-Caveat Lector-
O'Neill, Sen. Byrd in Fiery Exchange
Thu Feb 7, 6:22 PM ET
By ALAN FRAM, Associated Press Writer
A budget hearing exploded into a battle over humble beginnings
between a lecturing senator and a treasury secretary whose eyes
flashed — and grew moist — with raw emotion.
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said later those weren't
tears in his eyes, but "fire."
During the Senate Budget Committee hearing
Thursday, an angry Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and
O'Neill engaged in a remarkably bitter exchange for nearly 15 minutes.
At several points, Byrd waved President Bush's new budget,
which used a picture of Gulliver tied down
by Lilliputians to criticize congressional constraints on decision-making by
federal agencies.
"I just want to remind you, Mr. Secretary,
that a lot of us were here before you came," said Byrd, 84.
"And with all due respect to you, you're not Alexander Hamilton,"
the nation's first treasury secretary.
O'Neill, 66, paused to gather himself at the witness table,
then answered in a voice quivering with indignation.
"I've dedicated my life to doing what I can to get rid of
rules that limit human potential," he said. "And I'm not going to stop."
Byrd repeatedly said that he, and not O'Neill, a former
chairman of Alcoa, had been elected by voters.
"They're not CEOs of multibillion-dollar corporations,"
Byrd said of the voters. "They can't just pick up the phone and call a
Cabinet secretary. In time of need, they come to us, the people come to us."
O'Neill, who grew up poor in St. Louis, Mo., snapped back:
"I started my life in a house without water or electricity.
So I don't cede to you the high moral ground of not knowing what life is
like in a ditch."
"Well, Mr. Secretary," Byrd responded, "I lived in a house
without electricity, too, no running water, no telephone, a little wooden
outhouse." He was raised by his aunt and uncle in West Virginia's coal country.
O'Neill appeared teary at several points.
On the subject of regulations tying down government, he
pointedly cited the unjustness of "rules that said, 'Coloreds cannot enter
here.'"
Although O'Neill did not mention it, a younger Byrd once
belonged to the Ku Klux Klan, which he later renounced.
The blunt and sometimes impolitic treasury secretary has
had other confrontations with members of Congress, although none as
passionate as Thursday's.
He once characterized a Republican economic stimulus
package as "show business," prompting one GOP congressman to call for
his resignation. Bush stood by him.
Byrd took umbrage at O'Neill's earlier complaints to a business
group, when he said some rules were "like the Lilliputians tying us
to the ground."
Byrd said he believed those remarks were aimed at a Senate
rule that bears his name. The Byrd rule limits items that can be put on
a tax bill.
O'Neill stood by his comments but said he was complaining
more broadly about rules that inhibit progress.
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