Paul O'Neill (Secretary of the Treasury)

Paul Henry O'Neill (born December 4, 1935) served as the 72nd United States Secretary of the Treasury for part of President George W. Bush's first term. He was fired^[1] in December 2002 for his public disagreement with the administration and became a harsh critic. Prior to his term as Secretary of the Treasury, O'Neill was chairman and CEO of Pittsburgh-based industrial giant Alcoa and chairman of the RAND Corporation.

History

Early history

O'Neill was born in St. Louis, Missouri, although his "hometown" and current residence is Pittsburgh. He met his wife at Anchorage High School in Anchorage, Alaska, from which they both graduated in 1954. He lived on the military base there with his parents. He received a bachelor's degree in Economics from California State University, Fresno, a degree in economics from Claremont Graduate University in 1961, and a Master of Public Administration from Indiana University. O'Neill and his wife Nancy have four children, 12 grandchildren, and seven great grandchildren.

He began his public service as a computer systems analyst with the Veterans Administration, where he served from 1961 to 1966. He joined the United States Office of Management and Budget in 1967, and was deputy director of OMB from 1974 to 1977.

Private sector

After President Gerald Ford lost the 1976 election, O'Neill took an executive job at International Paper in New York City. He was vice president of the company from 1977 to 1985 and president from 1985 to 1987.

In 1988, he was approached by President George H. W. Bush to be Secretary of Defense. O'Neill declined, but recommended Dick Cheney for the position. Bush then pursued O'Neill to chair an advisory group on education that included Lamar Alexander, Bill Brock, and Richard Riley. Under O'Neill's leadership, the group recommended national standards and unified testing standards.

O'Neill was chairman and CEO of the Pittsburgh industrial giant Alcoa from 1987 to 1999, and retired as chairman at the end of 2000. His reign was extremely successful, as the company's revenues increased from $1.5 billion in 1987 to $23 billion in 2000 and O'Neill's personal fortune grew to $60 million.

In 1995, O'Neill was made chairman of the RAND Corporation.

Community service career

In December 1997, O'Neill together with Karen Wolk Feinstein, President of the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, founded the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative (PRHI).^[2] They assembled a wide-ranging coalition of healthcare interests to begin to address the problems of healthcare, as a region. PRHI adapted the principles of the Toyota Production System into the "Perfecting Patient Care" system.^[3] Mr. O'Neill became a leader locally and nationally in addressing issues of patient safety and quality in healthcare.^[4]

O'Neill was also pegged by Mayor Tom Murphy as a co-leader of Pittsburgh's Riverlife Task Force, along with the editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at the time, John G. Craig Jr.

In 2005, O'Neill entered closed-door meetings with the Pittsburgh Gambling Task Force to help them reach a "no-endorsement" stance on what casino to recommend. (News from June 1, 2006)

O'Neill is also a member of Carnegie Mellon's Heinz College's Dean's Advisory Council.^[5]

Since 2008 he has been a member of the Advisory Board of the W. Edwards Deming Center for Quality, Productivity, and Competitiveness at Columbia Business School. Within the center he was named co-chair of The Deming Cup initiative, an excellence award to recognize world leaders who have made outstanding contributions in the area of operational excellence and have fostered the culture of continuous improvement in an organization.

Bush Administration

O'Neill was appointed Secretary of the Treasury by George W. Bush. O'Neill was an outspoken member of the administration, often saying things to the press that went against the administration's party line, and doing unusual things like taking a tour of Africa with singer Bono.

A report commissioned in 2002 by O'Neill, while he was Treasury Secretary, suggested the United States faced future federal budget deficits of more than US$ 500 billion. The report also suggested that sharp tax increases, massive spending cuts, or both would be unavoidable if the United States were to meet benefit promises to its future generations. The study estimated that closing the budget gap would require the equivalent of an immediate and permanent 66 percent across-the-board income tax increase. The Bush administration left the findings out of the 2004 annual budget report published in February 2003.

O'Neill's private feuds with Bush's tax cut policies and his push to further investigate alleged al-Qaeda funding from some American-allied countries, as well as his objection to the invasion of Iraq in the name of the war on terror — that he considered as nothing but a simple excuse for a war decided long before by neoconservative elements of the first Bush Administration — led to him being fired^[1] in 2002 and replaced with John W. Snow.

Ron Suskind interviewed O'Neill extensively about his tenure in the Bush Administration. He was also given access to a large amount of documentation. In 2004 he produced the book The Price of Loyalty, detailing O'Neill's tenure in the Bush Administration.^[6] The book describes many of the conflicts that O'Neill had with the Bush administration. For example, O'Neill was a great arguer and discusser of ideas; however when he approached Mr Cheney and attempted to engage in dialog, the Vice President would simply nod his head, and thank him for his ideas. The book also details O'Neills criticisms of some of Bush's economic policies. Bush appears somewhat unquestioning and uncurious, and the war in Iraq was planned from the first National Security Council meeting, soon after the administration took office, even though Bush had promised not to engage in nation building during his campaign.^[7][8]

Comments and views

In a July 25, 2001 International Herald Tribune article, he shared a comment on the theory of an inevitable financial "contagion" in global financial markets and the theory that investors at the time would retreat from emerging markets because of their worries that the financial crises in Argentina and Turkey may spread to Brazil and elsewhere. Mr. O'Neill said that this view was a "fashion" and that "we need to retire that fashion like the hula hoop." "With a magnifying glass, you couldn't find a connection between Turkey and Argentina, except maybe in people's minds", and that in a well-managed global system, investors would not pull back from loans in emerging markets simply because of such isolated troubles.

In an October 16, 2007 Op Ed published in the New York Times, he wrote of the reluctance among politicians to address comprehensive reform in the U.S. health care system. In the opinion, he suggested, among other things, requiring doctors and hospitals to report medical errors within 24 hours, as well as moving malpractice suits out of the civil courts and into a new, independent body. Health care reform, he argues, cannot continue to progress in a piecemeal fashion. Instead, it must take all aspects of the problem—insurance coverage, medical costs, quality of care and information technology—into simultaneous consideration. In O'Neill's Book, The Price of Loyalty, by Ron Suskind, O'Neill relates discussions with Bush and Cheney regarding Social Security, which Bush wanted to Privatize. O'Neill says that he and Alan Greenspan had agreed to invest $3.6 Trillion of the Clinton $5.9 Trillion surplus into Social Security.That idea was subsequently rejected. [2] r

References