NewsMax.com
Monday, Jan. 12, 2004

His lack of enthusiasm for the Bush economic package certainly did not endear him to Bush administration loyalists, who saw the nation’s chief economic officer as failing to use his high office to assure business and the capital markets that Bush policies were sound and working.

O’Neill ran into image problems quickly. When assuming the office of secretary of the treasury, he announced that he would hold on to more than $100 million U.S. worth of shares in the aluminum giant Alcoa, which he headed for 12 years. Critics charged this left him with a clear conflict of interest. He was eventually forced to sell the stock.

When O’Neill did use the substantial bully pulpit of this office, his themes were often obtuse:

"If you set aside Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the safety record of nuclear is really very good," O'Neill once told a London audience.

Famously, he slighted Brazil and set off a currency panic by suggesting that aid to the country would end up in Swiss bank accounts.

O’Neill watchers were dumbfounded as Mr. Secretary toured Africa with the rock star Bono -- to review foreign-aid needs. Congressman Mark Foley, R-Florida, chortled, "With all due respect to Mr. O'Neill, he was in Africa with Bono in a toga. When will we get an economic message?"

Early on in his watch, ONeill garnered a reputation for worrying about issues beyond his job description.

In March 2001, for instance, as markets plunged, O'Neill seemed fixed on environmental policy.

A memo O'Neill sent to President Bush recommended how to look good on Earth Day:

"Establish a predicate for creating the Bush Administration position on climate change. Establish a group to develop a multifaceted approach to global climate change."

Continuing: "Prepare a document, for broad public use, that spells out the scientific facts that we know for certain regarding greenhouse gas concentrations. ... This document should also include projections of greenhouse gas accumulations, associated changes in global climate and the assumptions that drive the changes, e.g., energy intensity of developing countries, the one hundred-year 'half-life' of greenhouse gases, etc. ...”

Then there was the Ken Lay gaff.

Once when President Bush was talking about Enron and his supposed friendship with its CEO, Kenneth Lay, O’Neill laid an unwelcome egg.

"I haven't talked to Ken Lay or seen him," Bush told his aides casually as they waited for news cameras to enter the Oval Office. Then O'Neill dropped a bombshell. From a couch on the periphery, O'Neill disclosed that Lay had telephoned him before Enron's bankruptcy. Not long afterwards, the White House felt compelled to disclose that Lay, a major Bush donor, had contacted the cabinet officer.

Shortly after being ousted, O'Neill was saying publicly that Bush's plan to end tax on dividends will do little for the economy.

O'Neill preached that some of the money from the president's $674 billion tax-cut plan would be better spent to shore up Social Security.

O'Neill added that a 6 percent unemployment rate is "not bad" because businesses are learning to do more with fewer workers and the nation has to account for the influx of immigrants into the work force.

Since returning to Pittsburgh, the former treasury secretary has been working with an alliance of insurers and hospitals trying to make the region's health care system more efficient.

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