Expressing admiration last May for “Congressman Paul Ryan’s honest attempt to save Medicare”, Jon Huntsman wrote that critics of “his approach incur a moral responsibility to propose reforms that would ensure Medicare’s ability to meet its responsibilities to retirees without imposing an unaffordable tax burden on future generations of Americans.”
Today, as James Pethokoukis reports at the Enterprise Blog, U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner took issue with Ryan”s comprehensive plan to put the nation back on a sound fiscal footing, telling the House Budget Committee Chairman “the following: ‘We’re not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term problem. What we do know is we don’t like yours.'” (Via Instapundit.)
What a perfect illustration of the failure of this administration to offer leadership to one of the nation’s most pressing problems. We sure don’t like your solution, but, well, we don’t have one of our own.
Just as critics of Ryan’s Medicare reforms had a moral responsibility, to borrow Huntsman’s expression, to offer a plan of their own, so too do critics of the Republican budget have a responsibility to address the long-term problem of federal debt. Indeed, during the campaign, Obama said that “we’re going to have to embrace a culture and an ethic of responsibility, all of us, corporations, the federal government, and individuals out there who may be living beyond their means.”
His latest budget makes clear that, in his fourth year in office, he’s not prepared to embrace that culture or that ethic.
Pethokoukis goes on to detail problems in the president’s budget — and offers charts showing how rapidly debt would accumulate under Obama’s plan (and how the Democrat rejected the recommendation of the debt commission he created). So, just read the whole thing and ask yourself how this man can expect to campaign for reelection when his own Treasury Secretary acknowledges that this administration lacks a definitive solution to the growing debt problem.
UPDATE: It gets worse. “This,” writes Bryan Preston, “is the second year in a row that Geithner has described an Obama budget as unsustainable.” The Treasury Secretary said, ““Even if Congress were to enact this budget we would still be left with–in the outer decades as millions of Americans retire–what are still unsustainable commitments in Medicare and Medicaid.” He says he doesn’t like the Republican plan, but has put forward plan which doesn’t provide adequate commitments to these entitlements. This isn’t solving a problem, it’s kicking the can down the road. (Via Instapundit.)
Obamacrats don’t care about the debt. They only care about two things. 1. Free stuff from the Government and 2. More free stuff from the Government.
Republicans are talking about where to cut the budget, Democrats talk about offering free diapers to new mothers.
There is no hope.
Translation: We have the charts showing how we can tax and spend out way out of this mess, but we haven’t figured out the formula that creates the lines we have charted.
(Christine Romer could not be reached for comment. The non-partisan CBO is closed for Lent. The OMB is conducting maneuvers in Venezuela. The World Bank is interviewing Hillary. Jim Cramer has laryngitis. Jon Corzine did not return our calls. Ed Schultz said he would talk but we hung up on him.)
Sorry to burst your bubble Helio. The term “tax and spend” is a bit out dated. They’ve already spent it, now it’s time to tax it. I’ve never seen it before, but can we start using the term “spend and tax” liberals?
H-m-m-m. Maybe “spend and print” is also more accurate.
The political term “tax and spend” implied taxing at a rate to support the spending, now it’s “borrow and spend”…which is much more dangerous mantra.
Apparently, Geithner thinks our impending national bankruptcy is just a big joke.
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/326778.php
Everybody Laugh.
What “problem”? The worse the economy gets, the more people will clamor increased welfare benefits. Those evil people with property and savings will be impoverished, and everyone will be dependent on government handouts–goodies to be doled out only to those who follow an ever-growing list of rules. (And don’t forget the unspoken rule ‘do not criticize Obama’.) It’s a win-win for Obama and his fascist friends.
Geithner is also the “front man” for the kitchen cabinet treasury mob at Goldman Sachs and in hedge funds up and down Wall Street. Soros, Summers, Paulson, Buffet, Bloomberg and others are positioned to pick huge sums out of the treasury and “legally” keep the proceeds.
Geithner is not looking past 2020, because the players aren’t going beyond the here and now in their money transfer strategies.
There is NO plan for returning to sound footing on entitlements that would not interrupt the game these kleptocrats are playing. They are telling lies and peddling deceit to keep the game going for as long as possible.
Years ago, there was a cartoon of two golfers on the green with one ready to putt. They are looking back at the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. One golfer tells the other: “Go ahead and putt. There is plenty of time before the shock wave hits us.”
That would be Geithner.
Can you say. “Wiemar”?
Wheelbarrows on sale, this week only.
The above is actual language from a Democrat Bill in the House to create a “Reasonable Profits Board” to enable the Government to confiscate corporate earning they deem to be “excessive”
Geithner is an interesting person. He doesn’t even pretend the budget isn’t a sh*t sandwich. He doesn’t have to – Reid isn’t going to pass anything soon, and so neither the POTUS nor Geithner receive demerit for the budget.
Geithner is the canary in the coal mine.
Gee. Ya don’t say?
/sarc