Today’s Senate hearing on the confirmation of Jack Lew as Treasury Secretary isn’t attracting as much attention as those of Chuck Hagel and John Brennan. Nor is it likely that Republicans will have any more success in derailing his nomination than they did with the president’s national security picks. Nevertheless, the proceedings will afford Republicans plenty of opportunities to skewer both the Obama administration’s economic policies as well as give the nominee a hard time about his time leading a financial institution that got bailed out by the government after the 2008 fiscal meltdown. But the real focus on Lew today ought not to be on the slim chance that he will slip up in a way that will delay his confirmation. Rather, senators and the public should be zeroing in on the ominous similarity between something Lew said under oath in 2010 when he was White House Budget Director and a key point in the president’s State of the Union address last night.
Testifying before the Senate Budget Committee in 2010, Lew pledged that the budget the president had put forward as an alternative to Republican plans “would not add to the debt.” If that sounds familiar this morning, it should. Last night during the SOTU, President Obama presented another laundry list of liberal projects that he said Congress must enact into law. But, he added, no one should worry about the cost since the left-wing wish list of “investments” would add “not a single dime” to the nation’s debt. Unfortunately for the president, a hard look at the facts about Lew’s testimony makes the president’s current pledge look like just another politician’s fib.
