Thursday, February 17, 2011

Geithner Admits: Obligations in President's Budget "Unsustainable"

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner today admitted under questioning from Sen. Jeff Sessions that the president's own budget, submitted Monday, calls for interest payments and obligations that are "excessively high" and "unsustainable." The president's plan accumulates $13 trillion in new gross debt, with interest payments on the debt rising to $844 billion a year by 2021.
Additionally, the president's budget ignores the recommendations of his own fiscal commission, causing the Democrat Co-Chair of the Commission, Erskin Bowles, to remark that the budget "goes nowhere near where they will have to go to resolve our fiscal nightmare."
Under President Obama's budget, total federal spending will increase another 65% by the end of the decade. In fact, accumulated deficits under the president's budget are greater than those in the Congressional Budget Office baseline, which assumes we essentially do nothing.
 From budgetGOP



This is a rough transcript:

Sen. Jeff Sessions: “…Under your budget, the interest increases each year. It was $187 billion in 2009, under your proposal it increases to $844 billion”

Treasury Tim Geithner: “Senator, absolutely, it is an excessively high interest burden, it’s unsustainable”

Sessions: “Well it’s your plan. That’s the plan the President submitted.”

Geithner: “You’re absolutely right that with the president’s plan, even if Congress were to enact it, and even if Congress were to hold to it and reduce those deficits to three percent of GDP over the next five years, we would still be left with a very large interest burden and unsustainable obligations over time”

Sessions: “It’s not acceptable. I’m sorry, but that’s not a plan for winning the future, that’s a plan for losing the future…”

7 comments:

Right Wingnut said...

Another WTF moment....

Noelle said...

So let me get this right. Geitner says yes, it's a horrible plan. You guys come up with something better. My word. Our president has no concept whatsoever about what it means to be a leader. Embarrassing.

Ann said...

Those Democrats in Washington must think we're all idiots.

phil said...

This is unbelievable.

And then Geithner tries to rationalize the Obama's budget.

BOSMAN said...

Noelle,

Obama is in way over his head.

Instead of surrounding self with quality people, He surrounded himself with idiots.

zappo said...

Geithner is a joke.

hamaca said...

Geithner is not-so-subtly passing the buck.

He's hoping that people understand it was forced on him.