Freedom Line Blog

In response to questioning from Senator Jeff Sessions during a Budget Committee hearing yesterday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admitted President Obama’s proposed budget creates an “excessively high interest burden” that is “unsustainable.”

The president’s proposal would add $13 trillion in new gross debt and would increase interest payments on the national debt to $844 billion annually by 2021.

There were three people at the center of the federal government’s response to the economic meltdown during the latter months of 2008. President Obama still employs two. Tim Geithner got a promotion from heading the New York Federal Reserve to Treasury Secretary. Now Fed chief Ben Bernanke is up for rehire. And while the Senate Banking Committee had some heated words for the Fed’s handling of the worsening economic downturn, it offered “measured support” for the man responsible for handling the Fed. This, despite labeling the Fed itself as a “failed” regulator doing a “horrible job.”

And yet, Bernanke is widely expected to be confirmed for a second term. Coupled with Geithner’s tax evasion, one is left to wonder what could have possibly disqualified former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson from getting a plumb assignment in the Obama Administration.