Executive orders - Tom Clancy [269]
Mr. President, the Secretary of the Treasury, Agent Price announced at the side door to the corridor.
Thank you, we can handle this alone, Ryan said, rising from his desk as George Winston came in.
Morning, sir, SecTreas said, as the door closed quietly. He was dressed in one of his handmade suits, and was carrying a manila folder. Unlike his President, the Secretary of the Treasury was used to wearing a jacket most of the time. Ryan took his off and dropped it on the desk. Both sat on the twin couches, with the coffee table between them.
Okay, how are things across the street? Ryan asked, pouring himself some coffee, with the caffeine in this morning.
If I ran my brokerage house like that, the SEC would have my hide on the barn door, my head over the fireplace, and my ass in Leavenworth. I'm going to-hell, I've already started bringing in some of my administrative folks down from New York. There are just too many people over there whose only job is looking at each other and telling them how important they all are. Nobody's responsible for anything. Damn it, at Columbus Group, we often make decisions by committee, but we make by-God decisions in time for them to matter. There are too many people, Mr. Pres-
You can call me Jack, at least in here, George, I- The door to the secretaries' room opened and the photographer came in with his Nikon. He didn't say anything. He rarely did. He just snapped away, and the rubric was for everyone to pretend he simply wasn't there. It would have been a hell of an assignment for a spy, Ryan thought.
Fine. Jack, how far can I go? TRADER asked.
I already told you that. It's your department to run. Just so you tell me about it first.
I'm telling you, then. I'm going to cut staff. I'm going to set that department up like a business. He stopped for a second. And I'm going to rewrite the tax code. God, I didn't know how screwed up it was until two days ago. I had some in-house lawyers come in and-
It has to be revenue-neutral. We can't go dicking around with the budget. None of us has the expertise yet, and until the House of Representatives is reconstituted- The photographer left, having caught the President in a great pose, both hands extended over the coffee tray.
Playmate of the Month, Winston said, with a hearty laugh. He lifted a croissant and buttered it. We've run the models. The effect on revenue will be neutral on the basis of raw numbers, Jack, but there will probably be an overall increase in usable funds.
Are you sure? Don't you need to study all the-
No, Jack. I don't need to study anything. I brought Mark Gant in to be my executive assistant. He knows computer modeling better than anybody I've ever met. He spent last week chewing through the-didn't anybody ever tell you? They never stop looking at the tax system over there. Study? I pick up the phone, and inside half an hour I'll have a thousand-page document on my desk telling me how things were in 1952, what the tax code then did in every segment of the economy-or what people think it did, as opposed to what they thought then that it did, or as opposed to what the studies in the 1960s said they thought that it did. SecTreas paused for a bite. Bottom line? Wall Street is far more complex, and uses simpler models, and those models work. Why? Because they're simpler. And I'm going to tell the Senate that in ninety minutes, with your permission.
You're sure you're right on this, George? POTUS asked. That was one of the problems, perhaps the largest of all. The President couldn't check everything that was done in his name-even checking one percent would have been an heroic feat-but he was responsible for it all. It was that knowledge that had doomed so many Presidents to micro-managerial failure. Jack, I'm sure enough to bet my investors' money on it.
Two pairs of eyes met over the table. Each man knew the measure of the other. The