Perhaps, this is the second stumble of the incoming Obama cabinet, but it clearly isn’t a full faced fall. The Senate has delayed the confirmation hearings for Timothy Geithner, Obama’s choice for Treasury Secretary.
All the delays come amid reports that Geithner had not reported some taxes and formerly had in his hire an immigrant worker whose green card had expired.
“He’ll clearly get confirmed, clearly. That’s a given,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus told reporters on Capitol Hill.
Still, the delay in the hearing, which Baucus had hoped to hold this week, likely will mean Obama will enter office next Tuesday without a battle-tested Treasury secretary at his side during the worst U.S. economic crisis since World War II.
Apparently, some Republicans want to stall until after the inauguration. According to most the delay is nothing more than acknowledgment that Geithner will have to answer some tough questions. Of course, we have seen others in the past fall by the wayside concerning past employees without green cards.
Geithner will probably face the questions, take a little flack and be confirmed. The bottomline for America is that we need Geithner as Secretary Treasurer more than we need to make a point. This is one of those cases when we really cannot afford “principle.” Besides, if the best we can fault Timothy Geithner for is not paying a portion of his taxes in a timely manner… although they have now been paid… and that once upon a time he had a worker who had failed to have a green card renewed, well maybe we need to weigh the pros and cons.
Obviously, Geithner is a stumbling point. However, with the economy going down the drain quicker than a dose of Draino, someone needs to grab the reins. We need someone sitting in the money seat on Day One. And, we damn well better be hoping that Geithner has some new ideas.
After passing the plate in Congress, Paulson handed off the booty to the big banks with absolutely no transparency, as they say. And, Ben Bernanke in London in recent days is talking in terms of the Big T… that’s trillion plus… for the banks. Citigroup has become the hole in the dike, struggling to stay solvent (although no one believes they are) while hemorrhaging dollars faster than the Fed can print them.
So, no matter the stumbles of Geithner, he has to be better than Paulson or Bernanke. Oh, God! I hate I said that. We all know what happens when you think it can’t get any worse.
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