U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Wednesday that the bipartisan cooperation that sparked the tax deal at the end of last year was an important contributor to business confidence.

The job of government is to create the conditions for businesses to expand and to thrive and what we need to do in Washington is make sure we're creating a better environment for business to act with a little more confidence about the future, he said at an event sponsored by The Atlantic magazine.

He credited the tax cut package with helping to provide a business spark. You saw people in Washington come together on a bipartisan basis to do something productive for the economy, Geithner said.

(Reporting by Tim Ahmann, Editing by W Simon )

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