Sen. Gregg Calls for Quick Action on Entitlement Concerns, Confirmation of Geithner
Budget
New Hampshire Union Leader
Jillian Jorgensen
Boston University Washington News Service
Jan. 21, 2009
WASHINGTON—Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., called for quick action Wednesday on the long-term fiscal challenges facing the nation as well as the short-term threats.
Gregg spoke at the beginning of a Budget Committee hearing he co-chaired along with the panel’s chairman, Kent Conrad, D-N.D.,
“It was a good hearing, with the bottom line being that we’ve got a huge problem and we’ve got to get to work on it,” Gregg, the senior Republican on the committee, said after the hearing. “We can’t avoid it any longer, which I think is obvious, but Congress seems to be avoiding it.”
Gregg and Conrad proposed a Bipartisan Task Force for Responsible Fiscal Action in a bill last September to address the government’s long-term financial imbalance and, specifically, the structure of entitlement programs.
“On the horizon, the immediate horizon almost, is the retirement of the Baby Boom generation and the costs which are going to be put on the federal government, which are not sustainable in their present structure,” Gregg said in his opening remarks at the Wednesday hearing.
After the hearing, he said the financial experts who testified warned that action was needed to avoid the “long-term fiscal tsunami” the country is facing because of the cost of entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
“They told us that we’re in serious trouble and they suggested we get down to work,” Gregg said.
The bill Conrad and Gregg proposed last September would fast-track any recommendations from the bipartisan task force to final consideration in the Senate and House.
That approach would be better “than putting policy on the table first and having it shot down by all the different interest groups which always take sides around this town,” Gregg said during his opening statement.
He said the expert witnesses at the hearing suggested that with the focus on short-term changes as part of the economic stimulus package, it would be a good time to address long-term changes as well.
“This is a time when difficult choices will have to be made in the short term, and it will hopefully create an atmosphere where people are willing to make difficult choices for the long term,” Gregg said.
Gregg said prompt confirmation of President Barack Obama’s nominee for Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, was imperative.
“This is a ship without a captain on the issue of how we get out of the mess that we’re in in the financial system, and the captain of that ship would be the Treasury secretary,” Gregg said.
Gregg called Geithner, who has recently come under scrutiny for unpaid income taxes in the past, an “extremely well-qualified and a very strong candidate.”
“We need to confirm him sooner rather than later,” Gregg said. “We just can’t afford to not to have this key player in place. We just can’t afford not to have anybody at the helm of the Treasury Department.”
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