It soon got better. While the Secretary-designate chatted with Mark Gant, the latter’s portable computer open and operating in front of him, the table to their left groaned and crashed, spilling the pile of books to the floor, to the collective gasp of everyone in the room. Winston turned, startled and pleased. His gofers had done exactly what he’d told them, piling the collected volumes of the United States Tax Code right in the middle of the table instead of distributing the load evenly.
“Oh, shit, George,” Gant whispered, struggling not to laugh.
“Maybe God really is on our side.” He jumped up to see that nobody had been hurt. Nobody had. The first oaken cry of protest had made the people stand back. Now security guards darted in, only to see that nothing, really, had happened. Winston leaned into the microphone.
“Mr. Chairman, sorry about that, but it doesn’t really hurt anything. Can we proceed without further delay?”
The chairman gaveled the room to order, without taking his eyes off the disaster. A minute later, George Winston was sworn.
“Do you have an opening statement, Mr. Winston?”
“Sir, I did.” SecTreas shook his head and stifled a laugh, though not quite all the way. “I guess I have to apologize to the members of the committee for our little
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accident. I’d meant that to be an illustration of one of my points, but… well…” He rearranged his papers and sat more erect in his chair.
“Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, my name is George Winston, and President Ryan has asked me to step away from my business to serve my country in the capacity of Secretary of the Treasury. Let me tell you a little bit about myself. . .”
“WHAT DO WE know about him?” Kealty asked.
“Plenty. He’s smart. He’s tough. He’s pretty honest. And he’s richer ‘n God.” Even richer than you, the aide didn’t say.
“Ever investigated?”
“Never.” His chief of staff shook his head. “Maybe he’s skated on thin ice, but–no, Ed, I can’t even say that. The book on Winston is that he plays by the rules. His investment group is highly rated for performance and integrity. He had a bad trader working for him eight years ago, and George personally testified against him in court. He also made good the guy’s shenanigans out of his own pocket. His own personal pocket, that is. Forty million dollars’ worth. The crook served five years. He’s a good choice for Ryan. He’s no politician, but he’s well respected on the Street.”
“Shit,” Kealty observed.
“MR. CHAIRMAN, THERE are a lot of things that need to be done.” Winston set his opening statement aside and continued off the cuff. Or so it seemed. He jerked his left hand to the pile of books. “That broken table over there. That’s the U.S. Tax Code. It’s a principle of common law that ignorance of the law is not a defense before the bar of justice. But that doesn’t make sense anymore. The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service both promulgate and enforce the tax law of our country. Excuse me, those laws are passed by the Congress, as we all know, but mainly they happen because my department submits the proposed set of rules, and the Congress mod-
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ifies and approves them, and then we enforce them. In many cases, the interpretation of the code you pass is left to people who work for me, and as we all know, the interpretation can be as important as the laws themselves. We have special tax courts to make further rulings–but what we end up with is that pile of printed paper over there, and I would submit to this committee that nobody, not even an experienced member of the bar, can possibly understand it all.
“We even have the absurd situation that when a citizen brings his tax records and return forms into an IRS office for assistance from the people who enforce the law, and those IRS employees make a mistake, then the citizen who comes to his government for help is responsible for the mistakes the government makes. Now, when I was in the trading business, if I gave my client a bad piece of advice, I had to take the responsibility for it.
“The purpose of taxes is to provide revenue for the country’s government so that the government can serve the people. But along the way we’ve created an entire industry that takes billions of dollars from the public. Why? To explain a tax code that gets more complex every year, a code that the enforcement people themselves do not understand with a sufficient degree of confidence to undertake responsibility for getting it right. You already know, or you should”– they didn’t–“the amount of money we spend on enforcing that tax code, and that’s not especially productive, either. We’re supposed to be working for the people, not confusing them.
“And so, Mr. Chairman, there are some things I hope to be able to accomplish during my term at Treasury, if the committee sees fit to confirm my nomination. First, I want the tax code completely rewritten into something a normal person can understand. I want that tax code to make sense. I want a code with no special breaks. I want the same rules to apply equally to everybody. I am prepared to present a proposal to do exactly that. I want to work with the committee to make that into law. I want to work with you ladies and gentlemen. I will not let any corporate or any other form of lobbyist into my office to discuss this matter, and here and now, I beseech you to do
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the same. Mr. Chairman, when we start talking to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who has a little suggestion to take care of a special group with special needs, we end up with that!” Winston pointed to the broken table again. “We’re all Americans. We’re supposed to work together, and in the long run, tweaking the tax laws of our country for every lobbyist with an office and a clientele ultimately takes more money from everybody. The laws of our country are not supposed to be a jobs program for accountants and lawyers in the private sector, and bureaucrats in the public sector. The laws which you pass and which people like me enforce are supposed to serve the needs of the citizens, not the needs of the government.
“Second, I want my department to run efficiently. Efficiency is not a word that government knows how to spell, much less implement. That has to change. Well, I can’t change this whole city, but I can change the department with which the President has entrusted me, and which, I hope, you will let me have. I know how to run a business. The Columbus Group serves literally millions of people, directly and indirectly, and I’ve borne that burden with pride. I will, in the next few months, submit a budget for a Department of the Treasury that doesn’t have so much as one excess position.” It was a considerable exaggeration, but nonetheless an impressive one. “This room has heard such claims before, and I will not blame you for taking my words with a ton of salt, but I am a man accustomed to backing up my words with results, and that’s going to happen here, too.
“President Ryan had to yell at me to get me to move into Washington. I don’t like it here, Mr. Chairman,” Winston told the committee. He had them now. “I want to do my job and-leave. But the job is going to get done, if you let me. That concludes my opening statement.”
The most experienced people in the room were the reporters in the second row–the first row had Winston’s wife and family. They knew how things were done and how things were said. A cabinet officer was supposed to wax rhapsodic about the honor of being allowed to serve, about the joy of being entrusted with power, about the responsibility that would bear heavily upon him or her.
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I don’t like it here? The reporters stopped writing their notes and looked up, first at the dais, and then at one another.
MOVIE STAR LIKED what he saw. Though the danger to him was greater, the risk was balanced. Here there was a main four-lane highway within a few meters of the objective, and that led to an infinite network of side roads. Best of all, you could see almost everything. Directly behind the objective was a clump of woods, dense enough that it could not hold a support vehicle. There had to be one, and where would it be … ? Hmm, there, he thought. There was one house close enough with an attached garage that actually faced the day-care center and that one … yes. Two cars parked right in front of that house–why weren’t they parked inside? So probably the Secret Service had made an arrangement with the owners. It was ideal, fifty meters from the demi-school, facing in the right direction. If something untoward happened, the alarm would be issued, and the support vehicle would instantly be manned, the garage door opened, and out it would race like a tank, except that it wasn’t a tank.