WASHINGTON -- Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner acknowledges the federal budget deficit is too high, but that the priorities now are economic growth and job creation.
Asked repeatedly on NBC's "Meet the Press" whether this means taxes will rise, Mr. Geithner avoided giving specifics. He did say President Barack Obama is committed to dealing with deficit in a way that will not add to the tax burden of people making less than $250,000 a year.
The White House has not decided how to reduce the red ink, Mr. Geithner said in an interview broadcast Sunday. "Right now we're focused on getting growth back on track," he said. "And we're not at the point yet where we have to decide exactly what it's going to take."
He acknowledged that the economic recovery, while showing positive movement, has been shaky and uneven.
3 comments:
This a very interesting article. As the treasury secretary, Mr Geithner is doing a good job of painting a positive picture for the economy. Although factual in nature, we should just not limit ourselves to the positive attitude shown by Geithner. There are various other signals in the economy pointing otherwise. A good example of the negative nature of things happening in the economy are mentioned in my recent post where the commercial real estate has been losing its value putting a further burden on the already struggling US economy.
This sounds like another case of the government trying to induce spending and investment by increasing confidence. However, I think they continue to lose more credibility each time the claim that 'the economy is improving' is followed by even more dismal statistics. I think a lot of Americans, myself included, would like to hear the truth instead of such an overly optimistic outlook--or eventually you just stop believing what the government says altogether.
I agree with Christina’s comment, but I think that positive attitude should be encouraged as much as possible. The market was depressed too much during the recession, and huge number of negative reports scared consumers and companies. Therefore, good news should be released continuously, but they have to be reasonable too. So far, I think the government is doing a good job even though the reports are sometimes not credible.
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