President Obama nominated his chief of staff, Jacob “Jack” Lew, to replace Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Jan. 10, 2013, at the White House. Here is the full transcript of Obama, Geithner and Lew’s remarks:
President Obama nominated White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew as the next Treasury secretary on Thursday. If confirmed by the Senate, Lew will succeed outgoing Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, the president’s longest-serving economic adviser.
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OBAMA: Good afternoon, everybody. Please have a seat.
A little more than four years ago, I stood with Mr. Tim Geithner and announced him as my first nominee to my cabinet. We were barely two months into the financial crisis. The stock market had cratered. The housing market had cratered, as well. Bank after bank was on the verge of collapse. And worst of all, more than 800,000 Americans would lose their jobs in just that month. And the bottom was not yet in sight. So I couldn’t blame Tim when he tried to tell me he wasn’t the right guy for the job.
(LAUGHTER)
But I knew that Tim’s extensive experience with economic policy made him eminently qualified. And I also knew that he could hit the ground running. As chairman of the New York Federal Reserve, he had just spent several sleepless and chaotic weeks immersed in the complexities of the crisis and had been working closely with his Republican predecessor at Treasury to save the financial system.
Then, with the wreckage of our economy still smoldering and unstable, I asked Tim to help put it back together. And thanks in large part to his steady hand, our economy has been growing again for the past three years, our businesses have created nearly 6 million new jobs, the money that we spent to save the financial system has largely been paid back, we put in place rules to prevent that kind of financial meltdown from ever happening again, an auto industry was saved, we made sure taxpayers are not on the hook if the biggest firms fail again.
OBAMA: We’ve taken steps to help underwater homeowners come up for air and open new markets to sell American goods overseas. And we’ve begun to reduce our deficit through a balanced mix of spending cuts and reforms to a tax code that at the time that we both came in was too skewed in favor of the wealthy at the expense of middle-class Americans.
So when the history books are written, Tim Geithner’s going to go down as one of our finest secretaries of the treasury.
(APPLAUSE)
All right, don’t embarrass him.
(LAUGHTER)
On a personal note, Tim has been a wonderful friend and a dependable adviser throughout these last four years. You know, there’s an unofficial saying over at Treasury: no peacocks, no jerks, no whiners. That’d be a good saying for all of Washington: no peacocks, no jerks, no whiners.
(LAUGHTER)
Few embody that ideal better than Tim Geithner. That’s why when Tim was thinking about leaving a couple of years ago...
(LAUGHTER)
... I had to personally get on my knees, with Carole, to help convince him to stay on a little bit longer. And I could not be more grateful to Carole and the entire Geithner family for allowing him to make the sacrifices that so many of our cabinet members ask of their families in serving the country.
Now, the fact is, while a lot of work remains -- especially to rebuild a strong middle class and offer working folks new pathways to rise into the middle class -- our economy is better positioned for tomorrow than most of those other countries hit by the financial crisis. The tough decisions Tim made and carried out deserve a lot of credit for that.
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