Geithner: GOP tax policies a ‘$700 billion fiscal mistake’

[babsbunny]

Geithner: GOP tax policies a ‘$700 billion fiscal mistake’

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0804/geithner-gop-tax-700-billion-mistake/

By Agence France-Presse
Wednesday, August 4th, 2010 -- 6:01 pm

WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner took up the role of political attack dog Wednesday, lambasting Republican tax policies as a "700 billion dollar fiscal mistake."

In a rare partisan jab, Geithner assailed Republicans for backing tax cuts for "the top two percent" of US earners, a policy he said would punch a hole in government budgets for the next decade.

"Borrowing to finance tax cuts for the top two percent would be a 700 billion dollar fiscal mistake," Geithner told the center-left Center for American Progress in Washington.

[Toucano]

1. One of his predecessors, Tom Snow, resigned over it didn't he?

I'm going to look for that story.

On edit:

It was Paul O'Neill, not Snow.

A report commissioned in 2002 by O'Neill, while he was Treasury Secretary, suggested the United States faced future federal budget deficits of more than US$ 500 billion. The report also suggested that sharp tax increases, massive spending cuts, or both would be unavoidable if the United States were to meet benefit promises to its future generations. The study estimated that closing the budget gap would require the equivalent of an immediate and permanent 66 percent across-the-board income tax increase. The Bush administration left the findings out of the 2004 annual budget report published in February 2003.
O'Neill's private feuds with Bush's tax cut policies and his push to further investigate alleged al-Qaeda funding from some American-allied countries, as well as his objection to the invasion of Iraq in the name of the war on terror — that he considered as nothing but a simple excuse for a war decided long before by neoconservative elements of the first Bush Administration — led to his resignation in 2002 and replacement with John W. Snow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_O'Neill_(businessman)#Bush_Administration

[Skink]

2. I thought Greenspan said we should give the money back?

you mean we borrowed to do this?

[Rosa Luxemburg]

3. Timmy should have a word with Palin about this

put her straight