Letter: Administration works for wealthy

Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2002 | 9:09 a.m.

Financial disclosure statements by top officials in the Bush administration reveal that 15 Cabinet-level officials are millionaires. In fact, one-third of these officials are in the $10 million range.

The richest is Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, with a net worth between $67 million and $253 million. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is in the same league. Vice President Dick Cheney is in third place. All are former big-shot CEOs with corporations with records favoring the executives rather than the shareholders. This is not a group governing evenly for all of us. They blatantly, greedily favor the nation's wealthiest.

The first and probably the most pro-rich of the Bush-pushed legislation was the huge tax cut favoring the nation's wealthiest. Now President Bush is battling the unions and civil service employees in order to pack the new Homeland Security Department with more greed-tinted CEOs and executives.

Is the qualification to become a Bush high-level executive to be a millionaire and a Republican?

The greatest hypocrisy of this greedy, pro-rich campaign is that it is being carried out under the cover of fighting terrorism and starting a war with Iraq.

ORVILLE GOPLEN