Tim Geithner, Liar.

I’m sorry if the title of this post offended you, but it’s true. Tim Geithner went on national television today and accused Republicans of something he knows is not true. That makes him a bald-faced liar, by any definition of the word.

The Treasury Department on Sunday accused House Republicans of “praying for default,” because they seem unwilling to raise the debt ceiling.

“Some of them are praying for default,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told “Fox News Sunday.”

Now why would our young tax cheat of a Treasury Secretary do in front of the world and accuse “some” Republicans, who he didn’t even have the courage to name, of praying for a fiscal disaster? Obviously, he knows as well as we that all but five Republicans voted for a “Cut, Cap, and Balance” plan to immediately forestall any threat of default with a rise in the debt ceiling and a significant series of budget cuts.

He also knows, as do we, that the five Republicans who opposed “Cut, Cap, and Balance” did so because they prefer to forestall default with a greater amount of spending cuts that would remove the need to raise the debt ceiling. In other words, they don’t want to extend our credit limit, they want to cut back our spending so we can pay down the balance. Admittedly, that plan doesn’t actually exist in writing, which makes it equal to anything proposed by the President of Democrats in Congress. Can we then say with Geithnerian logic that the President is also praying for default?

Of course not. No one wants the United States to default on its debt.

So why would Geithner tell such a whopper? I’m afraid it comes down to that Ol Debbil Politics. He wants to pressure the Republicans into a short-term deal that would settle the debt ceiling issue through the end of 2012, so that it’s not an issue during the Presidential election (via memeorandum). We already know the financial markets do not want a short-term deal. They fear the uncertainty that has been the hallmark of all of Barack Obama’s tire-patch solutions to our economic woes.

Let’s also consider that the White House already walked away from one short-term deal when it thought it could get a better offer from the Gang of 6. Gabriel Malor put together a reasonable reconstruction of those events in a blog post here. It’s clear that the White House isn’t opposed to all short-term deals, just the ones that don’t raise taxes enough to please the howling left-wing mobs nor give away enough taxpayer money to their well-heeled campaign contributors. And of course, my definition of short-term (18 months) and the President’s definition (8 months) are different. Then again, I’m not interested in the politics of the situation nor am I willing to apply the Cruciatus Curse to the English language until it submits to my hyper-partisan world view.

So, back to Geithner. I suppose I shouldn’t be too hard on the lying cheat. He’s only doing the bidding of his boss. Any flailing around in the puddle of progressive logic we see from him reflects the utter panic that drove the President to the microphones at the end of last week to throw a temper tantrum of the likes we’ve not seen from a Chief Executive in my lifetime. Still, I’d expect a man with even a sliver of self-respect to resign rather than utter such an egregious falsehood as Geithner did today.

But this is politics. I don’t imagine that self-respect enters into it very much.