Geithner to Meet GOP Freshmen
Politico reports:
The Obama administration is wading into enemy territory Thursday as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner heads to the Hill to address the GOP House freshmen — the driving force behind Republican opposition to a straight debt limit increase.
Geithner’s appearance is another sign that the White House, which hosted the Republican Conference on Wednesday, wants to get moving toward a deal. A symbolic vote Tuesday night on a “clean” debt ceiling increase failed, clearing the way for serious negotiations.
The freshmen, who said they were disappointed by President Barack Obama’s remarks at the White House on Wednesday, are even more skeptical of Geithner, who animates so much of their distaste for the president’s economic policies.
If Geithner wants to win them over, he must clear a high hurdle. Freshmen said he has been warning of an impending debt ceiling deadline for months, issuing at least four dates by which the debt ceiling needed to be raised. Two of those deadlines have since passed. The next, just before the House takes its August recess, raised some eyebrows in the conference.
“He pushed it to the day before we go to recess. If you can’t see a political thing there, ‘Oh, we happen to be OK until just before we go away,’” Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois said Wednesday. “It makes me wonder if that’s a real date.”
Other members of the deeply conservative class described the suspicion the date changes have engendered with the freshmen.
“We all have to be mindful that there is somewhat of a Chicken Little aura about Secretary Geithner. If he’s going to describe economic catastrophes in specific dates, then he needs to be accurate when he does that,” says freshman Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama. “When we keep hearing these ‘the world is coming to an end’ deadlines, then those deadlines come and pass without the projected economic catastrophe, it really weakens his veracity, which in turn may embolden people who think that Geithner is not accurately projecting the economic consequences of not raising the debt ceiling.”
