WASHINGTON, February 16—Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner today admitted under questioning from Sen. Sessions that the president’s own budget is “unsustainable.” Sec. Geithner made a similar admission last year, when he said that “with the president’s plan, even if Congress were to enact it and even if Congress were to hold it and reduce those deficits to three percent of GDP over the next five years, we would still be left with a very large interest burden and unsustainable obligations over time.”

Testifying before the House Budget Committee today, U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told Chairman Paul Ryan the following:

“We’re not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term problem. What we do know is we don’t like yours.”

Obama’s budget proposal contains the following chart:

At one point during the hearing, Ryan brought out this chart illustrating the impact of the Ryan debt plan, the one Geithner said “we don’t like”:

And here was the exchange between Geithner and Ryan, after Ryan pointed the terrifying baseline (in red):

GEITHNER: You could have taken [the chart] out [to the year] 3000 or to 4000. [Laughs]

RYAN: Yeah, right. We cut it off at the end of the century because the economy, according to the CBO, shuts down in 2027 on this path.  And that’s no joke, Mr. Geithner.

Graphs and narrative via Doug Ross