Today, the Wall Street Journal reported that Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner had supposedly offered a plan in secret that would solve the fiscal cliff impasse. The details of the plan itself were not released; as per the usual Obama administration strategy, the impression of compromise was delivered without actual compromise.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, issued a scathing rebuke to Geithner and President Obama on their continued “secret” negotiations:
“Secretary Geithner has offered no plan on behalf of the President. Newspaper articles and leaks from anonymous aides are not a plan. Until this fantasy ‘plan’ from a secret meeting is made public and scored by the Congressional Budget Office it does not exist. Based on history, we can safely assume that reports that this ‘plan’ saves $4 trillion is a fabrication. It is a distraction that allows the White House to continue to run out the clock so it can have maximal leverage to force through a bad deal in the last minutes before midnight.”
Sessions is exactly correct. The Obama administration tried this same tactic during the last debt ceiling negotiation in 2011. They tried it again during Obamacare. House and Senate Republicans must call Obama out for non-transparency in these negotiations.
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