Geithner: Romney’s Claims on Women “Ridiculous”

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is usually reluctant to get involved in presidential politics. But on Sunday he went on a string of Sunday talk shows to talk up the economy and dismiss as “ridiculous and deeply misleading” comments made by Mitt Romney that 92.3 percent of jobs lost during the Obama presidency were held by women, reports the Wall Street Journal.

“It's a ridiculous way to look at the problem,” he said, noting that the recession “was a very damaging crisis, hurt everybody,” reports the AFP. Men were the first to lose jobs in large numbers when the recession started, which was before Obama took office. Geithner did acknowledge that as the recession progressed more women lost jobs mainly due to teacher layoffs, reports CBS News.

Romney’s campaign immediately fired back, saying that “if they move the starting point to the beginning of the so-called recovery, they will find women have benefited from less than one-eighth of the meager job creation.”

For whatever it’s worth, PolitiFact has ruled that Romney’s statements are “mostly false.”

Separately, Geithner said that when the United States hits its debt limit again late in 2012, it would be good for lawmakers to raise it “with less drama and less politics and less damage to the country than they did last summer,” reports Bloomberg.