Geithner: Romney's women jobs lost numbers 'ridiculous'
April 15, 2012
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner criticized likely GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney several times Sunday morning, calling his numbers attacking of President Obama on women's job losses "ridiculous."
Geithner made his sharpest hitback at Romney on ABC's This Week before repeating the criticism of the former Massachusetts governor on NBC's Meet The Press and CBS' Face The Nation.
"It’s a ridiculous argument, ridiculous." Geithner told This Week host George Stephanapoulos "It’s been largely debunked this week by the people who have looked at it."
Although technically accurate, Romney's mentioning of women making up 92.3 percent of jobs lost under Obama is highly misleading.
Romney picked the date Obama came into office in January 2009 instead of the recession period of December 2007 under former President George W. Bush to June 2009, where men lost more than double of jobs as women did. Women accounted for just 39.7 percent of jobs lost during the recession, which lasted into Obama's term in office.
“This crisis was a very damaging crisis, hurt everybody,” Geithner continued. “And it began in, as you know, in early 2008, and a lot of the early job losses in 2008 affected men because they affected construction and manufacturing. And as the crisis spread and state and local governments were forced to cut back on services and fire a lot of teachers, that causes a lot of damage to women, too.”
WATCH: Video from ABC, which was broadcast on April 15, 2012. (Highlighted clip 4:29 to 6:30)
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