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Geithner: Now is the time to pass president's jobs bill
President Obama's jobs bill would help put hundreds of thousands of Americans back to work and make a "substantial contribution to growth at a time that we need it," according to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
That is, if Congress decides to listen to the president and pass it.
"The impact it has depends on what Congress actually does, so we want them to do as much as they can as quickly as they can," Geithner told Bloomberg Television. "It would be prudent to pass this now."
"Large parts of the package had Republican support in the past," he said. "There is no reason with the economy growing more slowly not to take advantage of this moment."
The president's first large effort to boost the economy, a stimulus package pushed through Congress in the first months of his presidency, has been widely criticized by Republicans as wasteful and ineffective. Its unpopularity was also evident in the president's Thursday night speech, as the word "stimulus" wasn't uttered once.
But Geithner argued that the stimulus played a key role for the economy, and this new jobs legislation is the next step in a lengthy, concerted effort.
"The initial actions we took to address the crisis were incredibly successful in restarting growth and starting to heal the damage caused by the crisis, but it was a terribly damaging crisis," he said. "We're still healing."
He pointed to the recent spike in gas prices, the economic fallout from the disasters in Japan, the European debt crisis, and the blow to confidence from the summer's debt-limit fight as reasons for continued economic turmoil.
On that latter point, Geithner indicated that problems in the political system were undercutting the basic strength of the nation's economy.
"We have to have the political system catch up to the underlying strength of the economy," he said.
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