Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admitted on Thursday that President Obama’s fiscal year 2013 budget – the most expensive in United States history – would put the country on an "unsustainable" course if enacted.
Additionally, Geithner told House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) that the Obama administration does not have a "definitive solution" to the debt crisis facing the country. The White House does know definitely, however, that it does not like the Republican solution.
RYAN: Leaders are supposed to fix problems. We have a $99.4 trillion unfunded liability. Our government is making promises to Americans that it has no way of accounting for. And so you’re saying, yeah, we’re stabilizing it but we’re not fixing it in the long run. That means that we’re just going to keep lying to people. We’re going to keep all these empty promises going … You’re showing that you have no plan to get this debt under control. You’re saying we’ll stabilize it but then it’s just going to shoot back up. And so my argument is, that’s Europe. That is bringing us toward a European debt crisis.
GEITHNER: What our budget does is get our deficits down to a sustainable path over the budget window. Why do they take off again? Why do they do that?
RYAN: Because we got 10,000 people retiring every day, and healthcare costs going up…
GEITHNER: That’s right. We have millions of Americans retiring every day, and that will drive substantially the rate of growth of healthcare costs. You are right to say we’re not coming before you today to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term problem. What we do know is, we don’t like yours.