Geithner confident Congress to raise debt limit

But a top Republican quickly pushed back Sunday and said there was no guarantee the Republicans would agree to increase the US$14.3 trillion debt ceiling without further controls on federal spending.

Geithner told ABC television's “This Week” and NBC's “Meet the Press” that Republicans told U.S. President Barack Obama in a White House meeting last Wednesday that they will go along with a higher limit.

“I want to make it perfectly clear that Congress will raise the debt ceiling,” Geithner said in the interviews taped Saturday and aired Sunday.

He said the leaders told Obama that they couldn't play around with the government's credit rating. “They recognize it, and they told the president that on Wednesday in the White House,” Geithner said.

But Rep. Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, said that while it was true nobody wants the country to default, it's essential to address future borrowing at the same time.

“We want cuts in spending accompanying a raising of the debt ceiling. And that is what we have been telling the White House,” Ryan said on CBS' “Face the Nation.”

Ryan wrote the 2012 budget blueprint that the House passed on Friday. The plan for the budget year that begins Oct. 1 cuts US$6.2 trillion over the coming decade and transforms Medicare — the government health insurance program for the elderly — for people now under 55 when they retire.

The government is projected to reach its borrowing limit no later than May 16 and risks going into an unprecedented default. Geithner has said he will have a few options he can use that would delay a possible government default until about July 8.

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