2030_ The Real Story of What Happens to America - Albert Brooks [105]
Weeks before, Bernstein had sat down with the three most important people in the House of Representatives and the three most important senators, four Democrats and two Republicans, to inform them of what was about to happen. He also asked John Roberts, now in his twenty-sixth year as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, to attend. Bernstein thought having Roberts there would give the meeting gravitas, since Congress and the Supreme Court rarely mingled, except at the State of the Union.
White House staff had already cleared the idea with Roberts. They needed assurance that this was constitutional. Roberts said what they had hoped, that becoming a financial partner with another country was not even dealt with in the Constitution and therefore should not present a problem.
When the meeting adjourned, the President was pleased. There was virtually no resistance from anyone in the group, aside from perfunctory concerns about national security, but Bernstein convinced them that if anything, this would make America more secure, with two countries now having a stake in keeping the homeland protected.
When everyone left, the President said to John Van Dyke, “Ten years ago there would have been no way that those seven people would have signed off on this. This should prove to us more than anything what dire financial straits we are in.”
The speech was scheduled for a Wednesday night at nine P.M. Eastern Standard Time. The First Lady and all of the president’s cabinet accompanied him to the East Room, where the broadcast would take place. Bernstein was remarkably calm considering what he was about to tell the nation. But his calm came from the fact that he had grown to love the idea. Each day he was able to sell it better than the day before, and the fact that the U.S. had no choice—well, that made it easier. It was a little like surrendering in a war. You’ve lost, but at least it’s over and there was no other way out anyway. But this no longer felt like surrender. Quite the opposite.
Bernstein sat down behind the desk that FDR had used when he announced the attack at Pearl Harbor. The setting was elegant and clean, with just the American flag and the Chinese flag behind him. The President had the speech on a prompter, but he didn’t need it. It flowed out of him like conversation. At exactly nine P.M. he began.
“Good evening. Tonight has been billed as a historic speech, and for once it might actually live up to the billing.”
Bernstein smiled. He looked in control. He looked as if he was excited to tell the American people this information.
“As you know, one of the great cities of the world, Los Angeles, was destroyed on June twelfth of this year. Destroyed so thoroughly that it is now unrecognizable. It was as if nature turned back the clock to the time of the Old West. We now have huge swaths of land where great buildings once stood. Homes are gone, schools wiped out, lives ruined, commerce ground to a halt.
“Tonight I am happy to announce that all this is about to change. The United States, at this moment in its history, does not have the funds to rebuild a city of fifteen million people from the ground up. There is no way to give this a positive spin. The price tag to bring Los Angeles and the surrounding areas back to where it once was will be at least twenty trillion dollars. I repeat, twenty trillion dollars. With our debt load being what it is, there is no possible way to borrow this amount of money. No nation can afford to, or would be willing to, advance our country this sum. If we simply printed it, our economy would come to an end. Our currency would be worth