Mercifully I went through the makeup business fairly quickly. I had felt like an idiot doing it before going onstage with Oprah, and I still felt like an idiot. At least I didn’t have to do it with Kennedy in the same room. That would have probably been awkward. I don’t know why we had to do makeup, anyway. If you’re a dark complexion they want you lighter, otherwise they want you darker, and not so shiny, and the camera adds ten pounds and all sorts of horseshit is going on. I left makeup and was sent off to the green room. I bet that Kennedy got his own dressing room. Then again, he had a house in Washington, on DuPont Circle I believed. Maybe he would just show up already polished and primed.
Eventually I was called out during a commercial break, and put in a chair at a table across from Brinkley. I looked around uncertainly, noticing where all the cameras were. Kennedy came out, all smiles, and greeted half the crew by name, and immediately sat down at his chair, a few feet away. He had probably done this a hundred times before. I was ignored, being beneath the great man. The setup was so that they could focus on each of us without anybody interfering with a shot of somebody else.
Brinkley started off by introducing the topic, and giving a quick synopsis of the book, and was surprisingly fair with it. Then he turned to me and asked, “Doctor Buckman, throughout your book, you state that any number of government programs have costs far higher than what have been stated by a number of people, and that in order to pay for them, taxes have to be dramatically increased. Surely you don’t expect tax rates to be doubled, as you suggest in your book?”
“It’s not a matter of what I expect to happen as it is that these are basic facts, and we need to acknowledge them if we are to have any hope of stabilizing the finances of this country. If you go to the store and buy something, sooner or later you have to pay for it. Congress has gone to the store and has bought a bunch of things. They’ve bought pensions, which is what Social Security is, and medical insurance, which is Medicare and Medicaid, and highways and dams and water treatment plants. Somebody has to pay for this stuff. Right now, we’re just getting by, telling the entire world that, ‘Sure, we’re good for it.’, but sooner or later the bill is going to come due, and the bill will be beyond belief.”
“Senator, your response?”
Senator Kennedy gave a lengthy discourse on how the costs were nowhere near what I was stating they were, and that this simply was the Republican mantra of killing off needed social programs. He could have rambled on for the entire show, but Brinkley cut him off.
“Doctor Buckman, do you really advocate ending these social programs? What do you expect the millions of people who are on Social Security and Medicare to do without them?” he asked.
“I have never said we should end these programs. We have done a lot of good with Social Security and Medicare, for instance. What I am saying, though, is that we have to pay for them. My employees have pensions and health care, but I pay for them, in full, up front. If I stop paying, they don’t get them. As it currently stands, we are only paying a fraction of the cost, and promising the world we’ll pay sometime in the future, but that future keeps getting farther and farther away, and the amount we need to pay keeps getting larger and larger. At some point in the next thirty years — in our lifetimes! — the numbers will get so large we won’t be able to pay, no matter what we do!” I replied.
“That is simply not true!” interrupted Kennedy. “Doctor Buckman surely knows that payroll tax deductions are paid into a trust fund, a trust fund which fully pays for all future benefits!”
“And Senator Kennedy surely knows that money is a fungible commodity. Payments into the trust fund are immediately and automatically used to buy Treasury Bills, so the funds immediately flow into general revenues, and the Treasury Bills simply add to the budget deficit,” I countered.
“It is astonishing that at a time like this that a seemingly intelligent man like Doctor Buckman would be so willing to consider shutting down essential social programs that keep our weakest and most vulnerable citizens alive! It is simply unconscionable and unspeakably heartless!”
“Your response?” prompted Brinkley.
I smiled. “Well, my wife would surely agree that I’m unconscionable and unspeakable and heartless, but that’s a totally different subject. It is complete nonsense to say that I want to shut down Social Security or Medicare. This is a wealthy and powerful nation, and there is no reason we can’t have a strong safety net for all our citizens. What I want is for our political leaders to honestly explain how they plan to pay for it. Right now we aren’t paying for it, and we don’t have a plan to pay for it.”
“Which is simply not true. Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid are vital to the lives of millions of people, and this pathetic attempt to eliminate these programs is simply horrid in a modern society.”
Brinkley looked at me, and I countered. “Again, I repeat, I have no desire to end these programs, simply to pay for them. Listen, I’m not a lawyer, or an economist, or a politician. I’m a mathematician, and the one thing they teach you how to do as a mathematician is to add and subtract. When I tell you that two plus two equals four, then it equals four. It doesn’t equal five, and it doesn’t equal six, and it certainly doesn’t equal twenty-two. The math doesn’t add up, and unless we develop a way to pay for these programs, we’ll be bankrupt in our lifetime. If I ran my company this way, my company would be bankrupt and I’d be in jail!”
Brinkley called the argument to a close at that point and we went to commercial. That was it for me. I got hustled off the stage and got sent off to a dressing room to clean off the makeup. Kennedy went elsewhere, and I never saw him again. I cleaned up and left and drove home.
I got back to Hereford shortly after lunch, and was greeted by my son, who ran up to me saying, “You were on TV! I saw you on TV!”
I grinned down at him. “Really? You sure it was me?”
“Mommy said it was you!” He grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the foyer and into the living room.
Marilyn was coming out of the kitchen and she laughed at us. “The TV star is home! How was it?”
I kissed my wife hello, and then grabbed for Holly as she scampered past. She giggled and scooted free, and then ran down the hallway with Molly and Dum-Dum. I snorted at them and then told Marilyn, “I need this like I need more holes in the head!”
“You were great! I don’t think Senator Kennedy knew what hit him.”
I just shook my head. “I bet your old man isn’t too happy with me. How dare I dispute the great man!?” Big Bob was a major fan of the Kennedy family.
“Well, you’re my great man, so who cares what my father thinks. Have you had lunch yet?”
I shook my head and followed her into the kitchen. Lunch was ham and cheese sandwiches and iced tea, with the kids and the dog running through on occasion. Afterwards, Marilyn pushed me into the living room and hit the remote on the television and the VCR. I was too tired to do much more than sit there and vegetate while Marilyn rewound the tape and then started it up again.
“Hey! You’re on TV again!” yelled Charlie as he climbed up on the couch.
I snorted. “It must be magic.” He kept babbling and we finally had to tell him to be quiet — or else! That made him quiet down, but it also bored him, so he scampered away again.
The first half of the show went pretty much like I remembered, with Kennedy and me sparring. I kept telling him the numbers didn’t add up, and he kept saying I was an inhuman monster to consider throwing sick and old people out with the garbage. The curious part was during the second half of the show, when Brinkley called out his discussion panel of fellow journalists, the Roundtable. Today’s panel consisted of George Will, Sam Donaldson, and some other fellow I didn’t recognize. If I had known they were there that day, I might have stuck around to watch. I had been watching the Sunday morning talk shows for years, both before and after my recycle. I didn’t recognize the third guy with Brinkley, so he never made it big, but I just loved Will and Donaldson. Donaldson was on the liberal side of the fence, and Will on the right, but they were smart and articulate and just plain interesting!