Remember this comment from this morning, and cite it, and repeat it, the next time you hear some Democrat argue that the debt ceiling deal somehow hurt the economy:
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: So this won’t cost us jobs?
TIM GEITHNER: No, it will not.
From the beginning, I expected that one of Obama’s goals in the debt ceiling negotiations was to get the Republicans to take as much ownership of the economy as possible – or at least begin to set up that narrative – so that he has a scapegoat for economic woes until November 2012. “I wanted to spend more on job creation, but Republicans would rather leave tax rates low on corporate jets. I wanted to do more to help struggling families, but they felt it was more important to help out hedge fund managers.”
Of course, there’s a glaring flaw in that argument: The debt ceiling deal was so harmful and destructive to the recovery that Americans have no choice but to reelect the president who signed it into law.
Either way, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner just got the Republicans off the hook for job losses in the coming months. If Obama, or David Axelrod, or Debbie Wasserman Schultz, or some other Democrat attempts to blame the high unemployment rate on the debt ceiling deal, they’re contradicting the administration’s chief mind on economic matters.