Washington, D.C. – Congressman David Schweikert (R-AZ), a member of the House Financial Services Committee, discussed Treasury Secretary Geithner’s latest accusations on the debt ceiling, and what needs to be done to reach a deal on Reuters, Thursday. Below is the video and excerpts from the interview: Here is the link to the video and excerpts to the interview:
REP. SCHWEIKERT: GEITHNER ‘STUNNINGLY PARTISAN’ AND ‘NOT HONEST ABOUT THE NUMBERS’:
"He’s right on one point, time is running out. But I have to express my frustration. If you’ve ever sat through one of the Secretary’s speeches or have been in some of the private meetings as I’ve had with him, he’s been actually very honest about the scale of the problem and how the markets will crush us if we don’t demonstrate we’re bending the debt curve. But then they come out with something that in many ways almost sounds petulant and is actually stunningly partisan. This really disappoints me because I thought he would be one of the point men out of the Administration who would actually keep this discussion somewhat honest about the numbers."
REP. SCHWEIKERT ON DEBT TALK COMPROMISE:
"Look, the Left has to understand that those of us Republicans believe that just to go out and raise taxes will crush economic growth. Though, both Right and Left around here seem willing to have an honest discussion about rebuilding our tax code. But this is something we should have done months ago. We stepped up as the Republican Majority in the House months and months ago, and did a budget. That would have been the time to embrace that and then do the discussion on rebuilding our tax code to create jobs. Now, to trying to play the blame game from this Administration is actually a little outrageous."
REP. SCHWEIKERT ON SEN. MCCONNELL PLAN:
"I appreciate his attempt to try to be creative. But you know people like me, we were elected to come here and do hard things but do the things that save this Republic. And postponing it or finding another gamesmanship way to move it off the books and push it to someone else’s responsibility, I believe is somewhat wrong-headed. Look, this is tough. There’s a lot of folks here who’ve been elected year after year, I believe, not telling the truth about the devastating amount of debt that has been piling up on us and now, to have to look into a camera like this and explain to the American people that we got to change it, we got to change this crazy spending."
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