Anyone who thinks that people in the Tea Party care about deficits is incredibly naive. They are fundamentally angry people who resent and fear a changing world. FOX + talk radio whip them up about this and that, but it isn't this and that that really matter. Resentment and fear are as close to an issue as the Tea Party gets (aside perhaps from the occasional RONPAULRONPAULRONPAULRONPAUL supporter, but even then most RONPAULRONPAULRONPAULRONPAUL supporters are just walking bundles of resentment).

And this is part of the equation that the teabaggers don't understand and why some would think it's about Obama being black. They blame future deficits on Obama, yet the unfunded past has to be funded into the future. They decry health insurance reform as additional spending, but it was paid for. Would they prefer no reform and just raise taxes to pay for the past unfunded liabilities? How about repeal of those unfunded policies? No, they stand against everything Obama, including tax increases to pay for what they remained silent on.

I thought that Geithner's statement meant that, on Democratic attempts to rein in deficit spending, the Tea Party will be on board and fully support those initiatives. Any other response will reveal just what Tea Party members are REALLY about.

I'd like to hear Geithner say, "those who benefited most from the tax cuts of the last thirty years are going to bear the cost of paying for the unsustainable deficits". Instead, the administration seems to be focusing on cuts to middle class benefits to pay for the deficits. Greenspan must be proud.

If the demographic information relating to the Tea Baggeurs is correct they are a wealthy educated set of my country right or wrongers , except when they aren't . These exceptions include all the wedge issues , as it turns out , that were the bread and butter of the KKK , John Birch , and republican elites .
It may be time to wait until we see pigs flying for a sensible message , sans wedges , to come from these sweet peas . Personally I will settle for a pig whistling Dixie , I have always had a weakness for that air .

urkel you might be right, but right now the tea party crowd is fixed on deficits. Geitner and the Obama administration are trying to get to the front of that issue. Whether they turn a single tea partier is irrelevant to the over all need to start planning to reduce deficits once the crisis has passed. It is refreshing to see Geitner talk about the issue for another reason. It signals that at least the Secretary of the Treasury sees an end to the Great Recession.

urkel's right. The anger is at a darky in THEIR White House.

But, if it serves as a wake-up call to the unwashed masses to deal with an endless stream of unfunded mandates, from foreign wars to giveaways to senior citizens, then perhaps some good can come of the outrage.

-that's assuming some responsible politicians can harness that discontent.

Or is 'responsible politician' an oxymoron?

Hey, didn't Ron Reagan prove deficits don't matter?

After eight years of criticizing the Bush Administration's deficit spending (see the famous moveon.org ad), the Democrats have spent three years in charge of the Budget while showing zero interest in budget reform.

Wasn't President Obama bragging about tax cuts funded by deficit spending this week? Have the Democrats proposed any real budget cuts to demonstrate credibility on budget issues.

Geithner is just laying the ground work for massive tax increases in the near future and that is why no one really believes the claim that taxes will only be raised on the really rich and also why business refuse to increase investment.

If that was his intent, he's being way too subtle for those morons.

Your correspondent writes "Have the Democrats proposed any real budget cuts to demonstrate credibility on budget issues?"

Erm.....Orion?

Glad Timmy sees the Tea Party has his new best friends... them and the banksters.

Somehow, I'm sure, they'll all see getting usta 10% unemployment, ratcheting down social security and medicare are essential -- cuttin' deficit spending and snugging up big government...yeah, that's the ticket!

Ignore numerical facts that show how my guy screwed up! Focus on my unsupported paranoia about what your guy might suddenly decide to do!

Bush, Bush, Bush. You libs are obsessed with Bush. It's been 15 months since Barack Sambo Obama took over and he owns the entire economy. You can't blame Bush for things that happened almost a year and a half ago.

The teabaggers don't know what they want because they don't know or understand what they've got or how we got to where we are. And they don't care. Righteous anger feels good.

The world won't be right in their fuzzy minds until a white Rethug is once again in the oval office. At which point another Reagan-Bush clone can run up the deficit all he wants, and the Lipton dippers will say amen. Fiscal responsibility is only important when the Democrats are in power. When the Rethugs reign, budgetary smoke and mirrors is the way. If only the Dim-Dems could get a message and stick with it. The message is BUSH AND COMPANY SCREWED US FOR EIGHT YEARS, AND THEN THE HOUSE OF CARDS COLLAPSED.

If that was his intent, he's being way too subtle for those morons.

Pretty sure he knows those morons are unreachable with facts. He's talking to the non-insane portion of the electorate.

"Oh, now you're worried about fiscal responsibility. While Bush and the Republicans were taking fiscal irresponsibility to new depths with tax cuts and government expansion without paying for it, you kept on supporting them, but now you care."

Right. Bush and Cheney, after all, are white and you know how trustworthy and intelligent white people are. As opposed to that Ni-i-i-i-ii-i....

Have the Democrats proposed any real budget cuts to demonstrate credibility on budget issues.

I think fiscal credibility right now is based around getting the economic recovery on track, get the job numbers back up, and all of that. If Obama were to persue balancing the budget at the expense of the long-term health of the US economy, then the teabaggers would be complaining about that.

In other words, suggesting that Obama place deficit reduction before economic recovery pretty much deprives you of accurately using the word "credibility".

Wow, it really is true, the monster keeps coming back until you drive a stake through its chest. I refer, of course, to "superdestroyer," who makes a new foray from his voyage in WingnutWallyworld. This guy was one of the dumbest wingnut trolls to post over at Steve's old site "back in the day."

Welcome back, you nutbag moron. (not!)

This is exactly what I've been telling my Tea Bagger relatives, and they are left sputtering and speechless. I tell them that in light of their selective anger, there is no choice but to conclude that their new found rage is because they aren't in a position to dominate American politics and the federal government into perpetuity.

After eight years of the most ineffective and destructive administration both economically and in matters of prestige having one of the , "But , but , Clinton" brigades wag its little tongue is certainly nostalgic fun .
Oh the fun we had as the eight year debacle of the desperate for good news administration plunged the country into despair and poverty decided lying was the same as deficits , Don't Matter !
Now a reprise after the smoking cinders of the world emerge from the toxic waste of two well meaning good old white feller's who insisted that no torture was required to reduce the American dream to food lines .
Good on ya , keep simpering !

You can't blame Bush for things that happened almost a year and a half ago.

We're not. All of what Bush heaped upon the increasing deficit spending happened from 2001 to 2005. 2 wars, medicare part D, and 2 tax cuts all on deficits that didn't seem to matter. Duh!!! Raygun has been gone for quite some time, yet we still hear about him as being some type of messiah and Clinton, and Carter as creating all sorts of problems.

superdestroyer, three points. First, the Democrats have been trying to apply pay-go for at least the last 4 years. They have been twarted first by the Bush administration and then by the Great Recession. Second, during a recession, especially a really serious recession, deficit spending is perfectly OK, in fact it is necessary to reduce the effects of the recession. Once the economy is humming again we need to redress the deficits. Finally there are only two ways to reduce the deficit--increase revenues or decrease spending. I have never seen a Republican or a Democrat who wants to reduce spending on anything. It just isn't in the nature of any politician. They make promises we are expected to keep. That leaves increasing revenue. The government raises revenue by taxing. No politician likes to increase taxes--Democrats included. But if you are going to deal with the problem you have to do one or the other, decrease spending or increase taxes.

Ronald Reagan thought he found a third way--voodoo economics. Basically the notion that you can increase revenue by lowering taxes. The theory is that by lowering taxes you encourage economic activity. The theory actually works in some special situations. For example if you have an economy with a lot of highly appreciated assets being horded by people who are afraid to pay taxes, lowering the capital gains rates will raise revenues until the highly appreciated assets have been sold. Lowering capital gains rates only works, or works best, for a year or two.

Another situation where lowering taxes might increase revenues occurs when the top marginal rate is very high. If the top rate is high enough producers will have no incentive to work during part of the year. That situation is what Kennedy was addressing when he lowered rates, and again what Reagan was addressing when he lowered rates. I suspect that Reagan's top marginal rate is low enough that it doesn't encourage any rational person not to work. Republicans being Republicans didn't understand or didn't want to understand that lowering taxes to encourage increased economic activity is only effective in two special cases. The general rule still holds. Up to something close to the top margnal rate set by Reagan in a system lacking a backlog of highly appreciated assets the only way to increase revenues is to raise taxes.

I like the idea of reducing spending, but you tell me which programs you want to cut. I suspect you can come up with a list, but none of the items on the list will affect you personally.

"...I think all Americans understand that our deficits are unsustainable. And I think that'll be helpful as we move to try to make the hard choices to bring them down again."

i think timmeh's setting the stage for a major transformation (and not in a beneficial way to middle class americans) of social security and medicare.

any mention about zeroing out those useless billion dollar weapons programs; or unsustainable wars of choice... didn't think so.

Thanks for welcoming me back TCinLA. Just to update you: my new day job is serving as shit paper for all the stupid, rapid, mindless right wing extremist assholes just like myself. I love serving as shit paper for them. I simply love the smell of shit in the morning. Never mind my incoherent sniveling. It's all I know what to do given how full of shit I actually am.

I'd love to see, posted every week by the admin and Dems, the bar graph showing how much of a deficit (or not) each president had at the end of his presidency (which shows that Reagan and W were the biggest offenders, the Dems the smallest) which Steve posted here recently I believe.

In this case pictures speak volumes louder than words. It just hits one in the face in its simplicity and meaning. Might knock the Reagan worshippers back a peg or two as well (if they're being honest with themselves, that is).

Given the demographics of the average Tea Party member that have been published in the past week, I don't think we'll see rage against Republican fiscal irresponsibility anytime soon. Their anger about deficits is really about the structure of power, about who gets to control government and make the spending decisions.

Nevertheless, it is very political for Geithner to frame it this way. The Tea Partiers may be slow learners, but over time, as it sinks in that the nation is okay and Obama isn't actively promoting the interests of lazy blacks at the expense of hard-working whites, some may wake up to the paradox of their reaction to deficits. Some may even accept that Freedom and the American Way of Life will not destroyed if tax rates are restored to the levels of 2000 in order to deal with the Bush-created deficit. We hope!

Or alternatively, we'll see continuing craziness in la-la-cuckoo-land. Elites with deep pockets and access to the media have a strong motive to twist reality and keep the base riled up, and the base has a long history of being suggestible.

A 4 billion dollar a year budget cut does not demonstrate credibility on being fiscally responsible. That is budget dust in a three trillion dollar budget. The budget deficit is currently bigger than the total amount of income taxes collected.

Maybe people should ask what the economic impact of increasing taxes by over one trillion dollars. Maybe people who are really interested in policy would bring back the term "VooDoo" economics to describe the idea that the government can grow its way out of massive budget deficits.

A sweet thing can dream , eh ?
Keep dreamin' Hmmmmm
It is the pride of place choice
Until another dystopic right wing nightmare pops up .
They always dooo ...

flush .............flush .......... that's me going down the shithole .......

We all know true teetotalers become adamant and austere grumps specifically because they used to go off on benders in their more drunken past lives!

Geithner's response may just be his way of welcoming our current Teabaggers to sobriety!-Kevo

I simply cannot understand why anyone continues to try to engage people who believe in patent nonsense such as "supply side economics" in rational debate. It cannot be done.

I say this because only a fool would believe that any business, anywhere, adds jobs absent the need for them, i.e. demand. I run a small business; currently we have zero employees because we don't have enough business to either need or justify them. You could cut my taxes to zero and I still wouldn't hire anyone for the simple reason that I don't have anything for them to do. The end result would be that I have more money in my pocket to spend, not a decrease in unemployment for even one person.

Now, in my case, if I had more money to spend I would spend it. But people like me aren't the people who get their taxes cut, because we aren't already wealthy and don't already own both political parties. In the case of a Bill Gates or Warren Buffett or some other really wealthy individual who already had more money than they could ever spend, it's not going to get spent unless there's a way that it will generate a return, which it cannot if there is not sufficent demand for the product or service in which they've invested. Looking at the US economy as of one year ago, where would they have invested money to earn a return? Nowhere. So in effect, a tax cut under those circumstances merely removes the net dollars in circulation in the economy, while also robbing government of the cash needed to address the normal collective needs (security, roads, courts, etc etc) as well as the money needed to address the economic catastrophe (unemployment benefits, food stamps, etc).

This is not hard stuff. It's not some deep conceptual thing that only economists can make sense of. People don't spend money hiring other people to do work unless they're needed because of demand. And you don't generate demand by just throwing money at the business owners in the form of tax cuts. All that accomplishes is an exacerbation of the problem.

And it remains the prescription of choice for the right and all their deranged followers, none of whom have ever bothered to rub their two brain cells together to figure out why it's not a strategy that makes sense - if your goal is to promote the economic success of the populace at large. Which of course it isn't, and never has been.

But that's the alternate universe theory our government has operated under for 20 out of the last 30 years, and we've seen the results. The people who got the tax cuts - they got quite a bit wealthier. Not because they "created jobs" for the rest of us. Any jobs they created were overseas, where lower-cost goods could be produced and keep the cycle of strip-mining the US economy moving forward.

Ron Byers: props for a thoughtful response to superdestroyer's annoying comments.

Your logic bears repeating, over and over:

1) Dems have tried to balance the budget, but the Republicans keep thwarting them.
2) In a recession, deficit government spending is necessary;
3) To deal with the deficit, we need to increase revenues or decrease spending. Since everyone benefits from current spending levels, we have to increase revenues.

I will add this: We will know that Republicans are serious about dealing with deficits on the day when they are propose cuts to the Defense budget and/or tax increases to fund our wars.

Myke K, I don't suppose you recognize yourself as a bigot with the Barack Sambo Obama comment anymore than those that carry signs show president with a bone through his nose in loincloth, carry monkey stuffed toys to rallies, irrationally question his citizenship and much more, can anybody spell "niggar" as seen at tea party rally.

Pres. Obama is not even a liberal, much less a socialist or facist, he's a moderate and he is doing exactly what he campaigned on and was legitimately elected to do. Bush turned a budget surplus into a huge deficit, didn't fund two wars, passed and didn't fund large social program for seniors, didn't fund two large tax cuts that greatly favored the wealthy and didn't result in jobs "trickling down" to the masses....these are indisputable facts. Pres. Bush did pass the bailout which kept us from another 30's style depression, most of which has been repaid.

If hothead McCain had won, we'd be at war with Iran and in the breadlines.

Ron,

Thank you for the response. The closest the government ever got to running in the black was when there was a Democratic President and Republicans controlled congress. The U.S. went six years with no new taxes, no new regulatory schemes, and no new entitlements.

However, just like politicians cannot cut spending, they also cannot spending new sources of income. Economist use the term ratchet effect. If the government raises taxes , then during the recovery more money will come to the government and the government will find ways to spend it. Remember Bush and Gore talking about spending the surplus. Look at how California grew entitlements during both the dot.com boom and the real estate boom.

Also, politicians will not cut spending during the good times. Deificit spending during a recession (the Keynesian solution) requires cutting programs and increasing taxes during the good times. No politician is capable of being a Keynesian and thus, it should never be tried.

The easiest way to cut spending is to start off with an across the board cut so that everyone feels the pain. There should also be no increase in pensions or transfer payments until the budget is balance. That way everyone feels the pain and everyone will want to kill programs so that they will not be cut.

Barack Sambo Obama

Really? That's all you got?

Really?

Fire Geithner NOW

Remember the full statement Dick Cheney repeated over and over again was, "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter."

It isn't just that the Republicans were being fiscally irresponsible, they were doing so because that is what Reagan proved they could/should do.

What Geithner misses is that defecits don't matter as long as they are result of cutting revenue in order to concentrate wealth, or to fund foreign wars, they only matter if they are the result of repairing physical infrastructure, strengthening the social safety net in times of economic hardship and halting the freefall of a collapsing economy.

The only "hard choices" that the Republicans are interested in are further tax cuts and deregulation that will magically have us "grow" out of the deficit.

While the Democratic Party is hardly the poster child for fiscal discipline, they look postively responsible next to the Republicans, who have proven they have no real interest in cutting government spending.

Um, I hope some people realize that "Mike K" and "Myke K" are not the same person. Mike K is a right-wing troll and Myke K is a parody troll. As much as I disagree with Mike K I really don't think he'd ever go so far as to call Obama overtly racist terms. (At least I've never seen him say anything remotely racist.) So, parody trolls, you've crossed a line and you're confusing folks. Let's try to stick to arguments over substance, k?

Yeah, good ironic twist from Geithner (whom I normally don't trust a lot.) But I wish he'd specifically quoted Cheney saying, "Reagan taught us deficits don't matter."

superdestroyer: your point is game to bring up, but it's flawed. Bush's deficits 1. occurred during relatively good times (starting around 2003) when we didn't need to prop up an ailing economy (deficit spending should IMHO be reserved for emergencies) and 2. much of the criticism of Bush was him wasting so much debt on an ill-conceived and bungled war, rather than internal spending to get ordinary Americans to work etc.

Neil,

The left thoroughly criticized Bush for the deficit spending and there are those who will claim that a deficit would not exist without the 2001 tax cuts.

However, the end result is that the Republicans were voted out of office and the Republicans in Congress are not irrelevant to politics. That gives the Democrats complete control over budgeting and spending and the Democrats are not only spending at a faster rate, they are planning massive expansions of entitlements and other government programs. Why can't the Democrats remember the Clinton Administration are to as little as possible instead?

I will agree, we should admire Clinton and both parties working together for deficit reduction and close to balancing the budget in late 90s. Indeed I was sad to see that ruined in Bush's term. We'll need to try that again, but again: in such a crisis deficit spending (carefully to be sure and not tricked up for politics) is needed for awhile (indeed many economists say we needed for stimulus spending.) You realize, we can't cut taxes anymore (as teapartiers want) without totally ruining deficit reduction. I can accept that it may not be good to let all the previous cuts expire soon.