The Weed Agency (12 page)

NOVEMBER 1995

U.S. National Debt: $4.98 trillion

Budget, USDA Agency of Invasive Species: $112.2 million

The reports of a breakdown in budget talks had been growing louder, but no one had believed that differences between the new Speaker and President Clinton would lead to an actual shutdown of the United States government. Wilkins had periodically reassured the workers beneath him, “We’re the federal government. We never close.”

But as the deadline approached, the unbelievable had become reality. Congress had failed to appropriate any money to pay the salaries after the next pay period. The Agriculture
Secretary had given the word: Be ready to operate only with essential personnel starting the day after tomorrow.

Humphrey gathered all of his employees in a crowded conference room. Some stood in the hallways; those in field offices listened by conference call.

“Women and children first,” Humphrey declared.

“You had to evoke the
Titanic
right off the bat, huh?” Wilkins groaned.

“I approach the decision of ‘vital personnel’ with some chivalry,” Humphrey explained. “I am certain, once the shutdown ends, we will all be reimbursed for missed pay periods. Higher-salaried staffers are more likely to have accumulated savings to use for expenses during this time than our newer and younger workers. So, despite the fact that my instructions indicate that the younger among you are likely to rank among the nonessential, I … interpret the definitions differently than the Office of Management and Budget guidelines suggest. Any of you who find yourself with dire financial expenses in the near future, send me a memo by the end of the day and I will see to it you are deemed ‘essential.’ Those of you who can afford a delayed paycheck or two, your temporary sacrifice is appreciated. Beyond these arrangements, I myself will be … able to make emergency loans to anyone who needs it.”

Wilkins looked around the room and saw expressions of surprise and awe. For all of his flaws, Adam Humphrey believed in protecting his people.

“How long will the shutdown last?” Jamie asked.

“That’s up to the president and Congress, but I am taking steps to assure that we are in the innermost of inner loops as this fiscal crisis is resolved,” Humphrey said with a strangely reassuring, confident tone. “For some of you, this will be a brief unexpected vacation.”

A mix of disbelief, nervous laughter, and gallows humor as the workers paraded out. A shell-shocked Wilkins was left alone in the room with Humphrey.

“So how are we getting into the innermost of inner loops?” he asked.

“You and I are about to become surgically attached to Congressman Hargis.”

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1995

It was the first time Wilkins had been back to the White House since he worked there under Carter.

“I … am thrilled to be back here, Congressman, but shouldn’t you be back at the Hill?”

“I’m here to tell them we are up a creek,” Hargis grumbled as he, Humphrey, and Wilkins sat, shoulder-to-shoulder and butt-cheek-to-butt-cheek on a couch in the West Wing hallway.

“Forty-eight of my Democratic colleagues just voted for the Republicans’ continuing resolution that would require the president to submit a proposal to balance the budget within seven years. To do that, we would have to
cut
—not reduce the rate of growth,
cut
—about $160 billion from what we’re spending now.”

“Absolute madness,” Humphrey said, shaking his head. “Just keeping our budget static, with no baseline adjustments in the coming seven years, would be unthinkable.… To meet that insane ideological goal, every government agency would have to cut spending … one and a half percent in seven years!”

“More, really, because they would have to exclude entitlements,” Wilkins murmured.

Hargis ran his fingers through his thinning silver hair. “I’m getting hell in my district, and that never happens. I have to
look like I want to balance the budget. And if somebody like me is flipping, there’s no way we can sustain a veto from Clinton.”

Humphrey was as pale as Wilkins had ever seen him.

“My God … it’s going to happen, isn’t it? These barbarians are actually going to …”

“Lucky me,” Hargis chuckled bitterly. “I get to be the one to tell Bill Clinton that for the first time since World War II, the federal government will spend less than the year before.”

Through a window, they caught a glimpse of Clinton in his sweatsuit, reentering the Oval Office. A young brunette aide—an unpaid intern, most likely—emerged from the doorway and told the congressman the president would be ready to see him in a moment.

Hargis entered, and Humphrey and Wilkins were left on the couch, thankfully able to put some space between them. They sighed and looked at each other.

Wilkins was groping for a way to say things wouldn’t be that bad when they suddenly heard an explosion of howling laughter and cheers from a few offices away.

“YEE-HA!”

Several people roaring, laughing, and cheering. Coming from the direction of the Oval Office, Wilkins thought. They rose, walked toward the door, hesitated to open it, and then paced.

After several minutes, Hargis burst out, exuberant and laughing.

“We dodged a bullet!” The overweight congressman was somehow jumping up and down, and he slapped the men on their shoulders like an offensive lineman who recovered a fumble to score a touchdown. Beyond the doorway, they could hear the giddy cheers continuing. “Those sons-of-bitches just faxed over a continuing resolution proposal that makes the concessions we wanted on Medicaid, Medicare, education, and the
environment. All they wanted in return was some window dressing on veterans and defense spending.”

“The Republicans?” Wilkins asked.

“Blinked!” concluded Humphrey.

“Does this mean we won’t get cut?” Wilkins asked.

“It means the shutdown’s over, at least until mid-December,” Hargis said. He had to sit down after his little touchdown dance of celebration. “Hoo … We’re not out of the woods yet, but at least now we’ve got a shot. Those fools just declared a temporary ceasefire before we could hand them our surrender papers.”

“A proposal like this means that someone over there is sweating,” Humphrey surmised. “If they concede this now, they’ll probably be likely to concede something else, later.”

DECEMBER 1995

The shutdown ended … and then it began again.

The offices had reopened, and then, like déjà vu, the closure repeated. Once again, most federal workers remained home—as the holidays were approaching, some didn’t mind—and the news was full of breathless reports of the latest tense negotiations.

Humphrey once again began shadowing Hargis, ostensibly to keep the congressman informed about how the shutdown affected agency operations. But Wilkins knew that for the first time, Humphrey felt genuinely powerless about his work, and his “advice” to Hargis was becoming less veiled and subtle with every conversation. Wilkins sensed that if you took Humphrey’s work away from him, he might lose his mind.

Humphrey and Wilkins were supposed to meet the congressman on Capitol Hill. Hargis wasn’t leading the negotiations
but remained on their periphery. As an appropriator, his duty was periodically to remind the White House that they could not make concessions about spending, which his Democratic colleagues in the House considered their divine right. The White House was also counting on Hargis to win over Republicans who had been on the Appropriations Committee for a long time, nudging them to get them to urge their hard-line colleagues to concede. Thankfully, Hargis and his fellow Democrats had allies on the Appropriations Committee staff, almost all of whom were holdovers from when the Democrats were running the committee a year earlier.

So a few days before Christmas, Wilkins and Humphrey found themselves wandering the halls of the Senate office buildings, with Humphrey beginning to wonder if Hargis was deliberately avoiding him.

“Are they meeting in Dole’s office, or in Daschle’s office?” Wilkins asked.

Humphrey opened a door on the other side of the room, and entered one of the nicer meeting rooms he had ever seen on Capitol Hill. The room had a fireplace, and was fragrant with pine. Outside, a few flurries could be seen outside the window, which was flanked by long, gold curtains. A plate of cookies sat on the table.

“Oooh, cookies!” Wilkins’s face lit up. He crossed the room, reached for one—and then heard one of the doors on the other side of the room being unlocked.

Wilkins shot a panicked look at Humphrey, and ducked behind the gold curtain. Humphrey glared but followed, and the pair stood silently as they heard two familiar voices enter.

“In here, George—this back room,” said a flat, low Kansas twang. “The fireplace keeps it warmer—I’m starting to wonder if you guys got the building folks to turn down the heat, trying to freeze us out.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Senator,” replied the young, cheerily chirping George Stephanopoulos with a laugh.

“Moravian spice cookie?”

“Thank you, Senator,” Stephanopoulos replied. “Not where we were supposed to be right before Christmas, huh? An incumbent president, a likely challenger, stuck in Washington, far from the primary states.”

“Ergh. Argh. I’ve got to get to New Hampshire,” Dole muttered, tugging on his cardigan sweater with his left hand. “One way or the other, this thing is over on the thirty-first, because I’m out of here.”

Stephanopoulos nearly choked on his cookie, and behind the curtain, Humphrey’s eyes bulged and he smiled aggressively.

Wilkins and Humphrey remained absolutely silent throughout the brief meeting; the two men had rehearsed their talking points before the cameras, and they reiterated the usual points about budgetary discipline and the difficulties of the shutdown and the need for flexibility, but also the importance of standing on core principles. Nothing seemed to change, but when the two men rose from the table, Stephanopoulos’s gait was different: cheerier and excited.

When no sound had been heard for a solid minute, the pair of agency employees emerged from behind the curtains and hastily strode toward the door they entered.

In the Senate hallway, relieved their eavesdropping stunt hadn’t triggered a visit from the U.S. Capitol Police, Humphrey was like a teakettle ready to boil over.

“Unbelievable!” Humphrey was giddy.

“I can’t believe I just stole one of Bob Dole’s cookies.”

“Forget the cookies!” Humphrey ecstatically cried. “They’re going to fold! This will be over by January!”

“Wait, just so Dole can get to New Hampshire?” Wilkins asked.

“Precisely! He can’t afford to wait! The budget fight going into the New Year would interfere with Dole’s chances in the primary! This is the biggest budget brinkmanship in generations, and the leader of the Republicans in the Senate just told a leading negotiator for the Democrats that he has to accept whatever’s on the table at the end of the year. He just revealed his whole hand to Stephanopoulos!” He shook his head, laughed, and then laughed some more. “We’re saved by Dole’s ambition!”

“I can’t believe what you’re saying,” Wilkins said, cheered but almost afraid to believe. “Why did he do that? Is he really sick of the budget showdown and looking for a way out, or did he just inadvertently blurt out the one thing he couldn’t afford to reveal?”

“Does it matter?” laughed Humphrey. “Either way, the negotiations are effectively over. In a fight like this, the first side that splinters ends up conceding. Dole just told Stephanopoulos the precise date that the Republicans will give up.”

They walked down the hall, privy to a joyful secret.

“Wilkins … remind me to touch base with Congressman Bader early next year.”

MARCH 1996

U.S. National Debt: $5.11 trillion

Budget, USDA Agency of Invasive Species: $125.9 million

They met, month after month, meeting after meeting. Each time, Agency of Invasive Species Assistant Administrative Director Jack Wilkins tried to explain to Ava Summers, the twenty-four-year-old who somehow had become the driving force behind a massively ambitious plan to expand and revamp the agency’s nascent presence on the World Wide Web, just how complicated the creation of Weed.gov would become.