2080, Geithner remarked sarcastically, “Nice chart.”
Ryan chastised Geithner, with
a full room of lawmakers, staff
and spectators looking on, as well
as a C-SPAN audience: “Leaders
are supposed to fix problems,”
the 42-year-old Ryan told the
51-year-old Treasury secretary.
Geithner lashed out: “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,” he said, irritated.
Asked about this comment by
CNBC’s Larry Kudlow in July,
Geithner was defensive: “Let me
say, I said we don’t have a plan for
the next century. OK? We don’t
have a plan to solve the problem
for the next century. But we have
an excellent plan for the next 10
years, the next 25 years.”
Yuval Levin, a former White
House policy adviser to President
George W. Bush, has made the
clearest case for why Romney’s
HUFFINGTON 08.26.12
“THEY WANT
TO TURN
MEDICARE
INTO A
VOUCHER
PROGRAM.”
THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION
he eventually tried to reach a grand
bargain with House Speaker John
Boehner (R-Ohio). That deal fell
apart, leading to lots of fingerpointing and recriminations.
As for Medicare’s long-term
costs, Obama and his supporters have argued that Obamacare
is sufficient to bring down health
care costs. Other supporters,
however, such as former Clinton
White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles—whose name has
been mentioned as a potential
Treasury secretary in a second
Obama term—have said Obamacare does not do enough to bring
down health care costs.
The president also hasn’t done
what Ryan did: present a plan specifically aimed at curbing the debt
over the next few decades. In fact, the
Obama administration has shown a
level of derision for Ryan’s plan.
A comment by the Treasury
secretary, Timothy Geithner, is
sure to appear in a Romney campaign ad in the not-too-distant
future. On Feb. 16, Geithner appeared before the House Budget
Committee. In the committee
chairman’s seat sat Ryan. The two
engaged in a tense exchange over
the country’s long-term debt load.
As Ryan showed a chart illustrating the debt burden into the year