Debt Bomb

by Michael Ginsberg

  “For two weeks now, Americans have been fighting and dying in Taiwan. The war costs America a billion dollars day. Hundreds of billions of dollars in military equipment has been destroyed. For what? To protect Pax Americana? Why should we be the ones to keep the world’s peace? Every time Republicans talk about defending Pax Americana, there is never any pax involved. No, always shooting and war and imposing America’s will on someone else. All of this is paid for by the American taxpayer. Why?

  “Meanwhile, President Murray is slashing Americans’ Social Security. He’s taking away your Medicare benefits. Seniors are being thrown out into the streets with no money and no way to get the prescription drugs they need to stay alive. The poorest Americans have seen their social welfare safety net cut away. They are without food. They are without shelter. They are without medicine.”

  “What the fuck is he doing?” President Murray shouted, horrified.

  That goddamned momzer did it again, Andrea thought. And this time he’s screwing over the president of the United States.

  Mason took a breath and surveyed the crowd, a malicious smile creeping across his face. He looked directly into the camera.

  “President Murray would rather save an island of foreigners than feed, clothe, and provide medicine to Americans. He would rather fight a war in Asia than provide retirees their hard-earned Social Security. I categorically reject this and say:

  “Come home, America.

  “Come home and care for your parents and grandparents.

  “Come home, America, and provide for your children.

  “Come home, America, and let other countries pay for their own defense.

  “Come home, America, and support the troops by keeping them out of war.

  “I will not let my committee or my party vote to amend the emergency budget to pay for the president to fight half a world away.”

  President Murray glowered at the television screen, his hands balled into fists. “That goddamned two-faced backstabbing son of a bitch,” he snarled through gritted teeth.

  “If the president wants to save money, he doesn’t need to write a new budget. He just needs to stop spending on a war in Taiwan,” Mason continued. “How hard is that? I have been watching President Murray’s war and it has become clear to me. This war is lost. We will not defeat the Chinese in a few more weeks of fighting, and Congress will not approve one more nickel for this war. That is my solemn pledge.

  “It is time to end ‘Murray’s Chinese Theater.’ The president should apologize to China, negotiate a withdraw of American troops and vessels from the area, end this madness, and bring our troops home.”

  The House chamber erupted in applause. Only a handful of the most hawkish Republicans sat on their hands. All the Democrats and two-thirds of Mason’s fellow Republicans were on their feet cheering.

  “What the hell just happened?” President Murray jumped from his seat and swung at the air. “They’re treating him like he just won the Battle of Normandy. We’re going to lose this war because of him!”

  He grabbed the vase from the coffee table and hurled it against the wall. It exploded into a thousand pieces, with Andrea, General Ogden, and Admiral Wilkerson ducking for cover from flying ceramic shrapnel.

  “Did you see the way Congress reacted?” the president roared. His face flushed red as he paced the perimeter of the Oval Office. “What the hell was Mason thinking? He promised me he would get the Appropriations Committee onboard. He lied straight to my face. That goddamned son of a bitch!”

  “Mason may be an opportunistic jerk, but what about the rest of them?” Andrea said. “Was anyone not giving him a standing ovation? There’s no way we’re going to be able to amend the emergency budget to fund the war.”

  She resisted the urge to let fly an I told you so. Having been on the business end of Mason’s duplicity had sensitized her to his antics in a way President Murray hadn’t experienced. Until now.

  President Murray stopped and stared intently at the picture of Andrew Jackson on the wall. Andrea knew her history. Jackson probably would have challenged Mason to a duel. And he would have kept fighting until the war was over or he was impeached and removed. Or shot dead on the battlefield himself. Earl Murray might be tough, but he was no Andrew Jackson. And it wasn’t 1830. Presidents didn’t saddle up and ride onto the battlefield. Mason’s speech and the reaction to it told the tale. Murray was going to have to pull the troops from Taiwan and the South China Sea.

  “These spineless weasels are pathetic,” General Ogden growled. “Congress is going to leave our soldiers to die at the hands of some damned Communists. Are we seriously going to acquiesce in the worst territorial land grab since Hitler invaded Poland? Because we’re broke?”

  General Ogden’s words were a gut punch. He might as well have tossed the blame right at Andrea’s feet. She thought about resigning right then and there. Just get up and walk out. Go home to her kids.

  But it was too late for that. If she’d resigned before the war started, she might have kept President Murray from starting the war. Now she was responsible for all the American lives lost in vain. She walked to the window and stared at the landscaping outside, trying to keep her emotions in check.

  “There is no way at all I’m going to sit and let some finger-in-the-wind bullshit artist like Lew Mason let the Chinese get away with sinking our ships and killing our sailors,” Admiral Wilkerson shouted. “This is nuts. You think Andrew Jackson or Teddy Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan would have cowered in the face of a chickenshit Congress? Hell no. He’d tell Congress the war was happening and grab the money from someplace and do it. How many divisions does Congress have? They want to stop this war? Over my dead body!”

  The yelling was getting to be too much. Andrea imagined herself riding a centrifuge spinning so quickly it was disintegrating, flinging parts in all directions. Desperate for calm, she turned to Admiral Wilkerson.

  “Look, Admiral—”

  “I’ve heard just enough out of you, you goddamned bean counter,” Wilkerson shouted. “You’re the one who got us into this mess.”

  “You’re blaming me?” said Andrea. “I didn’t send that flotilla into the South China Sea to be sitting ducks for China’s target practice. You’re the one who said the Chinese would never be dumb enough to shoot at our flotilla. This flotilla, this whole war, all of this is on you, not me.”

  “Why you goddamned—”

  Admiral Wilkerson lunged at Andrea and shoved her backward into the Resolute desk. Her upper back hit the desk and she fell to the floor. She stared up at the admiral, stunned.

  “Get a hold of yourself!” General Ogden shouted. He grabbed the enraged Wilkerson and shoved him over to the couch in the middle of the room.

  “You disgrace!” Murray shouted. “How dare you physically assault someone in this office! Your resignation! Now!”

  Red-faced and huffing, Admiral Wilkerson ripped the ribbons from his uniform and slammed them on the coffee table. Then he ripped off his medals and slammed them down so hard the glass on the table cracked.

  “You are leaving over a hundred dead American sailors at the bottom of the South China Sea and doing nothing to avenge them. And you call me a disgrace?” He flung his hat like a Frisbee across the room, and it slammed with a thud against the wall. “You make me sick. Never spent a day in harm’s way in your life, and now you’re cutting the military off because you are too cheap and too chickenshit to pay to defend them. Rot in hell, all of you.”

  Wilkerson stormed out of the room. His ribbons and medals, a lifetime of service, sat in a disheveled pile on the broken coffee table.

  General Ogden helped Andrea up from the floor. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. I’m sure worse has happened in this office.”

  “Why don’t we all settle down for a second,” Murray suggested.

  Fisticuffs with Admiral Wilkerson wasn’t how Andrea had intended to bring calm to the group, but she appreciated everyone settling down all
the same.

  Just then the president’s phone rang. The president placed the call on speaker.

  “Senator Stover on line one, Mr. President,” said the operator.

  Senator Justin Stover was a calm, even-keeled Senate ally of President Murray’s to whom the president spoke regularly. Andrea hoped he might be able to restore calm to the Oval Office.

  “What’s the good word, Justin?” the president said.

  “Mr. President, I’m sorry to say it, but there is no way we’ll have support in the Senate for amending the emergency budget to fight this war. You are going to have to find a way to end it.”

  The president looked down at the plush carpet with the embroidered presidential seal. His look said it all to Andrea. She knew Stover was a straight shooter. If Justin Stover was delivering bad news, the news genuinely was bad.

  “Thanks for the update, Justin,” Murray said, and hung up.

  “The Senate has bailed on you too, huh?” said Andrea.

  “It’s over,” said Murray sadly.

  Andrea feared that no matter how responsible Mason was for ending the war, the country would see her emergency budget as the instrument of defeat. Her head drooped as she imagined herself joining the long line of American villains and turncoats: Benedict Arnold, the Rosenbergs, Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen, Edward Snowden, and now Andrea Gartner.

  In the quiet that had descended upon the Oval Office, Andrea carefully thought about the country’s options. She desperately didn’t want to pull the plug on the war with the Chinese, knowing what that would mean for the country and for her personally.

  “If we just had a little more time,” General Ogden suggested. “See if we can improve our position on the ground before calling it quits. A few more weeks.”

  Andrea realized time was something she could provide. Even if the United States didn’t have time to win the war, she could find money to prolong it and get America better terms for ending it.

  But the time she could provide would come with a painful catch.

  “Mr. President, I have an idea,” she replied. “But I hesitate to bring it up.”

  “Speak,” Murray ordered.

  Andrea glanced out the window. She could see the Washington Monument and thought about her earlier late-night walk.

  “We could move some funds,” she continued. “I think there’s at least ten billion dollars in the Pentagon’s budget I could reallocate for a few more weeks of war. But there’s a problem.”

  “What’s that?” Murray’s eye twitched.

  “The problem is it’s fucking unconstitutional!” Ogden shouted. “You can’t rob Peter to pay Paul to keep this war going. You take something from a different Defense Department account, someone’s going to suffer.”

  “General Ogden is right,” said Andrea. “Congress appropriated the money for something else. I think it’s probably unconstitutional to grab the money. Mason and his constitutional conservatives will scream to high heaven, and they’ll be right.”

  “Mason is dead to me,” Murray growled. “I don’t give a damn what that bastard and his damned Debt Rebel Gang thinks. Can you get me ten billion dollars to fight the war?”

  “Mr. President, we could take from the construction and maintenance budgets,” Andrea said. “And we could cancel the Pentagon’s free summer concerts in Washington, the Blue Angels air shows, the Marine Corps Marathon, and all the other frills the Pentagon funds. I’d hate to have to do this, but we could take funds from the veterans’ and family benefits accounts as well. If you let me squeeze every last bit of fat out of the Pentagon budget, I’ll get you ten billion dollars to fight with. Maybe more.”

  President Murray rubbed his chin. “Ten billion dollars. How long can we prolong the war with that?” He turned to General Ogden.

  “The war costs about a billion dollars a day,” said General Ogden. “If we are careful about how we fight and spend the money, we probably can get up to two more weeks of fighting. I’m not sure it’s worth it.”

  “Can you make those weeks of fighting painful for the Chinese?” the president asked.

  “Mr. President, I can nuke Beijing if you want,” said General Ogden.

  “How about we not do that?” President Murray sighed. “I want China’s nose to be bloody enough that they want the war to end too. But leave nukes out of this.”

  “We can probably destroy China’s bases on their artificial islands in the South China Sea,” said General Ogden. “But two weeks probably isn’t enough to dislodge the Chinese from Taiwan.”

  “Every little bit counts,” said President Murray. “Andrea, what do you think?”

  “There’s a risk the courts could stop our reallocation of funds, but if I was a betting woman, I’d say they don’t. Would a court really tell the president he can’t fight to get those sailors out of Taiwan? After the Chinese sank all those ships? No way.”

  “Andrea, move those funds,” President Murray said. “Two more weeks of war it is.”

  The next morning, Mason was seated at his Longworth office desk writing notes to supporters and basking in the glow of his dramatic speech the previous morning when the news banner scrolling across the TV screen caught his attention.

  BREAKING NEWS:

  President Murray announces $10 billion to be moved

  from Pentagon projects to fund the war

  Mason furiously smashed the point of his pen into his desk repeatedly. The point finally broke and blue ink gushed onto the desk and his hands. “Goddammit!” he shouted.

  Mason grabbed his sports coat and dashed out of his office.

  “Mr. Mason, where are you going?” asked his one remaining staffer as he bolted past her desk.

  “Not now,” roared Mason. “Cancel my schedule. I have a personal matter I need to attend to.”

  He understood that ten billion dollars meant the war would continue for at least a couple more weeks. Xu Li was not expecting that. If Xu Li found out before he had a chance to tell her and put his own spin on it, she might replace him the same way she replaced Acorn.

  Mason hustled down the Longworth building hall to the parking lot angrily muttering to himself. “Who the hell does Andrea Gartner think she is? Did she miss the day they taught appropriations law? I am the goddamn appropriations committee.” He kicked at the air. “If I don’t appropriate it, the Pentagon can’t spend it!”

  When he got to his BMW he pressed a small button on his watch. A digital keyboard appeared and he typed “entering the temple: 3.0.” He anticipated it would take him about an hour to reach the warehouse in Baltimore, but he wanted an extra two hours of cushion in case of traffic and to prepare to face Xu Li.

  Message sent, he started the car and screeched out of the Longworth parking lot, tires peeling against the pavement. Every traffic light seemed to turn red as he drove along North Capitol Street to the parkway to Baltimore. At the third red light his impatience overcame him and he furiously pounded the steering wheel. “Andrea Gartner! When this is over and the Chinese have me running the country you will be Prisoner Number One in my fucking gulags!”

  Driving up the parkway Mason steadied himself in preparation for meeting with Xu Li.

  If all Andrea can find is ten billion dollars, she’ll only be able to cover a couple more weeks of war. America’s war effort is running on fumes. If China can hold on for two more weeks, we’re going to succeed.

  Halfway to Baltimore he ran across a four-car accident on the parkway. There were no police or EMS anywhere in sight. All probably slashed by the emergency budget. Accident victims were tending to one another while motorists struggled to navigate around the accident without any police direction. Normally he would have exploded in road rage for being stuck in traffic, but he was enjoying the chaos of the accident scene. The missing police and EMS, the pathetic bystanders desperately trying to administer first aid to the bloodied victims, and the tangled, unmanaged traffic gave him confidence heading into his meeting with Xu Li. This chaos was his
creation, and he would make sure Xu Li knew.

  Mason finally arrived at the abandoned Baltimore warehouse after dark. He slowly drove his car up the alley beside the building. He had to go slowly; drug addicts had been known to shoot up there at night. He’d once nearly run one over. In the distance he could see fires burning in oil drums of homeless encampments. There were twice as many fires now since the emergency budget went into effect.

  Mason went down to the warehouse basement and pressed a red key on the control panel beside the screen. A Chinese agent appeared onscreen, greeted Mason, and disappeared down a hallway off-camera. When she returned, Xu Li was with her.

  “This war was supposed to be over by now, Crimson.”

  “Give it time, Madame Xu. Murray and Andrea Gartner are piecing their war budget together with duct tape and bailing wire. In a couple weeks they’ll be out of money.”

  “You told me the war would last less than four weeks. How is it that the chairman of the American Appropriations Committee does not know how much money is left for the war? I want answers, Crimson.”

  “It’s Andrea Gartner. She’s playing games with the budget. Sneaking money from other accounts.”

  “Ah yes, Andrea Gartner. Your budget director. She is a hardheaded one. But very practical and creative.” Mason detected grudging admiration in Xu Li’s voice. It wasn’t like her to heap praise on anybody, much less an enemy. He felt betrayed. It wasn’t as if Andrea Gartner was doing such a great job. Americans were unemployed, deprived of medicine, and dying.

  Why is Xu Li holding me to an impossible standard while praising our enemy?

  “I know what she has been doing with the budget numbers.” Xu Li didn’t elaborate. “And I know she humiliated you in those hearings you promised would bring down her government. She is a bit more formidable than you give her credit for.”

  Shit, she already knows about the extra money. Stay calm. Don’t let her think she’s got you nervous.

  “She’s a self-righteous, arrogant know-it-all. A scold. Americans hate that,” said Mason.