Pittsburgher, former treasury secretary and former Alcoa head Paul O'Neill has at least two characteristics that make him a community treasure: He is an original thinker and he tells what he sees as the truth.

A talk to a couple of hundred people Thursday at the Duquesne Club in Downtown provided him another chance to share his thoughts. He called the talk, "What Could Be," and he led off with a not original, basically conservative Republican thought -- nonetheless liberating -- that government has no money to pass out unless it takes it away from us. For that reason, he said, people need to impose much higher expectations on government.

He said government whining about not having enough money to meet social service needs and to fight its various wars was like whistling Dixie: the federal government under-collects some $400 billion in taxes per year, a gem from his days as treasury secretary, thus imposing a 15 percent surcharge on those of us who do pay our taxes faithfully each year.

Moving to his current favorite theme, health care, he said he favored universal access to medical care. He added that everyone who could afford it should be required to purchase catastrophic care insurance and that the needs of the 45 million uninsured Americans, who presumably can't afford a health plan, should be covered by savings in what he estimated to be the 30 percent to 50 percent of waste in health care costs. Social Security, he said, is a vast pyramid or Ponzi scheme, and people should be required to have personal savings accounts for their retirement.

Moving into questions and answers, which Mr. O'Neill said was his favorite time because that was when he really got himself into trouble, he said forcing China to revalue its currency would not make much difference. Asked how to start a national dialogue on critical issues, he said telling the truth should launch it, giving people a chance to state to government and to candidates, "It's our country." This led to a question on whether he intended to run for public office. He ducked it, leaving the possibility open.

Asked how the country could break through the lobbyist-campaign finance knot, he said if the members of Congress had less to sell, those seeking to buy it would drop in number. This point is particularly pertinent in Pittsburgh where, Thursday night, donors paid $500 a head in the Strip District to support the campaign of Democratic Senate candidate Bob Casey Jr. Last night a different group of donors gathered in Sewickley Heights to meet President Bush at a cost starting at $1,000 a person to fuel the campaign of the Republican incumbent, Rick Santorum.

We would venture that even if there is no obvious office for Paul O'Neill, who is 70, to run for, it would nonetheless be useful to the country for him to tour the United States, making his strong and stimulating points on issues that are important to the American people.