Ed Wood "The Right Stuff" Published March 13, 2002

Byrd droppings

There was high drama the other week in what they like to call "the greatest deliberative body in the history of the world," the United States Senate.

The event was a confrontation between Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O'Neill, former CEO of the Aluminum Corp. of America (ALCOA), and Sen. Robert Byrd, D-WV, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. The senator had summoned O'Neill to appear before his committee to account for something or the other, but the inquisition quickly degenerated into Byrd's attacking Secretary O'Neill for having made a success of himself.

Byrd: I haven't walked in any corporate boardrooms. I haven't had to turn any millions of dollars into trust accounts. I wish I had those millions of dollars.

O'Neill: 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.

Byrd: Well, Mr. Secretary, I lived in a house without electricity, too. No running water, no telephone, a little wooden outhouse.

Truly, both these giants of trade and politics have accomplished much in their lifetimes. But there is just one difference: Secretary O'Neill started at the bottom and rose through the ranks of the corporate world by creating the jobs and, thus, the taxable profits that financed Sen. Byrd's political success. Sen. Byrd gained his position of distinction by being re-elected many-too-many times as a result of the political pork he has funneled into his home state of West Virginia.

And lest his constituents forget just which side their bread is buttered on, Sen. Byrd offers a few reminders in the naming of the Robert C. Byrd Hwy. (formerly known as the West Virginia Turnpike), the Robert C. Byrd Locks and Dam, the Robert C. Byrd Institute, the Robert C. Byrd Lifelong Learning Center, the Robert C. Byrd Honors Scholarship Program, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, the Robert C. Byrd Institute for Advanced Flexible Manufacturing, the Robert C. Byrd Federal Courthouse, the Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center, the Robert C. Byrd Academic and Technology Center, the Robert C. Byrd United Technical Center, the Robert C. Byrd Federal Building, Robert C. Byrd Dr., the Robert C. Byrd Hilltop Office Complex, the Robert C. Byrd Library, the Robert C. Byrd Learning Resource Center, the Robert C. Byrd Rural Health Center, and so on and so on.

Here, in this one confrontation, we find the classic example of a producer of wealth, in the person of Secretary O'Neill, being insulted by a confiscator of wealth, the honorable senior senator from the state of West Virginia. By virtue of his pork-barrel-financed political longevity, Sen. Byrd now occupies a position of arrogance from which he can, with impunity, publicly castigate a man whose briefcase he is not worthy to carry.

Any wonder good men in government are hard to find?

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Ed Wood is a resident of Sparta, TN. His column is published each Wednesday in the Crossville Chronicle.