[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS6f5Z206pI]
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner painted a picture of Barack Obama as a strong decisive leader who took necessary actions to confront the economic crisis when he came into office – nowhere mentioning the rampant cronyism and corruption that accompanied the implementation of the $787 billion stimulus – during an address to student graduating from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies Thursday.
“President Obama did not play politics with the crisis he did not sit there and commission a series of academic studies,” Geithner said. “Ye didn’t sit there paralyzed by the terrible perils of the choices wed face he didn’t wait to act in the hope that the crisis would burn itself out he decided to act and do the hard things early.
“At the height of the crisis, President Obama made a difficult and courageous choice.”
The Treasury Secretary told the students Obama didn’t have a playbook to react to what he termed as the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s and suggested that the president embarked on what he called “a remarkably effective financial rescue.”
Geithner sought to pin the blame for the over $5.1 trillion that the federal government has amassed since Obama took office on the “paralysis of our political system” rather than on his administration’s fiscal policies.
House Republican leaders say privately they have been frustrated by the Obama administration’s refusal to meet them half way to resolve issues related to the national deficit and national debt.
By way of comparison, Obama has amassed more debt in his three years as president than where the entire national debt was during 1992 presidential campaign when Ross Perot appeared on TV to lecture Americans about the then $4.1 trillion national debt.
“Don’t put politics ahead of economics,” Geithner said. “Polls, opinion polls may tell you what seems popular at the moment. They can show you the political obstacles to change and reform , but they cannot tell you what is the right thing to do they are not a reliable guide to good economic policy, particularly in a crisis when all the options seem terrible to any sensible person.
“He did not let politics get in the way of doing the right thing and that made all the difference.”
According to The Heritage Foundation, the nation’s reported 8.1 percent unemployment rate – reported as high as 11.1 percent by some calculations – remains far in excess of the just under 6 percent unemployment rate that the Obama White House projected in January 2009 when it sold the stimulus to Congress.
“Don’t put politics ahead of economics. Polls, opinion polls may tell you what seems popular at the moment,” Geithner said. “They can show you the political obstacles to change and reform, but they cannot tell you what is the right thing to do they are not a reliable guide to good economic policy, particularly in a crisis when all the options seem terrible to any sensible person.”
Red Alert Politics Associate Editor Sarah Muro contributed to this report.
