If the job should open up, I’m offering my services to President Clinton as his next secretary of energy.
This is something I’ve never thought about. But now I realize that I have excellent credentials for this Cabinet post.
Here are my qualifications:
1. I’m terrified of flying.
2. I will fly, but only when absolutely necessary.
3. I will use any excuse to avoid flying.
As for the rest of the energy job–watching over America’s nuclear plants and nuclear waste–I can learn that later.
It’s my morbid dread of flying that would make me a popular choice among value-conscious taxpayers.
President Clinton’s present energy chief–a lady named Hazel O’Leary–obviously loves flying.
And not just around this country, which is where her energy responsibilities can be found.
She enjoys jetting to distant parts of the world: Europe, China, Africa, India, South America.
Not only does she travel more than any previous energy secretary–or maybe all of them put together–but she gets around almost as much as the secretary of state, whose job is foreign relations.
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And you won’t see Ms. O’Leary dragging a suitcase through a terminal like some lonely salesman.
She enjoys going first class or better and sometimes brings along a small army of flunkies and acquaintances.
At our expense, of course. Isn’t that what we’re here for?
In a neat job of investigative reporting, the Los Angeles Times found that in three years, Ms. O’Leary has made at least 16 foreign trips that cost millions of dollars.
For one journey to South Africa, she chartered a luxury jet. She needed an entire plane because she took along 51 federal employees and 68 influential civilians. Plus there were photographers and camera crews to take everyone’s picture.
This cost us about $560,000, which is a tidy sum considering that we don’t have any nuclear plants or waste in South Africa.
The luxury jet, with a bar and kitchen, also was used to fly O’Leary and dozens of her people to China and Pakistan. We don’t have any nuclear plants in those countries either.
Another jaunt was to Costa Rica so she could sign some kind of greenhouse gas agreement with its government.
Fine. Agreements must be signed, I suppose. But she brought along about 14 flunkies, and they hung around Costa Rica for five days.
Of course, she might have feared running out of ink while signing the agreements.
But if she said, “Anybody got a pen?” would she really need 14 flunkies whipping out their ballpoints?
She even sent a five-person team to attend the UN Fourth World Conference on Women, which had about as much to do with America’s energy problems as it did with golf. It’s this kind of government spending that can make people a little skeptical when they see Clinton on TV talking about our responsibilities to the poor, the old, the young, the sick and the downtrodden.
How many of the downtrodden, or even the uptrodden, get to ride on chartered jets with an open bar?
Of course, Ms. O’Leary says that criticism of her travel costs is just so much petty nit-picking because she is really making money for this country rather than wasting it.
She says that when she stuffs that luxury charter jet with private business executives and other guests, they cut overseas deals that eventually enrich the United States.
A White House spokesman also scoffed at the critics and said that for every $1 that Ms. O’Leary spends on travel, she generates $1,000 in new business.
If so, that’s a terrific investment. It means that for only $540,000, the South Africa jaunt alone created business deals worth more than half a billion.
I wouldn’t question the White House’s math because this administration is renowned for precision and accuracy in economic matters, but maybe they should provide details about these dazzling deals.
They might also consider dropping notes to the fortunate businessmen who went on the trips, telling them that they are a bunch of free-loading ingrates.
That’s because many of them failed to reimburse the government for the thousands of dollars the trips cost the taxpayers. You would think that after reaping all those wondrous benefits, they’d be oozing gratitude.
Despite my fear-of-flying credentials, my guess is that Clinton won’t offer me the job as energy czar.
Then I have another suggestion that could save the government millions of dollars for an investment of a dollar or two.
Buy a piece of sturdy rope.
Tie one end of the rope to Ms. O’Leary’s ankle. Tie the other end to her desk.
See? Whipping the deficit doesn’t have to be complicated.