Geithner says Obama, Congress will reduce deficit in 2011

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Thursday that the Obama administration and Congress will be working together to reduce the nation’s deficits once the recovery is underway.

“The President has made clear that he will not seek any major revenue increases until 2011 when the recovery should be firmly in place,” Geithner said in prepared opening remarks to lawmakers today during a hearing with the House Committee on Appropriations.

“He has, however, been equally clear that once recovery is underway, we must get our fiscal house in order or risk having government borrowing crowd out productive private investment,” he added. “Treasury and the White House will work with Congress to make the tax changes that are necessary to reduce deficits and to do so in a manner that is fair to all Americans.”

Geithner told Bloomberg in an interview Thursday that the Obama administration’s goal is to reduce the deficit to 3 percent of gross domestic product from the 12.9 percent gap expected this year.

The comments come a day after the U.K was warned by a credit rating agency that it could lose its top ‘AAA’ credit rating and amid concerns by investors.

Pacific Investment Management Corp co-chief investor Bill Gross said that the U.S. may eventually lose its ‘AAA’ credit rating.

Gross said that today’s U.S. markets drop were due to concerns by investors that the U.S. is “going the way of the UK – losing AAA rating which affects all financial assets and the dollar.”