(Former Treasury Secretary) O'Neill says Bush's memoir misstates record on tax-cut talks

[sabra]

Source: The Hill

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said he directly told former President George W. Bush on several occasions that he didn't support the administration's tax cut proposals.

O'Neill's opposition to the tax cuts is no secret — he was fired in December 2002 for challenging the Bush White House on the tax-cut proposal.

But he argues that Bush misstates what happened during the tax-cut discussions in his recently released memoir, Decision Points.

"So for the president to say in his book that it got back to him that I didn't agree with a third round of tax cuts is not true," O'Neill said in an interview with Bloomberg Television's Margaret Brennan. "I said to him directly and personally on three different major occasions, 'This is why we shouldn't do it. These are my reasons.' "

Beginning in April 2002, in a meeting with top administration officials including Chief of Staff Andrew Card, senior adviser Karl Rove, Vice President Dick Cheney and Commerce Secretary Don Evans, O'Neill said they were telling Bush, " 'Well, you need to mount an effort for another round of tax cuts.' "

"I said, clearly, 'This is not a good idea for these reasons. We've just had 9/11. We could have another one of those. There's a conversation about going to Iraq. God only knows how much that could cost,' " O'Neill said in the interview.

...

Since his departure eight years ago, O'Neill has stood by his argument, saying that the money could've been better spent on entitlement programs and the growing deficit.

He said Cheney's statement that "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter" occurred during one of those tax-cut meetings.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/domestic-taxes/132155-oneill-says-bush-account-inaccurate-of-tax-cut-talks

[RandomThoughts]

1. They have the effect of moving money from tax payers

To people with assets.

[w4rma]

4. Simply and accurately said. (nt)

[closeupready]

2. When someone like Cheney who refuses to divest his Halliburton holdings

in the run-up to the Iraq War claims that deficits don't matter, I'm betting the opposite of what he says.

[JDPriestly]

3. Be sure to read the book written on O'Neill's time in the Bush administration

called The Price of Loyalty. The extent of the idiocy in the Bush administration is mind-boggling.

[Roland99]

6. First full book I read after I began my personal evolution from a conservative to a progressive.

[NewJeffCT]

5. and, he was written off in the media

as a disgruntled former employee who got fired. Yet, nobody has been able to disprove the main things he has said.

[tanyev]

7. He's the Rewriter.