Tim Geithner

The biggest long-term fiscal problem we have as a country is the rate of growth in health-care costs.

We have to find a way to give the American people confidence that we are going to have a framework that brings these deficits down.

We are not going to do new things, new, expensive things, long-term commitments, without paying for them.

We have established by the Congress an independent Fed with a basic obligation to make sure we keep prices low and stable over time.

The biggest threat to long-term solvency of Medicare and Medicaid is a health-care system that has enormous hidden costs.

The Bankruptcy Code is not an effective tool for resolving the failure of a global financial services firm in times of severe economic stress.

You have a financial system that is more stable. Credit is more available. People can borrow at much lower cost.

We can't put the country in the position where we enter the next crisis with a limited set of tools.

But it is also true that almost any measure of financial health for this country, in January of this year, was still in signs of emergency.

I think the U.S. financial system today is in substantially stronger shape than it was 3 months ago, 6 months ago, 9 months ago, and on the eve of this recession.

The only way to deal effectively with the moral hazard risk created by the consequences of this crisis and by the too big to fail problem is to make sure there is a set of reforms in place.

We do not have a mortgage market today except for that directly supported by the Government.

Clarity about strategy, matched by resources in authority, is central to confidence.

But if you think through what happens when you let default happen, consider the trauma caused by Lehman's default to get a sense of the damage that can result.

We wanted to make sure we were focusing on those problems that were central causes of this crisis.

I think a necessary part of the solution for the U.S. financial system will be a more effective body to bring together the responsible supervisory agencies.

Senator, you're absolutely right that one of those things that helped produce this crisis was that, in our country, we allowed people to choose their regulator, to put risk in areas where they thought it was going to be least…

This issue of too-big-to-fail moral hazard is a really important thing.

I think this Government should have moved earlier to address this crisis.

The Budget Committee deals in hallucinations, and the Appropriations Committee deals in facts.

I think a necessary part of the solution for the U.S. financial system will be a more effective body to bring together the responsible supervisory agencies.

While we see some initial signs of economic improvement and the financial system is beginning to heal, our country faces very substantial economic and financial challenges.

President Obama and his administration are working to meet these challenges by getting Americans back to work and getting our economy to grow again.

We are going to do what it takes to fix this system. We are going to do no more than what it takes.

I believe that what Congress did at that point was absolutely essential to hold this system together.