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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (38900)	11/21/2009 5:51:17 PM
From: lorne	1 Recommendation Respond to of 71588

Echoing Democrat's Comments, Two Republicans Call for Geithner to Go Geithner Pushes Back, Blames Bush Administration for Problems By MATTHEW JAFFE Nov. 19, 2009 abcnews.go.com Echoing comments made by a Democratic lawmaker Wednesday night, two Republican members of the Joint Economic Committee today called for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to resign. Two Republicans call for the treasury secretary's resignation during hearing."It's been a year since the president was elected," the panel's ranking Republican, Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, said at a hearing this morning featuring Geithner. "It's appropriate for the American people to assess how well the administration's economic policies are working. They are not. They have failed." "Unemployment has skyrocketed far past the White House's projections and promises. America continues to shed jobs: More than 2.8 million since the stimulus was enacted," Brady said. "We've had a series of embarrassing investigations about all the wild stimulus claims, the latest fake jobs from fake "You are the point man on the economy," Brady said to Geithner. "The buck, in effect, stops with you." Brady cited comments made Wednesday night by a Democratic lawmaker, Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon, to MSNBC's Ed Schultz that Geithner and National Economic Council director Larry Summers should resign. DeFazio told Schultz that President Obama is "being failed by his economic team. We may have to sacrifice just two more jobs to get millions back for Americans." When Schultz asked if Geithner should stay on as Treasury chief, DeFazio responded "no." "Conservatives agree that as point person you've failed," Brady told Geithner at today's hearing. "Liberals are growing in that consensus as well. Poll after poll shows the public has lost confidence in this president's ability to handle the economy. For the sake of our jobs, will you step down from your post?" Replied Geithner, "I agree with almost nothing in what you said, and I think that almost nothing in what you said represents a fair and accurate perception of where this economy is today." Geithner said it is "a great privilege to serve this president." He reminded lawmakers of the dire economic situation that the Obama administration inherited in January. "You gave this president an economy falling off the cliff, values of American savings cut almost in half, millions of Americans out of work," Geithner said. "It's just a basic fact: A year ago this economy was falling at a rate of 6 percent a year. We were losing between half a million and three-quarters of a million jobs and that process was accelerating, not slowing, until the president of the United States came and took office." "Mr. Secretary, the public has lost all confidence in your ability to do the job," Brady responded. "Conservatives agree, Democrats agree that it really is time for a fresh start, and I would urge you to consider it." "If you look at any measure of consumer and investor confidence today," replied Geithner, "if you look at any measure of the strength and stability and health of the American economy, if you look at any measure of confidence in the financial system, it is substantially stronger today than when the president of the United States took office and that happened not on its own, it happened because of a set of tough difficult choices. "This economy did not come into this simply facing the worst financial crisis in generations, it came into this with almost a decade, certainly eight years of basic neglect of basic public goods in health care, in education, in public infrastructure, in how we use energy, and fixing those problems is a central obligation," Geithner said. "Tell all of that to the millions of Americans who no longer have jobs because of your decisions," interrupted Brady. "They would have had more jobs and more confidence and more employment in this country if we had not let this crisis get to the point that it did," Geithner retorted. "And we would have had a stronger fiscal position if we'd had eight years of paying for our commitments, not borrowing." Later in the hearing another Texas Republican also called for Geithner to go. "I don't think that you should be fired," Rep. Michael Burgess told the Treasury boss. "I thought you never should have been hired." "My constituents – they're not just anxious, they are mad," Burgess continued. "They are fighting mad about what's happened in the economy, They are fighting mad about the stimulus. "They're fighting mad about how many jobs we created in Arizona's ninth district – you know a member of Congress from Arizona's ninth district? They won't have a ninth district until after redistricting next year. They only have eight right now. This kind of nonsense is what the American people are seeing and that's why they're so upset," Burgess said. Two Democratic lawmakers – Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland – later voiced their support for Geithner, with Cummings saying, "I'm glad you're there."

To: TimF who wrote (38900)	11/23/2009 12:50:54 AM
From: Peter Dierks	2 Recommendations Respond to of 71588

The Coming Deficit Disaster The president says he understands the urgency of our fiscal crisis, but his policies are the equivalent of steering the economy toward an iceberg. NOVEMBER 20, 2009, 6:47 P.M. ET. By DOUGLAS HOLTZ-EAKIN President Barack Obama took office promising to lead from the center and solve big problems. He has exerted enormous political energy attempting to reform the nation's health-care system. But the biggest economic problem facing the nation is not health care. It's the deficit. Recently, the White House signaled that it will get serious about reducing the deficit next year—after it locks into place massive new health-care entitlements. This is a recipe for disaster, as it will create a new appetite for increased spending and yet another powerful interest group to oppose deficit-reduction measures. Our fiscal situation has deteriorated rapidly in just the past few years. The federal government ran a 2009 deficit of $1.4 trillion—the highest since World War II—as spending reached nearly 25% of GDP and total revenues fell below 15% of GDP. Shortfalls like these have not been seen in more than 50 years. Going forward, there is no relief in sight, as spending far outpaces revenues and the federal budget is projected to be in enormous deficit every year. Our national debt is projected to stand at $17.1 trillion 10 years from now, or over $50,000 per American. By 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) analysis of the president's budget, the budget deficit will still be roughly $1 trillion, even though the economic situation will have improved and revenues will be above historical norms. The planned deficits will have destructive consequences for both fairness and economic growth. They will force upon our children and grandchildren the bill for our overconsumption. Federal deficits will crowd out domestic investment in physical capital, human capital, and technologies that increase potential GDP and the standard of living. Financing deficits could crowd out exports and harm our international competitiveness, as we can already see happening with the large borrowing we are doing from competitors like China. At what point, some financial analysts ask, do rating agencies downgrade the United States? When do lenders price additional risk to federal borrowing, leading to a damaging spike in interest rates? How quickly will international investors flee the dollar for a new reserve currency? And how will the resulting higher interest rates, diminished dollar, higher inflation, and economic distress manifest itself? Given the president's recent reception in China—friendly but fruitless—these answers may come sooner than any of us would like. Mr. Obama and his advisers say they understand these concerns, but the administration's policy choices are the equivalent of steering the economy toward an iceberg. Perhaps the most vivid example of sending the wrong message to international capital markets are the health-care reform bills—one that passed the House earlier this month and another under consideration in the Senate. Whatever their good intentions, they have too many flaws to be defensible. First and foremost, neither bends the health-cost curve downward. The CBO found that the House bill fails to reduce the pace of health-care spending growth. An audit of the bill by Richard Foster, chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, found that the pace of national health-care spending will increase by 2.1% over 10 years, or by about $750 billion. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's bill grows just as fast as the House version. In this way, the bills betray the basic promise of health-care reform: providing quality care at lower cost. Second, each bill sets up a new entitlement program that grows at 8% annually as far as the eye can see—faster than the economy will grow, faster than tax revenues will grow, and just as fast as the already-broken Medicare and Medicaid programs. They also create a second new entitlement program, a federally run, long-term-care insurance plan. Finally, the bills are fiscally dishonest, using every budget gimmick and trick in the book: Leave out inconvenient spending, back-load spending to disguise the true scale, front-load tax revenues, let inflation push up tax revenues, promise spending cuts to doctors and hospitals that have no record of materializing, and so on. If there really are savings to be found in Medicare, those savings should be directed toward deficit reduction and preserving Medicare, not to financing huge new entitlement programs. Getting long-term budgets under control is hard enough today. The job will be nearly impossible with a slew of new entitlements in place. In short, any combination of what is moving through Congress is economically dangerous and invites the rapid acceleration of a debt crisis. It is a dramatic statement to financial markets that the federal government does not understand that it must get its fiscal house in order. What to do? The best option would be for the president to halt Congress's rush to fiscal suicide, and refocus on slowing the dangerous growth in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. He should call on Congress to pass a comprehensive reform of our income and payroll tax systems that would generate revenue sufficient to fund its spending desires in a pro-growth and fair fashion. Reducing entitlement spending and closing tax loopholes to create a fairer tax system with more balanced revenues is politically difficult and requires sacrifice. But we will avert a potentially devastating credit crisis, increase national savings, drive productivity and wage growth, and enhance our international competitiveness. The time to worry about the deficit is not next year, but now. There is no time to waste. Mr. Holtz-Eakin is former director of the Congressional Budget Office and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. This is adapted from testimony he gave before the Senate Committee on the Budget on Nov. 10. online.wsj.com

To: TimF who wrote (38900)	11/23/2009 6:54:33 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

I have no doubt AT ALL that there are some fairly 'optimistic assumptions' baked into the current Senate proposal. However the CBO does project a $130 Billion deficit reduction as a result or the new proposal's enactment... and, even assuming (as you and I both do), that there is some budgetary fluff in the proposal... it most likely pales in magnitude when compared to the massive budgetary chicanery and hypocrisy that went immediately before. This about the Bush administration Medicare Part D changes, massive transfer of national wealth to Big Pharma that they were, (from an earlier post of the Forbes article by Bruce Bartlett): Just to be clear, the Medicare drug benefit was a pure giveaway with a gross cost greater than either the House or Senate health reform bills how being considered. Together the new bills would cost roughly $900 billion over the next 10 years, while Medicare Part D will cost $1 trillion [over ten year horizon]. Moreover, there is a critical distinction--the drug benefit had no dedicated financing, no offsets and no revenue-raisers; 100% of the cost simply added to the federal budget deficit, whereas the health reform measures now being debated will be paid for with a combination of spending cuts and tax increases, adding nothing to the deficit over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. (See here for the Senate bill estimate and here for the House bill.) Maybe Franks isn't the worst hypocrite I've ever come across in Washington, but he's got to be in the top 10 because he apparently thinks the unfunded drug benefit, which added $15.5 trillion (in present value terms) to our nation's indebtedness, according to Medicare's trustees.... Message 26116735