THE O’NEILL MEMOS….Remember that CD full of 19,000 documents that formed the documentary core of Ron Suskind’s book about Paul O’Neill? Suskind has decided to put them online.
This should be good for loads of laughs as new documents get added to Suskind’s online collection. I haven’t had a chance to browse through everything that’s up so far, but I did like this February 2001 memo to O’Neill outlining talking points he should be careful to stick to:
Key background information: the public prefers spending on things like health care and education over cutting taxes. It’s crucial that your remarks make clear that there is no trade off here ? that we will boost education spending and set aside Social Security and Medicare surpluses to address the future of these programs, and still we will have an enormous surplus.
That didn’t work out so well, did it? And it’s interesting to see the admission that the public prefers spending on social programs to tax cuts.
More later, I’m sure. It’s not clear if Suskind is planning to put all 19,000 docs online or only the ones that he used for his book, but in either case there should be lots of interesting stuff as we all start browsing through it. Comments are open.
