"If I had said, ’We’re going to war,’ or ’We’re sending weapons,’ that would have been illegal."

"So I changed my rhetoric."

"I proposed the Lease Bill. I told Congress and the American people that this was neither an act of war nor a gift."

"It’s like if my neighbor’s house was on fire, and I lent him my garden hose to put it out. When the fire’s out, he’ll give me the hose back."

"You see, the essence of the matter didn’t change at all. The weapons still got sent, and the Germans still got bombed."

"But by redefining the action, by changing the words used to describe it, I turned something that was originally illegal into something legal."

"That is how you control reality by controlling the discourse."

"Now, back to the present."

Roosevelt directed Leo’s gaze to the rejected document.

"Finch is objecting because, within the existing fiscal discourse, you’ve defined these projects as ’expenditures’."

"Expenditures mean a reduction in assets. They mean debt. They mean a bottomless pit."

"In this system, spending is a sin."

"But what if they aren’t expenditures?"

"What if they’re investments?"

"What if they’re quality assets capable of generating future returns?"

Leo froze for a moment.

"How can a cafeteria generate returns? How can free training generate returns?"

"That requires a little imagination, child," Roosevelt said with a smile. "You need to learn to speak with the tongue of Wall Street."

"Look at this glass of water. If you say it’s for quenching a thirsty person’s thirst, then it’s a consumable, a fiscal burden."

"But if you call it a ’necessary consumable for maintaining the normal function of a biological organism to ensure its continued generation of labor value,’ then this glass of water becomes a maintenance cost, a part of the means of production."

"Same thing, different name, and its nature changes."

"Giving money to the unemployed is feeding the lazy. But ’injecting liquidity into temporarily idle human capital to prevent skill depreciation and class decline, thereby ensuring the stability of the future tax base’? That’s risk hedging. That’s fiscal management."

"Do you see, Leo?"

"This is the power of language."

"Go, sit down. Use his language, enter his logic, and then dismantle it from within."

Leo understood. He took a deep breath.

He pulled out a chair and sat down across from Finch.

He picked up the draft proposal that Finch had thrown back at him.

"You’re right, Blake. We can’t be handing out welfare. It doesn’t align with fiscal discipline."

Leo opened the proposal to the first page and pointed to the first line of text.

"For example, this: the ’Skills Training Center for Unemployed Workers’."

Finch said stiffly, "That’s a classic welfare expenditure. The city government pays for teachers to teach laid-off workers how to use a computer or repair pipes. That money is spent and gone, with no direct fiscal return. You cannot issue bonds for this."

"No, Blake. You’re still looking at this with the eyes of an accountant, not an investor."

Roosevelt’s voice gave real-time guidance in Leo’s mind. Leo took a red pen from the desk and mercilessly crossed out the word "welfare."

"We’re changing the name."

Leo wrote another line of words beside it.

"Let’s call it the ’Regional Human Capital Infrastructure Upgrade Project’."

Finch paused, chewing on the words. "Human capital... infrastructure?"

"Correct," Leo explained. "The workers are this city’s capital, just like the machines in a factory. When a machine gets old, we need to repair and upgrade it. Right now, our workers’ skills are obsolete. By training them to master new skills, we are performing an upgrade and maintenance."

Leo stared at Finch.

"A worker who masters a new skill can find a higher-paying job. Higher pay means more consumption, and it means that for the next thirty years, they will pay more in personal income and property taxes to Pittsburgh."

"Therefore, this isn’t an expenditure. It’s an investment in our future tax base."

Finch frowned, tapping a few keys on his old calculator as if trying to compute the discount rate of this logic.

After a few seconds, he stopped.

"...In terms of macroeconomic theory, it makes sense," Finch had to admit. "Human capital can indeed be calculated as a long-term asset. As long as we use the future increase in tax revenue as the source of debt repayment, there are no legal loopholes."

"Excellent."

Leo turned to the second page.

"Next up, the ’Free Community Cafeteria for the Elderly’." 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"This is unequivocally charity," Finch said adamantly. "Handing out meal tickets to the poor has no potential for asset appreciation. You can’t possibly tell me that elderly people who’ve had a meal are going to pay more taxes, can you?"

"Superficial."

Leo once again brandished his red pen, blacking out that line of text.

"We are not building a cafeteria."

In the blank space, he wrote an extremely convoluted phrase.

"’Food Security and Community Disaster Resilience Guarantee Node’."

Finch’s jaw dropped. "What?"

"We are constructing emergency infrastructure," Leo redefined the cafeteria’s function without batting an eye. "Under normal circumstances, these nodes provide food to sustain the community’s low-income population."

"But during wartime, or in the event of natural disasters like floods or blizzards, they become shelters and supply distribution centers scattered throughout the city’s neighborhoods."

"This is a public safety asset, Blake. It’s like a fire hydrant. You can’t say a hydrant is a waste of money just because it doesn’t spray water on a normal day. This is for the city’s resilience."