NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is staying put, the Obama administration announced Sunday.So what are the Secretary's priorities? Here is what he said when discussing the debt ceiling fight:
"Secretary Geithner has let the president know that he plans to stay on in his position at Treasury," a Treasury spokeswoman said in a statement.
Geithner plans to stay at least into the fall of 2012, an administration official told CNN.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said that the president had asked Geithner to stay and "welcomes his decision."
Check the transcript of Geithner's interview about the GOP hostage crisis. The word "Republican" is said once, and only by the interviewer. In fact, when Geithern is asked whether the GOP did this, he demurs.Obviously we need to "reforming entitlements"! "Obviously"!
JOHN HARWOOD: You said a moment ago that Congress owns the credit rating. John Kerry, Democratic Senator, said today, "This is the Tea Party downgrade." Is that right?
TIM GEITHNER: Well, I wouldn't-- I'm not going to do politics, John. And I think if we've learned anything these last few months it's-- it's time to put the economy ahead of politics. Again, these are challenges facing the country of the United States, not-- not facing one party or the other. We both have some responsibility for coming together to dig our way out of this stuff.
And, again, this was-- you know, it's a big down payment on our fiscal challenges. Very strong bipartisan support for it. Our challenge is to build on that support and try to take the next steps that make some longer term progress. You know, we need to reform our tax system to help the middle class make this a stronger place to invest. Obviously we need to reform entitlement to secure Medicare for the next generation. And we've got to do some additional things to make the economy strong.
You know what would make the economy strong? People having jobs.
You know what would make the economy worse? Pretending there's a "dficit" crisis with 9% unemployment!
Thanks, Tim! So glad you're sticking around!
I will agree that we need to "reform our tax system", but how is the goal of that to make this a "stronger place to invest" for the middle class?
ReplyDeleteI was under the impression that my family was "middle class", and I really wasn't seeing a deep and abiding interest in investment opportunities coming from Mom.
On the other hand, fixing the economy so that Dad can find a (semi-)permanent job instead of temping or keeping medicare and social security which he's spent 63 years paying into or maybe even offering help putting Cori through college (which she'll presumably want to do in ~6 years) would be nice.
OR, maybe you could just stop threatening to shut down the government every other F***ing month so that Mom can actually do her job over at HHS instead of preparing for shutdown contingencies. That would be awesome.
Thank you,
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