I.O.U.S.A - Addison Wiggin [41]
matter, ” said O ’ Neill. “ I think it is true on a temporary basis there was no
that a nation can have a defi cit and have a good reason for political backlash
having a defi cit. I think with the Second World War there was from running
these large and
no way we could avoid having a defi cit, but when we came persistent defi cits.
out of the Second World War we started running budget sur-The government
pluses again and did that through the 1950s and into 1960.
and the American
It ’ s interesting, it ’ s really only been in the past forty years or so people had become that we ’ ve accepted the notion that it ’ s a bipartisan thing that desensitized to the
numbers.
we don ’ t have to have fi scal discipline. ”
This heated conversation over further tax cuts carried on until the end of 2002, until O ’ Neill received a phone call from the vice president telling him that the president had decided to make some changes — and he was one of them. He requested that O ’ Neill come and meet with the president and then issue a release saying that he had decided to go back to the private sector.
“ You know, for me to say that I ’ ve decided to leave the Treasury is a lie, ” O ’ Neill told us candidly, “ and I ’ m not into doing lies and so that was it. I went back to my offi ce, packed up my briefcase and went down to the parking space that ’ s reserved for the secretary of the Treasury, got in my car, and drove back to Pittsburgh.
“ It was the fi rst in my life . . . I ’ ve ever been fi red before.
I ’ d only been promoted to ever higher levels of responsibility, c05.indd 80
8/26/08 9:00:52 PM
Chapter 5 The Leadership Defi cit 81
but it was okay with me. I would have really been uncomfort- Medicare:
able arguing for policies I didn ’ t believe in. ”
Initiated in 2006,
O ’ Neill believes the path the United States is head- this federal drug ing down — burdening our children with a massive national program subsidizes the costs of
debt and soaring defi cits — is unsustainable, to say the least. prescription drugs Americans need to understand what is happening in this for Americans country, he told us, because the government doesn ’ t have any who are Medicare money “ that it doesn ’ t fi rst take from its taxpayers. ”
benefi ciaries. Since
its inception, the
“ A year ago [in 2006] there was this signing ceremony in program spending the Rose Garden for the new prescription drug entitlement and is running around it ’ s going to cost us trillions of dollars, ” O ’ Neill recalled. “ This $ 40 billion per year event was not unlike any of the others in the Rose Garden on (2008 is projected a nice sunny day, with the president sitting at the signing table to be $ 36 billion) and the total
with a bunch of grinning legislators behind him taking credit unfunded liability for this ‘ great gift ’ they ’ re giving the American people. There for this program was no mention of the fact that this in effect was a new tax is greater than on the American people, and we didn ’ t know how we were the entire Social going to pay for it. It was only grinning presidents and legisla- Security trust fund.
tors taking the credit for a gift, which strikes me as a ridiculous continuing characteristic of how we do political business in our country.
“ When we, the Bush 43 adminis-
We only need to look at the fate
tration, took over, we had something of other countries who ’ ve lived over $ 5 trillion, maybe $ 5.6 trillion beyond their means for a long time you inevitably get into trouble.
worth of national debt. Today, the When you get extended to the number ’ s $ 8.8 trillion. That ’ s not an point that you can ’ t service your innocent change, it is a monumen-debt, you ’ re fi nished.
tal change in the debt service that we — PAUL O ’ NEILL
have to do in addition to and on top
of all of the other things that our country needs to do. We only need to look at the fate of other countries who ’ ve lived beyond their means for a long time before you inevitably get into trouble. When you get extended