if week show in the house we re acting responsibly, curbing back spending and putting ourselves on a trajectory and cutting the deficit and over the course of time balancing the budget we ll be the responsible party. greta: the president says he s not going to do that. the president says i ll be irrelevant. greta: that s going to put us at a stand still. the house can only control itself and i think part of the reason speaker boehner and others, we got ourselves into trouble we listened too much to harry reid and the president. we should do what we believe in, what we were elected to do and pass it over to the united states senate. the senate needs to do its job and they haven t. greta: it s interesting, secretary geithner sent a letter to speaker boehner about the debt and it s interesting, it says congress should act as early as possible to extend the following authority. the reason i thought it was interesting, no place in the letter does he say the president has the autho
treasury, being vacanted by secretary geithner. lew has gone before the full senate for confirmation more than once in the past four years. he hasn t gotten a no vote yet. and the president doesn t expect one now. jack has my complete trust. i know i m not alone in that. in the words of one former senator, having lew on your team is the equivalent as a coach the luxury of having somebody in almost any position and knowing he will do well. and i could not agree more. so i hope the senate will confirm him as quickly as possible. one thing lew may have to work on, though, if he gets the job, his signature. yes. this string of loops is actually jack lew s signature. and it s not a small thing, considering it would go on all the new dollar bills. that s the first one we would see. and frankly, a lot of currency over the next few years. jack assures me that he is going to work to make at least
the banks and make some really smashing reforms. but we ve been there, and it didn t happen. and if jeff sessions is complaining about it, then it just seems like they re making this stuff up because they ve got nothing else to do. they re bored. so the million-dollar payout doesn t that s not going to be you don t think well, the issue, i think donny was right, the issue is should anybody have been getting these payouts back then? the question of now whether this guy who got a payout among the 5 billion people we re dealing with who got payouts yeah. for something. you could never hire someone from the private sector. you could never hire a wall street person for that job. he makes a really important point. you cannot have a treasury secretary without business experience or financial experience. and all of these people attain to. exactly. tim geithner who apparently jeff sessions thinks is a great guy, he was at the fed while this stuff was going down. he was
the president described his move from chief of staff to treasury as bittersweet but insisted the loss will be the nation s gain. over the years, he s built a reputation as a master of policy who can work with members of both parties and forge principled compromises. jack has my complete trust. i know i m not alone in that. in the words of one former senator, having lew on your team is the equivalent of a coach of having the luxury of putting somebody in at any position and knowing he will do well. and i could not agree more. so i hope the senate will confirm him as quickly as possible. senator jeff sessions has accused lew of misrepresenting the effect president obama s proposals would have on the country s deficit. and yesterday on cnbc, the senator said, in part, quote, lew certainly doesn t bring the gauf taus gravitas of former new york fed chair like secretary geithner and others we ve had as secretary of treasury.
perhaps an ominous sign for democrats, some republicans are looking past the fiscal cliff entirely and getting ready for the next fight. senator bob corker spoke moments ago on capitol hill. we immediate to do something in the 4 1/2 to $5 trillion range. so we can begin this year with this and in the rear view mirror and our economy really has the opportunity to take off. i think it is apparent that on these december 29 without anything that s bold in place, that s probably not going to happen. so, unfortunately, for america, the next line in the sand will be the debt ceiling. secretary geithner sent up a letter. it is probably around mid march action has to be taken. we are going to keep an eye on that. he will keep talking. we will bring you the highlights. first, though, this is going to be pretty hot. we have singer/songwriter, a man you are going to want to hear from whose biography could serve as a life lesson in and of itself.