Mick Wright.net

Back when former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill was a threat to the Bush campaign, he was a media darling. The Ron Suskind book about him, The Price of Loyalty, became a best-seller. But now with Bush reelected, O’Neill has been sidelined.

It shouldn’t be that way. After all, the main conflict presented by O’Neill in the book, and his main objective in accepting the President’s nomination, centered on his ideas for fixing Social Security. Now that Social Security is the topic of the hour, where is O’Neill?

I quote from my review of the book last May:

In an ideal world, O’Neill would instead be remembered for his bold Social Security plan, the one that eventually put him at odds with President Bush.

Using the expected budget surplus, O’Neill and Greenspan came up with a plan to fix Social Security for older citizens and offer fully-privatized accounts to every worker younger than 37 (140). Under the plan, which was also championed by Bob Kerrey (recently of 9-11 commission fame), Senator McCain, and the late Patrick Moynihan, a person vested in a private Social Security account at 18 would have $1 million in assets by age 65 (152-153). But even without the surplus materializing, there is plenty that could have been done to help make the program solvent, and private.

This plan was to be O’Neill’s lasting gift to the country. Suskind writes, “O’Neill, who had come to Washington dreaming of reforming Social Security left feeling confused and deflated.” (153)

O’Neill was pissed off primarily because he thought nobody wanted to listen to his ideas for Social Security, both in the media and the administration.

We’re listening now, but the O’Neill media storm has slowed to a trickle.

Thankfully, Neil Cavuto is on the ball. O’Neill appeared on his program last Wednesday. Here’s the relevant part of their exchange:

CAVUTO: OK. Well, there’s so much I want to get into with you, Mr. Secretary, but let’s first talk about your plan for Social Security. You think we’re chasing the wrong ghost here. What do you mean?

O’NEILL: I do. I think there’s an opportunity now to do something really important, and it’s related to this question. What meaning should we, the American society, give to the notion of financial security for people over 65? I think that’s the right question.

And my answer is, we ought to create a system so that when people get to be 65 years old, they have a substantial amount of money, and the numbers I put together would suggest $1 million.

And the way to do that is on the day that a child is born, we, the American people, put $2,000 into an account in their name. And every year for the next 18 years, we put in another $2,000, and with the six percent interest rate, when they get to be 18, that account would have $65,000. And if left to accumulate to retirement at 65, it would be worth over $1 million.

CAVUTO: And they can’t touch that money?

O’NEILL: They can’t touch that money.

CAVUTO: What happens to Social Security in the meantime?

O’NEILL: Well, I want to get to Social Security in a minute. First, I think we, as a society, should define our objective, and for me, the objective should be people have real financial security when they get to be 65, without regard to what they do in their life.

If they’re born in America, there should be meaning when you get to be 65 of real financial security, which means enough money to pay for your health and medical care needs and your housing and your food and your transportation and everything else. And the only way to really do that is to save and save early…

CAVUTO: A lot of people haven’t.

O’NEILL: Because babies don’t have earning capacity, I would say that those of us who are already working ought to create real savings. Instead of the tax and spend system that we have now…

CAVUTO: And we rob that. We rob that piggy bank.

O’NEILL: There’s nothing in the piggy bank, really. And so, this is a way to take care of both Social Security and Medicare (search), which is a much bigger problem.

CAVUTO: Right, for those babies eventually become retirees. But protecting, let’s say, the 65 and under crowd right now that’s very leery of what the president is proposing.

O’NEILL: OK. Well, see, what I would do is, first of all, I would establish where we’re going. You know, you have to be a little long-headed to do this. You need to be thinking kind of in a Chinese mode about the future.

So, what are we going to see? What are we going to leave as an inheritance for our children and their children? So we get that established.

And then we have remaining the issue of how do we take care of the financial requirements? How do we meet our obligations under the current system?

CAVUTO: How do you do that?

O’NEILL: I think there are bunch of different things that you could do.

CAVUTO: Radical, raise the retirement age, yes or no?

O’NEILL: Yes, it’s a little bit of tinkering.

CAVUTO: All right. A little tinker. Now what about fat cats like yourself? Get no Social Security? Means tested?

O’NEILL: Personally, I don’t care about that, but I think a lot of people would care about that. Personally, it’s a point of indifference to me.

CAVUTO: Raising the income threshold above $90,000.

O’NEILL: I think that’s all right.

CAVUTO: That’s OK. How about raising the FICA tax, period?

O’NEILL: Well, eventually, what I’d like to do in my system is get rid of the FICA tax. If you think about it right now, the 12.4 percent Social Security contribution is a tax on labor. You don’t pay it on capital equipment; you pay it on labor.

So that if we could design a system so that we provided financial security to the retired population through the savings process, when that system kicked in, the 12.4 percent tax on labor could go away. And labor would be in a much better position than it is today, as a factor of production.

CAVUTO: But if we do nothing for Social Security, the administration has argued that it will eventually go broke.

O’NEILL: That’s true. That’s true. And it’s going to happen faster than Medicare and if not…

CAVUTO: The Democrats say it’s fine. The Democrats say it’s fine.

O’NEILL: That’s not true. It’s simply not true.

CAVUTO: OK. So on this, you agree with the president?

O’NEILL: We need to fix these systems, but nobody has talked about what we need to do about health and medical care in this country. I have, but it’s hard to get any air time for this subject.

Indeed.

But at least Greenspan is having some success.

I was remarkably accurate, no?

More later…

First… a big thanks to the Shelby County Republican Party for the opportunity of a lifetime. Thank you all very much.

To anyone who is jealous of me, guess what — I was honored with the ticket because I was a Bush volunteer. I worked with the local campaign maybe three or four times, with very minimal effort on my part. Most of the other people on stage I recognized as fellow volunteers. There aren’t many, and even fewer of them are young people. There’s plenty opportunity to get involved. I also wasn’t a big donor this election cycle, but I did donate to the campaign, and online, putting me in a select 2% group. So there’s our lesson for today — if you volunteer and donate, even a little bit, you’ll stand out. And sometimes it pays off, but that’s not why you should do it.

Ok, so you want details, right? Of course you do. You’re reading a blog.

I woke up between 5 and 6am, got ready and drove downtown. I heard on the radio that everything was blocked off, traffic was heavy, etc, etc. I get downtown a little before 7 and I’m able to drive within a block of the entrance to the Cannon Center, no problem. There are lots of police officers on the street, but they aren’t blocking me. I find a parking lot on Commerce St. Apparently, that’s where all the protesters were gathering, because everybody who pulled in around the same time had Kerry stickers and hemp bracelets. I’m kidding about the hemp bracelets.

Parking – $5
A chance to see the leader of the free world – Priceless

And “free” is the word to stress, there. There’s alot more free world now than there was four years ago.

Guess who was the first person I spoke to this morning. If you answered George W. Bush, you’re incorrect. Actually, it was Andy Wise. I saw him checking in at the media entrance and stopped to offer my support. Shortly afterward, I saw Mr. Phillips (you know, the blogger/reporter Andy sent the e-mail to, right? Ok, just so you’re still with me).

After that, I found the end of the line, bending around main street and down the next block. Longer than I expected at that early hour. Traffic kept whizzing by us as we shuffled toward the entrance. To repeat, there was no problem getting around downtown this morning.

Guess who I spoke to next. If you answered George W. Bush, you’re incorrect. It was a guy from my church who is also on the church bowling league. He said he would have been on stage with me, but he could’t pass the secret service check, because he recently purchased a handgun. Go figure — I guess that’s what you get for exercizing your 2nd amendment right these days.

Guess who I spoke to next. I don’t care who you guessed, you’re wrong. It was a former co-worker from my last place of employment. She still works there. Business is good. She’s one of only three Republicans in the office, she says.

Sounds about right, although I thought my former boss had come around. Never underestimate the power of the dark side, or suffer Bush 41’s fate you will.

I was inside and past the security check within the hour. After that, all the red ticket holders waited in a holding room for about an hour. Then we were seated for another hour before it started. What happened to the warm-up act? No sign of Noah McCullough. Nobody said anything. Maybe he got sick, or was grounded. Who knows.

As we sat there, agents kept stepping in and out from behind the stage, so you eventually became immune to the hope that at some point it might be GWB. But then they announced, “ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.” It wasn’t even a second and there he was, like he had been there, just out of sight, all along, just one step away. He looked great. He looked like he always looks, only this time he was just a few feet away.

He’s a real person. And he’s standing right there. It’s odd, and yet not.

I can’t describe it, but I had the same sensation when I saw the Statue of Liberty a few years ago — the feeling that you are in a particular place, not just somewhere, and that you could be located on a map from anywhere in the world. And that’s the Statue. Not a statue, but the statue. There’s only one, and there’s only ever been one. And you’re looking at it. And it looks like everything you always thought, and yet smaller, but bigger at the same time. The word is vertigo, I guess. I had the same feeling this morning.

As for the speech, I can’t tell you much. If you see any of the video, watch the puzzled faces of the people sitting with me on stage. We had NO CLUE what anybody was saying. There were no speakers pointed at us, so we heard nothing but muffled reverberations. Every now and then you could pick out something, but not much. So you clap when the audience claps, unless you hear something, and then you clap genuinely. But you can pretty much guess what he’s saying. It wasn’t anything new, I don’t think.

One interesting fact — the official transcript gets several things wrong, and even leaves out parts. For instance, the third speaker said her husband died when he was 49. A few minutes later, the President asks her how old he was when he died (and from his inflection, it seems he wasn’t listening the first time around — I don’t blame him, ok, but I’m just saying…) and she has to repeat herself. In the transcript, you only have him asking her, but you don’t have any record of the first part of her comments. Odd. And there are lots of minor problems, too, and not flattering to the President. “Youngsters” becomes “youngster,” singular, and parts are left out of this sentence:

What Beverly is saying is, is that she was too young for the survivor benefits and therefore the money that he put into the system — “he” being the husband — there was nothing there.

Before “there was nothing there,” the President made a “poof” sound with the microphone.

For now, you can view the local news video here, but there’s no telling how long they’ll keep it linked. I’d like to give you a better link, but the file doesn’t appear to be downloadable.

Near the beginning of his speech, Bush made a comment about the separation of church and state, but I couldn’t hear exactly what it was. I knew he said “sikh,” but that’s about it. That’s one line I knew I would be blogging about later, and I wish to quote it here:

I want to thank a lot of the other friends of mine in the clergy who are here. You know, when we talk about the role of religion in society, it’s always important to emphasize that one of the things makes us great is that we separate the church and the state, that you’re equally American if you choose to worship or not worship. You’re equally American if you’re a Christian, Jew, Muslim or Sikh, whatever you choose to do. But one of the things I think is important is to include faith-based programs in the healing of hearts so that America can be a hopeful place. I do not fear the influence of faith in our society. I welcome faith. (Applause.)

And over the next four years, we’ll continue to work with the generals and colonels and sergeants and privates in the army of compassion, to help change our country one heart and one soul at a time. If you want to serve America, feed the hungry, find shelter for the homeless. If you want to do something patriotic, mentor a child and teach him or her how to read. If you want to make America a better place, put your arm around somebody hurt – who hurts and says, I love you, brother; or, I love you, sister, and I’m here to help you. No, America’s great strength is the hearts and soul of our citizens. And we must continue to rally that great strength to make America a better place. (Applause.)

In other words, if you volunteer and donate, you’ll stand out. The opportunities are behind almost every door. The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.

I’m preaching to myself, too, ok?

While I can’t really tell you what he said, I am qualified to report that the jacket bulge is still there. If it is some kind of medical or technical device, it isn’t very thick, because anytime he arches his back, it disappears. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just a seam in the jacket, or in his shirt. Isn’t it great how the media made a big deal about it during the debates but nothing was said about the Kerry pen sneak, and nobody has since followed up on the jacket bulge?

Is that a bulge in your jacket, Mr. President, or am I just happy to see you? Perhaps both?

To all you in the media who are so upset about the people who got to sit on stage, guess what. After the speech, Bush waved at us, then went down and shook hands with the people on the front row, then came back up and waved at us briefly, and left. So much for the perks of being hand-picked. We were props, nothing more. And we couldn’t even hear the speech!

Afterward, I walked up to Sheriff Luttrell and shook hands with him.

Then I walked outside and guess who was standing right there talking to about 10 random people. It was Harold Ford, Jr.

He said his plan for social security was to lower the retirement age for the older generation and raise it for the younger generation. I kid you not.

Hey, that’s something I can really get behind. Let’s support a corrupt system by making it even more unfair to my generation!

Harold’s fix for social security: age discrimination.

The nerve!

But at least he was there. At least he was approachable and friendly. I shook his hand and thanked him for being there, and asked him to work with the President.

And now at least he can’t honestly repeat what he said earlier this morning:

”I have not run into one person in my district who has expressed … enthusiastic support for what [President Bush] wants,” said Rep. Harold Ford Jr., the Democrat who represents much of Memphis. ”The support that may be there is very soft.”

Maybe you need to get out more, buddy.

***

Note to self: “Harry Summer, an elder for the Germantown Church of Christ, was one of seven panelists who spoke directly with President Bush during his March 11 visit to Memphis.”