Tim Geithner Doesn’t Have A Solution But Knows He Doesn’t Like The Republican Plan

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan were talking about the debt today and Geithner said they don’t have a solution for any long-term problems of the debt. Ryan said, “Here’s the point, if you’ll allow me. This is your time, so we’ll just take a long time. Here’s the point. Leaders are supposed to fix problems. We have a $99.4 trillion unfunded liability. Our government is making promises to Americans that it has no way of accounting for them. And so you’re saying yeah, we’re stabilizing it but we’re not fixing it in the long run. That means we’re just going to keep lying to people. We’re going to keep all these empty promises going.” He added, “you’re showing that you have no plan to get this debt under control. You’re saying we’ll stabilize it but then it’s just going to shoot back up. So my argument is, that’s Europe. That is bringing us toward a European debt crisis because we’re showing the world, the credit market’s future seniors — people who are organizing their lives around the promises that are being made to them today — that we don’t have a plan to make good on this.” Geithner said, “Mr. Chairman, as I said, maybe we’re not disagreeing in a sense.” After a few more quick questions Geithner admitted, “That’s right. We have millions of Americans retiring everyday, and that will drive substantial further rise in the growth of healthcare costs. We’re not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to our long-term problem. What we do know is we don’t like yours.” No real reason, he just doesn’t like it.