I think we are absolutely taking the right policies,” said Christina D. Romer, chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” one of two stops she made on the talk-show circuit. “I have every expectation, as do private forecasters, that we will bottom out this year and actually be growing again by next year.”
Asked on “Fox News Sunday” how confident she is that a year from now Obama administration policies would be succeeding, she replied: “Incredibly confident.”
“We absolutely think that they are going to do the job for the American economy,” Ms. Romer added.
That optimism was not met by Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, and Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee. They cited new estimates released Friday by the Congressional Budget Office that calculated that the White House’s tax and spending plans would create deficits totaling $2.3 trillion more than the president’s budget projected for the next decade.
“The practical implications of this is bankruptcy for the United States,” said Mr. Gregg, who also appeared on CNN. “There’s no other way around it. If we maintain the proposals which are in this budget over the 10-year period the budget covers, this country will go bankrupt. People will not buy our debt; our dollar will become devalued.
“It is a very severe situation. And I find it almost unconscionable that this administration is essentially saying, well, we’re just going to blithely go along on this course of action after they’re getting these numbers.”
Mr. Shelby, speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” said Mr. Obama was going to have to scale back his budget in light of the new estimates: “He’s going to have to. We’re on a — on the fast road to financial destruction, and I see a 20 billion — a $20 trillion deficit in the few years to come,” he said.
Maine Senator Susan Collins, one of the few Republicans to support President Obama’s stimulus package, said she could not back his budget plan, which she said would bring debt to an unprecedented level. “It poses a threat to the basic health of our economy,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Ms. Romer challenged the estimates, calling the figures unrealistically pessimistic.
“There is a question whether the C.B.O. is right,” Ms. Romer said. “So we know that forecasts, both of what the economy is going to do and of what the budget deficit are going to do, are highly uncertain. And especially when you get further out in the C.B.O. numbers, we think they really are too pessimistic in thinking about how fast the U.S. economy can grow.”
Kent Conrad, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said the different estimates could be explained. “In fairness to this administration, they locked down their forecasts three months ago,” said Mr. Conrad, a Democrat of North Dakota. “There’s been a lot of bad news since.”
But he added: “We have got to get back to a more sustainable fiscal circumstance. We cannot have debt pile on top of debt. We cannot run budget deficits in the out-years of over $1 trillion a year.
“I will present a budget that I think begins to move in that direction,” Mr. Conrad said. “It acknowledges in the short term, yes, we have got to have added deficits and debt to give lift to this economy, but longer term, we have got to pivot.”
The state of the economy once again dominated the talk shows on Sunday, the day before the administration plans to unveil its toxic-asset plan. Ms. Romer stressed that the private investors entering a partnership with the government to buy assets of trouble companies would not be subject to the same scrutiny now being leveled at American International Group. In response to the $165 million in bonuses that A.I.G. dispensed to the business unit that caused its near-collapse, the House moved to impose a 90 percent tax on bonuses given out at companies receiving more than $5 billion in bailout money.
“What we’re talking about now are private firms that are kind of doing us a favor,” Ms. Romer said on Fox, “right, coming into this market to help us buy these toxic assets off banks’ balance sheets. And I think they understand that the president realizes they’re in a different category, and I think they are going to have confidence that they’re going to be able to come into this — into this program.”
The job security of Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner was another topic of conversation on Sunday, with both Democrats and Republicans saying that they favored giving him more time.
“In the area of trying to stabilize the financial sector of our economy, they’re doing the right things,” Mr. Gregg said. “They haven’t done it as definitively as they should have, clearly. We would have liked a plan that was more definitive earlier, but they are moving in the right direction, and the Fed is moving in the right direction,” he said.
“I don’t think anybody after two months has been tested enough that I would say he should resign,” Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Other leaders backing Mr. Geithner included New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. President Obama reiterated his support for Mr. Geithner during an interview with “60 Minutes” to air Sunday evening.
One exception was Mr. Shelby, who said his confidence is waning daily. “I think he’s probably on shaky grounds now, at least with the Congress and a lot of the American people,” he added.
Ms. Romer dismissed talk of a resignation as “really silly.”
“Tim Geithner is an excellent secretary of the treasury,” she said.
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