Wanted: Public reassurance on Wall Street cure

[maddezmom]

Wanted: Public reassurance on Wall Street cure
By MARIANNE MEANS
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

WASHINGTON -- In the early Bush administration years, still riding high with a complacent Republican Congress and a demoralized Democratic opposition, then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill warned Vice President Dick Cheney that uncontrolled spending was producing dangerously high federal deficits, wiping out the huge surplus inherited from President Clinton.

O'Neill later disclosed that Cheney had cut him off, saying coldly that "deficits don't matter." The quote seemed odd for a fiscal conservative at the time, but now looks astoundingly stupid.

This is, of course, similar to that other bone-headed Cheney argument that invading Iraq was wonderful because the country had links to the terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks and harbored vast weapons of mass destruction.

None of that proved to be true. Mercifully, Cheney, long thought to be the real power behind the Bush throne, is nowhere to be seen in the current financial meltdown. We do hope Cheney is now on an around-the-world cruise with little communication, basking in the sunlight of the political wreckage he has left behind. We also hope that he's forgotten that silly legal argument that he's really a part of the congressional branch of government, rather than the White House, a ploy to help him evade federal requirements that his records be made public.

more:http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/380252_meansonline24.html

[bemildred]

1. It seems clear now, Cheney is astoundingly stupid.

Name one single thing he was behind that came out right. One can only hope that he gets to reap the rewards of his treason before his circulatory system makes it moot.