Who got to Geithner? Ex-Treasury Sec backpedals on claim White House told him to 'bend the truth'

I wonder what the Obama White House says to you when you start going off the reservation by publicly telling the truth about how they operate, and what type of leverage they can exercise over you when you're no longer in their employ.

Whatever it is, it works quickly. It certainly got snappy results from Tim Geithner, whose newly released book says the White House wanted him to bend the truth about the relationship between Social Security and the deficit. A day after that story came out, er, Geithner is clarifying:

In an interview with Fox News' Bret Baier, the former Obama Cabinet member denied that the White House attempted to get him to mislead the public. "I was never, ever in the position where anyone in the White House asked me to do that," he told Fox News. "And of course, I would never have done it. But Dan Pfeiffer never asked me to do that."

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Pfeiffer is the White House adviser who apparently gave Geithner a Sunday talk show prep session in 2011. In his memoir, "Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises," Geithner wrote that he objected when Pfeiffer wanted him to say Social Security "didn't contribute" to the federal deficit. "It wasn't a main driver of our future deficits, but it did contribute," Geithner wrote. "Pfeiffer said the line was a 'dog whistle' to the left, a phrase I had never heard before. He had to explain that the phrase was code to the Democratic base, signaling that we intended to protect Social Security." Asked Wednesday about that meeting, Geithner expressed gratitude for Pfeiffer's guidance. He said Pfeiffer was being "helpful," by pointing out "that we didn't want to look like our proposals ... were proposals that were going to appear to some as cutting Social Security benefits to cover the shortfalls." He said the administration didn't want its proposals to be "vulnerable to misperceptions" that they would try to address the deficit "on the backs of Social Security." He said Pfeiffer "was right about that."

Apologies to Fox News for the unusually long excerpt, but it was necessary to get the context. Let's assess this by considering the substance of the matter at hand. An article of faith on the left is that Social Security doesn't contribute to the deficit because FICA taxes provide enough revenue to pay for it, or they would if Congress wasn't constantly absconding with those funds to pay for other spending priorities. Geithner thinks it's stretching the truth to say Social Security doesn't contribute to the deficit at all, but that is part of the liberal canon and Pfeiffer doesn't want Geithner to stray from it -- not because he is worried Obama policies will be misconstrued but because it creates a # in the armor of the Democrat spending machine. By the way, the truth is that Social Security absolutely contributes to the deficit. Why? Because it's money spent, and money is fungible. The nation as a whole has only so much capacity to be taxed before the economy can no longer take the strain, and the evidence of GDP movement in the past several years suggests we are probably beyond our capacity already. Even if it's true that FICA taxes generate enough revenue to pay for Social Security, the fact remains that the FICA taxes are part of the total taxation burden being placed on the American people. The fact that you're imposing that tax means there is less capacity available to tax elsewhere. The total cost of all Social Security benefits paid out in 2012 was more than $1.3 trillion. That is money out the door, and regardless of how you earmark certain tax revenues, the fact remains that every dollar spent on anything contributes to the deficit. If you cut that spending by $1 and left everything else the same, you would reduce the deficit by $1. The next time a liberal tries to tell you Social Security doesn't contribute to the deficit, point that fact out. (By the way, the trustees' own report says Social Security's expenditures have exceeded non-interest income since 2010, so it's absolutely running a deficit now.) So why did Geithner write in his book that Pfeiffer wanted him to bend the truth, only to turn around and claim he didn't really mean that? I'll give you three guesses and the first two don't count. The White House obviously still has ways of making his life difficult if he doesn't play ball, and someone reminded him of that. By the way, the story of Stephanie Cutter trying to get Geithner to express "outrage" at private sector bonuses is pretty funny too. I am not a big fan of the job Geithner did as Treasury Secretary, but it definitely sounds like he is grounded enough in reality that he was very out of place in the Obama White House.