Chapter 38

The President went through her morning routine of struggling, with Steve's help, to get washed and dressed, while listening to the news to find out the latest developments in the world before starting to read her daily briefing reports. In those, she read about more terrorism throughout southern Europe, especially in Greece, Italy and Spain. Troop buildups were continuing in Germany, Turkey and southern Saudi Arabia. Iranian backed troops were moving from their meeting points in Azerbaijan, Iraq and Iran to mass in northern Syria near southern Turkey. They were also gathering at Tanger, Morocco and Tunis. The troops gathering near Turkey were the most worrisome, because it was the largest group, and they appeared as if they were almost ready to invade Turkey. An unusually bad winter storm near Turkey had slowed down the rate of transport flights into the southeastern corner of N.A.T.O. and she was concerned that their efforts to airlift troops into Turkey might not be sufficient to withstand the fundamentalist invasion. The troops assembling in Morocco appeared to be preparing to invade Spain to reverse the 1492 expulsion of the Moors, while the fighters gathering in Tunisia now looked as if they were going to invade southern Italy. If that was the case, it explained the large number of terrorist attacks in these regions.

Fighting was still very heavy in the former Soviet republics of Turkmenia and Kazakhstan. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan had fallen to the radicals, and Georgia and Turkmenia were not far behind. The government of Kazakhstan was not faring much better, but it appeared to be offering at least some resistance to Makhtol's hordes. Russia had sent troops to help the governments fight the radical Islamic tide, but their numbers and their effectiveness had been limited so far.

Makhtol now controlled all of the Mideast from Pakistan to Morocco with the exception of Egypt, Israel, Southern Saudi Arabia and Oman. He also controlled two former republics of the old Soviet Union and was about to take control of at least two others. He now controlled nearly half of the world's oil supply, which he withheld from those he considered to be infidels, that is, anyone who opposed him. The price of oil had already risen above $150 a barrel, and was still rising. Between the war and the astronomical prices of oil, economic activity throughout the world ground almost to a halt. Gasoline rationing was implemented in most areas of the world, and brown outs were common. If anything, the world economy was in worse shape than it had been during the severe recession and depression people had been suffering through over the previous several years. And it looked as if things would not be improving for a long time.

The U.S. economy, of course, was not immune from any of these developments. Gas lines had formed as the price of gasoline had soared to over $10 a gallon. Factories were closing or cutting their hours to conserve energy.

And farmers continued to be hit hard from rising fuel and fertilizer costs while the prices they were able to get for their crops once again stagnated after the brief burst of panic buying before the bank holiday. With spring approaching, it was necessary to come up with a program to deal with the situation or else many farmers would not be able to obtain the loans and other financing they would need to afford to buy seeds to plant their crops. If too many farmers did not plant, food shortages later in the year were a real possibility.

With those thoughts in mind, Kathleen Lehrer met with Fred Valentine, her White House Counsel and Chief of Staff, Donald Conway, the Secretary of the Treasury, Ralph Baker, the Secretary of Agriculture, Kent Rosenstein, the Commerce Secretary, Mitchell Stroach, Head of the Office of Management & Budget, Elaine Washington, the Secretary of Energy, and Sherman Watson, White House Liaison with state and local governments.

The President began the meeting. "I'd like to thank you all for coming over here so we can put our farm program together. As you know, spring is near, so we have to put this together real soon, if we are to ensure that we will have an adequate harvest. With so many resources around the world being diverted to the war effort, we have to make sure that our farmers are in position to supply food in areas that might otherwise go hungry. Several weeks ago, I had put forward some general principles that I wanted to see in any farm program before I would approve it. Ralph, since you are the Secretary of Agriculture, and are the most involved with this, why don't you start?"

All eyes turned to Ralph Baker. "I would like to first review the primary principles you had put forward, Mme. President, and then discuss how we propose to meet those principles."

"First," continued the Secretary of Agriculture, "our farm program must provide food for the poor from our farm surpluses and our plan should try to encourage the production of food, while keeping the prices high enough to ensure that the farmers will be able to survive. We must ensure that people can afford get enough to eat, while ensuring that farmers can earn enough to continue providing the food we need to survive. And whatever is in the program we propose, it must cost the same or less than what we are currently paying. That is a pretty tall order, but I believe we have put together a program that will meet these objectives. We have been meeting with people from other departments to coordinate our activities and to make sure that this plan works."

"In order to ensure that all of our people have enough food to eat, we have expanded the amounts of food that we are providing to schools for the school breakfast and lunch programs for those who may not otherwise have enough to eat, as well as expanding what we are making available to soup kitchens and other programs to feed the hungry and the homeless. We feel that this will cost an additional $1 billion, which we propose to pay for by totally eliminating subsidies that we pay to farmers to grow tobacco and by greatly reducing the subsidies that we pay to large agri-businesses, while leaving subsidies fairly intact for family farms and for medium size farmers that depend on these subsidies to survive."

"A major problem facing the farmers is the dramatically higher fuel and petroleum based fertilizer costs that have resulted from the war. We have been working for several years to encourage less use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and by using more organic products. We have expanded this program, mostly through a wider education program that will teach farmers how to farm organically. We have been working with successful organic farmers and we are having them show other farmers how to grow food without chemical fertilizers and pesticides. This will ease their dependence on petroleum based fertilizers and pesticides, which will ease their costs, as well as helping the environment."

"We have been talking with Elaine Washington to discuss what steps the Energy Department can take to help ease the burdens of the higher fuel costs from the war. Elaine, would you discuss some of your proposals?"

"Sure. We have been doing quite a bit of research over the past several years into using alcohol derived from corn and other grains as a motor fuel and as a source of energy for power plants. Not only will expanded use of fuel alcohol ease the burden of the higher oil prices, but could also ease our dependence on imported oil and open up new marketing possibilities for farmers."

"We've been mixing alcohol with gasoline in the winter to hold down the levels of pollutants for several years, haven't we?" asked the President.

"Yes, we have, and in light of the skyrocketing costs of gasoline due to the war, we're expanding that program now," answered the Secretary of Energy.

"One thing I've heard about these fuel mixtures is that the cars don't seem to run as smoothly, especially when they're first started, and I've heard a number of people complain that their gas mileage drops by three to four miles per gallon," commented Kent Rosenstein. "People want to do their part to help clean the environment, but they question whether some of these steps the government takes when it results in their cars running like shit and their fuel mileage drops significantly, especially with the prices going through the roof."

"That is a good point," replied Elaine Washington. "As you know, we have been working with the auto manufacturers to come up with engines that will more efficiently burn these new fuels. They have just informed me in the past several days that they have made a breakthrough with a part that consumers can buy for about $200 to $300 that can be attached to the fuel injection system that will enable people to use pure alcohol as fuel rather than gasoline. This new attachment supposedly allows the engine to burn alcohol as efficiently as gasoline, and because alcohol burns cleaner than gasoline, emissions are reduced as well. The car makers are pushing to get this on the market as quickly as possible because of the gas shortage, and they're hopeful that they'll have it available to the public within the next month or so. Once this goes on the market, prices of corn and other grains should increase because of the increasing demand. This should also help ease the pressures to increase farm subsidies because they won't be as necessary."

"That's good news," said Mitchell Stroach from O.M.B. "I'm always looking for places where we can cut spending, and if we can cut subsidies without hurting the farmers, I'm all in favor of it."

Kent Rosenstein changed the subject. "We have been working with Ted, Ralph and their people to coordinate our international marketing efforts for our food products. Our efforts look promising, especially with the war affecting food supplies in various countries. The war, however has cut off some of our traditional markets, and that is going to affect our exports. After the war is over, we should be able to get most of these markets back, especially since they were food importers before the war, and they're sure to encounter shortages due to the cut off of trade."

"We have already begun to send the message," added Ted Reynolds, "that once the war is over, the primary focus of our foreign aid will be changing from weapons to food and development aid. Some of the more autocratic leaders are not too happy about this, but they'll accept it. They don't really have a choice, especially since we've made progress in our discussions with other arms exporting nations about reducing the quantities of arms that they provide to other countries. I think most of them realize that the large numbers of arms that have been obtained by Third World countries since the 80s has contributed to the seriousness of our current situation."

"I think," commented the President, that people are finally realizing how disastrous all of the arms exports have been to us and how much they are now coming back to haunt us. Now, if we can get everyone to change the emphasis from military aid to humanitarian and development aid, we will have accomplished a giant step toward accomplishing a sustainable world peace after the war is over."

She then continued, "I think we have the basic things here that we need for our farm policy. Let's put this together so Ralph can announce it by the beginning of next week. Thank you. You've all done a great job putting this together in such a short time. I really appreciate it and I think the farmers, as well as the consumers will appreciate it too."

President Lehrer and her Chief of Staff Fred Valentine then left the meeting, stopping by the Oval Office to check on her messages before they headed over to the East Room, where the President would sign into law the Federal Aid to Education Act of 1998. Fred was pushing the President's wheelchair when he asked her how she was doing.

"I know one thing. I'll be really glad when they can finally take these damn casts off and I can walk normally again."

"How much longer do they think it will be?"

"Probably another three to six weeks. They did say that I should be able to have a walker cast next week."

"How are Marty and Sara doing?"