A Ghost from a Ghastly Public Policy Past

By Sam Pizzigati

Created 04/09/2011 - 12:24pm

House budget-cutters are taking their inspiration from the greatest giveaway — to the rich — artist the nation's capital has ever known.

You won’t find many photos with smiles on the face of Andrew Mellon, the U.S. treasury secretary back in the 1920s. The exceedingly dour — and fabulously wealthy — Mellon may be smiling someplace now. His spirit lives.

Mellon, a Pittsburgh financier, began his dozen years atop Treasury in 1921. He rated, at the time, as one of the world’s richest men. One of the most determined, too.

Mellon came to Washington as a man on a mission. That mission: to slash federal income tax rates on his fellow rich — and himself, of course, too. He succeeded.