Geithner dressed down by… the man who turned down a cabinet appointment.
Absolutely phenomenal. Those who see what is happening at Treasury and call a spade a spade like this will be hailed as heroes one day:
It was obvious to most Capitol Hill insiders why President Obama wanted Republican Judd Gregg as a member of his cabinet: He’s one of the sharpest money-minds in Congress.
But instead of getting Gregg’s counsel within the administration, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner found himself today of the receiving end of Gregg’s fiscal conservative wrath.
In a hearing before the Senate Budget Committee Gregg dressed down Geithner with facts, figures, and charts. While always keeping his cool, the exchange was somewhere between a mother’s scolding, a drill sergeant’s questioning and an attorney’s cross examination.
In his opening statement, Gregg politely called the administration’s budget forecast a lie.
“The argument that it cuts the debt in half in four years is, ahh, is truly spurious,” he told Geithner.
Read it all. Obama may finally see Timothy Geithner as the disaster that Wall Street so clearly thinks him to be after all, rather than “the only man for the job.” So far, Obama’s cabinet appointments have been one tax-evading disaster after another, Geithner first and foremost. The one bright spot on the Cabinet so far has been… Hillary Clinton, who as the head of the State Department, merely has conflicts of interest from foreign contributors to her husband’s coffers as a black eye on her office. Rumors are already swirling that Geithner may not last long, and his replacement may already be waiting in the wings.
Let’s hope that:
- it’s true, as I suspect the Dow would pick up around 500 points the day Geithner steps down (”to spend more time with [his] family,” most likely), and
- that his replacement is both a taxpayer in good standing and a whole lot more competent at helming the economy.
