In the post below, I noted, “The Dems pursued a strategy of trying to help job seekers by attacking and hamstringing  job providers.”

Today, Congressman Michael Burgess (from this neck of the woods) had a chance to grill Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and made pretty much the same point:

BURGESS: Your own special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program has got several concerns about it. Why not just stop spending on the TARP funds? And why not repeal the program? We don’t need it anymore. The American people never liked it. Let’s just do away with it.

GEITHNER: Let me just point out the disagreement between what your colleague said and I think what most people across the country understand and believe, which is that, if you look at what’s happening in housing, if you look at what’s happening to small businesses, this economy still faces tremendous financial challenges.

BURGESS: What’s happening in small businesses is people are frightened to add jobs, because they don’t know what we’re going to do to them in health care. They don’t know what we’re going to do to them in financial regulation. They’re scared of what we might do with energy prices in the future with cap and trade. Small business — medium sized business is frightened at jobs right now.

I could help the president and his panel. He doesn’t need another program. We don’t need another stimulus. We need to provide some tax relief and then get the heck out of the way, and the American economy will recover as it has always done.

Well said, Congressman.

John Hinderaker over at the Powerline Blog has additional thoughts about the Burgess-Geithner exchange. Well worth a read.