So says Michele Bachmann and Jim DeMint, and likely many other Republicans, after the downgrade by S&P of American bonds.  Gary Gross, who lives in Bachmann’s district, covers her demand for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s scalp:

BACHMANN: That’s right Greta. Tonight’s decision by S & P to downgrade our credit rating from AAA to AA+ is historically significant. It’s a very serious event for the United States because our country has had a AAA bond rating since 1917. That rating has never been downgraded since before the Great Depression, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the terrorist attacks on 9-1-1.

This president has destroyed the credit rating of the United States through failed economic policy and his inability to control government spending by once again raising the debt ceiling. We were warned by all of the credit agencies that a failure to deal with the debt would lead to this downgrade in our credit rating. But instead, this president submitted a budget that had a $1.5 trillion deficit and then he requested a $2.4 trillion blank check on top of that.

President Obama is destroying the foundations of our economy one beam at a time. I call on the president to seek the immediate resignation of Treasury Secretary Geithner and to submit a plan with his list of cuts that balance the budget this year, turn this economy around and put our people back to work.

I’m very concerned that this administration tomorrow might look for anyone else to blame. They may blame the TEA Party. They may blame the rating agencies or anyone else. They knew this was coming this year in January but they didn’t write a plan and they still don’t have a plan.

That’s letting this administration have it with both barrels, something that should’ve happened weeks, possibly months, before this.

There isn’t a sentence in Michele’s statement that I’d disagree with. President Obama’s policies aren’t just failing. It’s that they’re expensive and adding trillions of dollars of debt in just 3 years.

Think about this: This year’s deficit will be equal to or more than the debt added by the Bush administration. What’s worse is that President Obama’s plan hasn’t created enough jobs to keep up with population growth. Obamanomics certainly hasn’t created a real economy, either.

The Daily Caller reports on DeMint’s demand:


DeMint, a hardline conservative Republican, also criticized the deal brokered by Congress to end the debt crisis as “not a serious attempt to solve our spending and debt problem.”

As Allahpundit noted last night, Geithner should probably resign for no other reason than publicly poo-poohing the idea of a downgrade in the spring.  That kind of bad guesswork has been a hallmark of this administration’s economic policies.  Given that Geithner is now the most senior of all Obama’s economic advisers, he should be the one to fall on his sword now.

There is another symbolic reason to demand Geithner’s resignation, too.  The Secretary of the Treasury has a responsibility to safeguard the standing of American currency and credit.  If Geithner couldn’t get Obama to change direction to ensure that American credit remained strong, then he should have resigned in protest.  If his advice led to Obama’s refusal to deal with the structural debt problems that led to the downgrade, then he should resign in shame.

Either way, the US and the Obama administration need to show a change in direction, and since Obama won’t be resigning, Geithner has to go.  But he shouldn’t be the only one to fall on his sword, either.  Jacob Lew, the OMB director, should also resign in disgrace, as well as whoever remains on Obama’s board of economic advisers.  In order to restore some confidence and demonstrate a new direction, this administration needs to clean house and revise its policies in a significant manner.

Will Geithner resign?  He was already halfway out the door, according to some reports, when Obama and his chief of staff William Daley tried talking him into staying.  The White House might resist those calls for resignation in order to keep blaming conservatives for refusing to pass tax hikes, but that’s not going to convince anyone who understands that our structural debt crisis goes way beyond any help on the revenue side.

However, this is equivalent to closing the barn door after the horse has bolted — and then mated, raised several more horses, who then bolted and raised herds of their own.  Geithner and the rest of the Obamanomics authors should have resigned when their Porkulus package failed and unemployment stayed above 9% after spending almost a trillion dollars.  They certainly should have resigned when the Commerce Department revised the GDP numbers over the last several years and showed that the “recovery” was nothing but smoke and mirrors.

It’s time for a completely new fiscal policy direction, and Geithner and his cohorts in this administration cannot and will not supply it.  The time for them to go has been long, long overdue.