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I had the pleasure of meeting with Mary Ellen Withrow, the 40th
Treasurer of the United States at Molloy College last December.
She started her career in politics by running for school
board in 1969. She
later served as Marion County Treasurer and then Ohio State
Treasurer from 1982 to 1994 when she was tapped by President
Clinton to be the US Treasurer.
While serving as Ohio State Treasurer she earned nationwide
recognition for her innovative programs, management efficiencies
and record earnings for Ohio.
In addition to other numerous awards she was named Most
Valuable State Public Official in 1990.
The following interview is an excerpt of our conversation.
ADAMS:
How did you begin your career in public service?
WITHROW:
I started out running for school board.
Then I moved up through the state.
I’ve run in eight elections.
I am the first one to have held all the treasurer positions
from local to state to federal.
I think all the campaigns made me a little different from a
lot of people I meet in Washington. Many people at the Treasury have been appointed to their
position. I was appointed by President Clinton. Because I have run
for office, I know what it means to be a servant to the people. It is the people we have to answer to in government.
I think when people have been appointed they don’t always
remember how important it is to listen to the people.
ADAMS:
What have you learned as a manager coming through the ranks
from the state to the federal that could be applied to other
businesses?
WITHROW:
I manage two bureaus. The secretary runs the treasury. The
mint is a huge operation. It’s like a fortune 500 company. The
bureau of engraving and printing is a huge operation as well. We
also produce about 75% of the postage stamps at the bureau too. I
think I’ve learned so much. The most important thing I have
learned is that you can’t tell the American people what to do. I
mean if they like something they’ll use it, if they don’t like
it they won’t use it. We went through so much with the decision
on the dollar bill and the dollar coin, new state quarters and
changing the currency the way it looks. In that last legislation
in 1997 when they passed the bill toward the new dollar coin, they
said that we would do away with the dollar bill and there was such
an uprising. Of course, congress has to answer to their
constituents. If it had passed, I think people would have been
very upset and who knows what direction it would have gone. The
people will us what they trust and what is convenient. I travel
all over the country and I listen to a lot of comments from
everywhere. I think that’s one of my better qualities is my
listening ability…and I feel that you have to be very sensitive
to what people say to you about what you’re doing.
You
see I’m in a very difficult position. If you stop and think, my
two bureaus are in competition with one another for the dollar. I
have the mint that is wanting
the dollar coin to be a success and I have the bureau of engraving
and printing that does not want the dollar coin to be a success,
and because it would mean jobs.
The public will use what they want to use. They make the
decision on what’s going to work here, what is convenient.
ADAMS:
So do you have to predict how much money we’re going to
need in circulation at any given time?
WITHROW:
I don’t do that. The Federal Reserve does that. They come
to us and they place their order. And it has ranged for the
currency between 9.2 and 9.6 billion notes a year. Except for last
year, for Y2K, it was 11.3 billion notes. And then in the coins
we’re producing this year more than ever in history. The highest
it had been prior was 22 billion and this year it’s going to
range between 27 and 28 billion. Enormous amount of money being
ordered out there by the banks and so the Federal Reserve makes
that decision. And if they have too much, for instance in the year
of Y2K last year, everything went very smoothly and so there is
money left over and we produced mostly hundreds and fifties for
Y2K. And the fact that, you know, is this enough, is this not
enough, they went through all these formulas of what they thought
would happen and we must provide the money for the country. I mean
you should not ever go into a store and a store not have money to
give change and so we thought that maybe 11.3 billion would be too
much and it was. So this year the order is just a little over 8
billion because there’s 542 billion in circulation. It stayed
pretty constant. It went up to 609 billion over the Y2K period and
then the rest of this year it’s just kind of been at 542/540
billion in circulation. There’s 2/3 of it outside of the United
States.
ADAMS:
Really? 2/3 of it outside the United States?
WITHROW:
Yes. And that’s very good for us because the Federal
Reserve invests the amount of money that’s outside of the United
States in treasury bills and notes and that interest is paid into
treasury and it amounts to an enormous amount of money for the
United States. And so the fact that other people trust our money
more than their own is very good thing for us. So we are the world
currency.
ADAMS:
What about pennies, do we still need them?
WITHROW:
They cost less than a penny to make. If you didn’t have
pennies you would be rounding up and not rounding down. It would
affect the economy and even though people don’t have a whole lot
of respect for pennies they still serve a purpose.
ADAMS:
Has coin collecting become more popular with all of the new
editions?
WITHROW:
Yes, I think so. I think there’s been something wonderful
happening. I have been trying to teach children to save every
since I’ve been in this position. I try to visit a school
wherever I go and talk to young people about saving money because
we’re not saving nearly enough. It was only 3% of our disposable
income in 1993. Today its 7% of our disposable income. We are
going to be living, maybe retired longer than we worked. . And so
it’s so important to our country that people save money because
you know first of all, we don’t have to have as many foreign
investors if we saved our money. And the fact that it helps trade
and it keeps interest rates down because if there’s not enough
money out there the interest rate goes up for our loans, then
people have to borrow money. So all of this is important to our
country. So what the quarter did is teaching young people to save
money. And we didn’t think about it in that term. We knew
they’d collect it, but it’s also teaching them to save. And I
said, ‘Isn’t that wonderful, it’s an added bonus.’
ADAMS:
So it’s not just children that don’t know how to save.
It’s the grownups that don’t know how to save and what can we
do to encourage savings in this country?
WITHROW:
I’ll tell you we need to. We have been working with the
Federal Government. We had different conferences that came out of
the White House, we have this conference going on today. I think
people have to want to before they are going to do it. But the
reason I talk to children is it’s easier to start with them and
train them young. It becomes like a game to see how much this has
grown and how much you can possibly do with it.
So all of that is so important to get people in the habit.
And how can you do it, I don’t know, we’ve tried all different
sorts of things to do it. There’s so many ways to save out there
now. Today it’s kind of complicated, there’s a lot of things
there and it’s hard to decide what’s the best.
They had an interesting question about savings bonds in
here (Molloy Conference). Of course I market the savings bonds.
I’m always saying that its fine to be in the stock market, but
on the other side of that coin, in your portfolio you should also
have something that’s very safe and secure, something with the
full faith and credit of the United States Government and this
I-Bond has just taken off like you wouldn’t believe. We had our
big kick off yesterday (December 7, 2000) for savings bonds. It
was going down and its leveled and now its going back up with the
amount of people purchasing savings bonds.
ADAMS:
You said the savings in this country is 3%?
WITHROW:
It was 3% in ’93 and now it’s seven.
ADAMS:
And what should it be?
WITHROW:
Well, we’re the lowest of any of the major countries of
the world. I’m trying to think what some of the other countries
were, Japan and Great Britain. They’re all way above us. You
want it higher than what we have it, I know that. It’s
interesting I’ve been very involved in these savings bond drives
in the treasury and you have a very sophisticated group of people
in the treasury in investing.
People think they are going to live forever and they
don’t need anything and they think other things are more
sophisticated. But I think you need a balance in your investments.
ADAMS:
What can we do about women, women are dreadfully under
funded for their retirement?
WITHROW:
I know, women are more concerned about saving then men are.
Have you ever noticed that? I’ve always been amazed because
women realize that they are probably going to live longer than
their husbands, if they have husbands and they just want that
protection because they feel vulnerable. And I think it’s
wonderful, we’re having this paycheck conference here. These all
over the country are what are needed, because I feel women can ask
questions here that they might not have a chance to ask anywhere
else.
ADAMS:
Even though they are very conservative they don’t have
necessarily the resources to be able to save the money.
What can they do?
WITHROW:
But I don’t care if you have money, if you’re in the
habit of saving money. This is what I tell the children, I say,
‘you all have access to money, whether it’s an allowance or
you have a job, I mean little children have access to money. If
you can just save just a little bit, you don’t have to save
enormous amounts. But that gets you in the habit of saving and
then you’ll get into teens and it will become second nature for
you and all of a sudden you’ll realize how easy it is to do.’ So women that do
not have much money, if they can just put a little bit aside, and
I know sometimes that’s difficult. But think of it in terms of a
cup of coffee, you know a latte or something that they get at the
bus stop every morning or wherever. I see people operating where
they could save so much money if they didn’t do certain things,
I observe this. And it’s just lack of thinking seriously about
saving money. You have to think seriously about it and try to do
it.
If
you’re working somewhere where you have payroll deduction that
it’s so important because you never have it. All of a sudden
it’s in this account that you can’t get to very easily. And I
think those things the places and the jobs where you have those
opportunities you should really take advantage of it.
ADAMS:
Now the treasury does that through US Savings Bonds and
there’s the T Bill, you can do it with the T-bills as well?
WITHROW:
Well, we have our Treasury Savings Program. The money that
is taken out of our paycheck, you can do it for savings bonds. I
can’t buy savings bonds because of my position. The Secretary
and I are the only two people in the country that can’t buy
savings bonds under the social security number, but everyone else
can. And so I’m very involved in the treasury program for
savings bonds and I had bought savings bonds when I was state
treasurer and then prior to that too.
ADAMS:
What about the national debt, do you think that’s a
problem?
WITHROW:
Well, we’re paying it down. We’re buying back debt from
the treasury and tremendous amounts of money that it’s being
reduced by and I think that it was a problem. I think we’re
addressing it and I think if whoever is going to be president. I
hope they continue to operate in a manner that will cause us to
keep paying down the debt.
ADAMS:
I am working on a project to get more women on corporate
boards. Do you think it’s important to put more women in
decision-making positions in corporations?
WITHROW:
Absolutely
ADAMS:
What impact do you think that has on corporations?
WITHROW:
Well it’s the same impact it had when women started
getting into congress and the senate. Men do not think about what
women need or want. Women only know that. You have to have that
input in order to run a company because who’s buying it out
there. Women are buying the products in most of the cases. Most of
the men they might be more involved in business, but you’ve got
women out there spending the money. It’s so necessary that they
think they know how we’re thinking about whether we like this or
we like that for their products.
ADAMS:
So it’s just as important to them as it is to us to have
the representation on the boards.
WITHROW:
Absolutely, I don’t see how they can exist!
ADAMS:
So what do you like best about what you do in your job?
WITHROW:
Oh God, I love my job. That’s what’s so hard on me. I
love going out and marketing what I do. I try to bring people into
my world and give them some idea of what I do because most people
don’t know what I do. And I love talking to people, giving
speeches. I love the travel; I love being all over the United
States, all over the world really. It is the perfect job. And I
love it more today then I did a year ago. It just keeps getting
better. And we’re doing so many wonderful things that I like to
get the word out there. I’m so thrilled about savings bonds and
of course I was thrilled when we were going to change the currency
and the coins too.
ADAMS:
And what’s the best thing about being in government
service?
WITHROW:
Well, the reason I got in government service was because I
wanted to help people and it’s still the same thing. People want
to know how to do something with a government agency, they don’t
know where to turn and we just want to make it as easy for them as
possible. That’s always been my philosophy and I have made so
many changes to make things better with people starting with when
I was county treasurer. There were 20 places where they could pay
their taxes instead of one. Then when I became state treasurer I
started all these programs the Withrow plan for linked deposits
where they could borrow money for 3% for small business, 3% less
than normal and women’s businesses being one of the biggest
participants in that. And I started a program called Star Ohio
where we invested local money; I have people telling me everyday
what that has meant to their school or their university or their
library. And you can do so much good, you’ve got to work
together. But you have to learn how to get along to get these
things accomplished you can’t just do it by yourself. So you
have to have that ability. That’s how I met Bill Clinton. He
implemented my program, the Withrow plan for linked deposits in
Arkansas. It was in January of ’92 and he had some questions
about the linked deposits program and that’s the first time I
met him.
ADAMS:
That’s great, look where it got you. But also to create a
program that’s duplicatable there’s a lot of gratification in
that.
WITHROW:
Yeah, there was a lot for me. 26 states copied the program
in their own ways. And in fact both of these programs that I
mentioned are still in operation in Ohio. And the legislature
keeps figuring out other ways to do the same thing with other
things. That philosophy was implanted and it’s still working.
And that to me was a great satisfaction and I don’t know if I
could have gotten that in the private sector. Who knows what I
could have done in the private sector, but it’s that desire, I
don’t know it’s the thrill of government. I’ve always been
in awe of our government because the more you know about it and
the higher you go, the more you realize how brilliant the people
were that created it. You read about Ben Franklin and everyone and
the things that they came up with that are still so good today.
It’s been pointed out in this election in the discussion of the
Electoral College, how if you did away with the Electoral College
the large states would run the country and that isn’t the way it
should be.
I’ve
read all those books, and most of them when I was in Washington,
about two senators and all the arguing that went on about that
when they were trying to decide that. They were just so brilliant
in what they did. And I just love the history. I didn’t used to
like history the way I do today, but it’s been a wonderful
history lesson to be in this job. Everything I do is about history
and so we change a coin you have to back through the history of
that coin and all of that is just part of your daily work and you
just realize that we’ve had all sorts of things in our history.
And you can never say we never had this. We never had a three-cent
coin because we did. We’ve had everything you can imagine.
ADAMS:
Did you ever aspire to be Treasurer of the United States?
WITHROW:
Oh, no! It’s
a wonderful honor to be able to serve at this level, but I never
expected it. That’s what I tell the school children. I didn’t think when I ran for school board that I would be
in Washington some day. But
when I got the nomination I had to be investigated by the FBI. One of the people they talked to was my sixth grade teacher.
Now when I was in sixth grade I had no idea that someday I
would be asked to be Treasurer of the United States.
We never know what we are going to be doing in our lives,
but everything we do matters.
Editors Note:
Kathy Adams, CPA is President of Inner Options, Inc.
Her email is Kathy@inneroptions.com
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