stopped writing.
“What does that mean?”
“There's a basic idea in economics. Make something more expensive and, generally, people do less of it.”
“Generally.”
“Generally,” Grant agreed. “Take cigarettes. Why do we tax them so heavily?”
“Revenue.”
“That's one reason.”
Susan knew where he was going.
“To discourage smoking.”
“Exactly. We deliberately make cigarettes more expensive because we want people to buy less of them.”
“So?”
“So why do we put a tax on every additional dollar somebody earns by working?”
“Because the government needs revenue.”
“Of course it does. But that doesn't make the incentive disappear.”
Grant leaned forward.
“If taxing cigarettes helps produce less smoking, what should we expect when we tax work?”
“Less work?”
“At the margin, yes. Maybe somebody doesn't take the extra shift. Maybe an employer thinks twice about adding another worker. The effect isn't the same for everybody, but the direction shouldn't surprise us.”
Susan considered that.
“And you want to stop taxing wages?”
“No. I want us to ask whether we're taxing them more than we need to.”
“What's the alternative?”
“Consumption.”
“A national sales tax.”
“That's what everyone calls it when they want to kill the idea.”
“What do you call it?”
“A consumption tax.”
“That's better marketing.”
“It's also more accurate.”
Susan smiled. “Consumption taxes are regressive.”
“They can be.”
“That's not much of a defense.”
“Then don't tax necessities. Food. Medicine. Maybe housing. You design the exclusions before you set the rate.”
Susan considered that.
“It's still regressive.”
“So is the Social Security payroll tax. We take it out of a worker's first dollar of wages.”
“You'd replace the payroll tax with a consumption tax?”
“I'd start by asking how much of the payroll tax we could eliminate.”
“And then we put another federal tax on top of everything people already pay?”
Grant shook his head.
“No. That's the part everybody gets wrong.”
Susan put down her pen.
“Go on.”
“What if it isn't another tax? What if some of the consumption-tax revenue replaces taxes on work?”
“How much of the payroll tax could you eliminate?”
“I don't know.”
“But you think you could eliminate some of it.”
“Of course. The question is what consumption-tax rate it takes—and what happens to working families when you do it.”
“You're interviewing to run the Office of Management and Budget and your answer is you don't know?”
“My answer is that I'd rather tell you I don't know than invent a number because I'm sitting across from the President-elect.”
Susan smiled.
“Good answer.”
“It wasn't intended to be.”
“Even better.”
For the next ten minutes, they argued.
Susan attacked the idea from the bottom of the income scale. Grant attacked it from the top. She asked about retirees. He asked about the cash economy. She asked what happened in a recession. He asked why government collected so much of its revenue from people doing exactly what government said it wanted them to do—work, earn and hire.
Neither convinced the other.
Susan loved it.
When the interview ended, Grant stood and extended his hand.
“Thank you for your time.”
Susan didn't take it.
“Sit down.”
Grant sat.
“I have another question.”
“All right.”
“Do you want the job?”
Grant looked at her. “I thought that was what this interview was about.”
“No. The interview was about whether I wanted you.”
“And?”
“I do.”
Grant smiled.
Susan finally extended her hand.
“Now I'm asking whether you want me.”
Grant laughed. “I've never heard a President-elect put it quite that way.”
“You've interviewed with a lot of Presidents-elect?”
“One.”
“Then your sample size is terrible.”
Grant shook her hand.
“I'll take the job.”
Fifty-nine minutes.
* * *
September 22, 1998 · 11:41 p.m.
“It's wrong.”
Susan Joyce didn't look up from the spreadsheet.
“It isn't wrong.”
Daniel Park pulled the empty chair closer and sat beside her in the nearly deserted business-school library.
“It's wrong.”
Susan finally looked at him.
“I've been working on this for six hours.”
“That doesn't make it less wrong.”
“You're very encouraging.”
“That's why you asked me to look at it.”
They had been in the same MBA program for a little more than a year. Susan had learned two things about Daniel Park quickly.
He was very good with numbers.
And he was almost completely unimpressed by hers.
She turned the laptop toward him.
“Where?”
Park pointed to a row near the bottom of the model.
“You're assuming the company can grow sales eighteen percent a year without increasing working capital at the same rate.”
“Not the same rate.”
“Close enough.”
“Margins improve.”
“Margins improve in your spreadsheet.”
“That's generally where projections go.”
Park smiled.
“Cash doesn't.”
Susan stared at the screen.
Then she changed one assumption.
The result at the bottom of the page dropped by almost a third.
She said nothing.
Park waited.
“I hate you.”
“No, you don't.”
“At this particular moment, I do.”
“You'll like me tomorrow.”
Susan looked at the new number.
“Probably not tomorrow.”
Park started gathering his books.
“Daniel.”
He stopped.
“Thanks.”
“For ruining your model?”
“For finding it before I turned it in.”
Park nodded.
“That's what friends are for.”
More than thirty years later, Susan would ask Daniel Park to become her Secretary of the Treasury.
She would have many reasons.
One of them began that night.
Daniel had never been afraid to tell her when the numbers didn't work.
* * *
July 18, 2029 · 4:26 p.m. · Ohio
Rebecca Torres waited until the cameras were gone.
That was the first thing Susan remembered about the afternoon.
The President had spent almost two hours touring a workforce-training center with the new Secretary of Labor. There had been welding demonstrations, apprentices in matching shirts, employers describing open positions and a presentation filled with charts showing completion rates.
It had been a good visit.
At least Susan thought it had.
They were walking toward the motorcade when Rebecca touched her arm.
“We need to talk before you leave.”
Susan stopped.
“About what?”
“The program you just praised.”
“What about it?”
Rebecca glanced toward the building.
“It's not working nearly as well as they told you.”
Susan looked at her.
“We just spent two hours being told it was.”
“I know.”
“You were standing next to me.”
“I know that too.”
“Then why didn't you say something?”
“Because I wanted you to hear the truth, not spend the next forty minutes watching everybody defend themselves.”
Susan folded her arms.
“I'm listening.”
Rebecca explained.
The completion rate was real. So was the placement rate.
What the presentation hadn't emphasized was how many people left those jobs within six months. Some couldn't afford transportation. Some couldn't arrange childcare around changing shifts. Some had been trained for jobs that paid less than the brochures implied. Employers were counting people as successful placements even when they didn't stay long enough to build a career.
“So the numbers aren't false.”
“No.”
“They're just answering the wrong question.”
Rebecca nodded.
“Washington asks how many people completed the program. I want to know how many lives actually changed.”
Susan looked back toward the training center.
“What do we do?”
“Change what we measure.”
“That's going to make some people unhappy.”
“Probably.”
“Including people in your own department.”
“Definitely.”
Susan smiled.
“You don't seem very worried about that.”
Rebecca smiled back.
“You didn't hire me to make the Department of Labor happy.”
No, Susan thought.
She hadn't.
* * *
January 9, 2032 · 7:12 a.m. · The White House
Michael Grant was already sitting at the table when Susan walked into the Roosevelt Room.
So were Daniel Park, Rebecca Torres and Liz Boden.
They had been together for more than three years now.
Long enough for Susan to know what Michael looked like when he had found a problem he couldn't solve.
Long enough to know that Daniel's silence usually meant he was still checking somebody else's arithmetic.
Long enough to know that Rebecca got quieter, not louder, when she thought everyone in the room was missing something important.
And long enough for Liz to walk into the Oval Office with one folder, no presentation and an idea that could make half of Washington furious.
They had argued about budgets at midnight, eaten cold food in the West Wing, celebrated legislation that passed and watched other legislation die. Susan knew their spouses. She knew which children were in college, whose mother had been sick, and who would answer the phone at two in the morning without asking why she was calling.
They worked for the President.
But somewhere during those years, they had also become her people.
* * *
This morning, Michael had a thick binder in front of him.
Daniel had three.
Rebecca had none.
Liz was drinking coffee.
Susan took her seat and looked around the table.
She knew what each of those things meant.
“All right,” she said. “Who killed it?”
Nobody answered.
Susan smiled.
“That's what I was afraid of.”