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General Electric‘s Keith Sherin, chief financial officer, said that if Congress were to solve the fiscal cliff by the end of the year, the problem would not end there, Reuters reports.
Speaking at an event sponsored by MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Sherin said the primary responsibility of the elected officials is to manage the country’s deficit and “they’re not getting it done.”
“It’s in everybody’s interest to find some way to have a bipartisan solution to deal with our deficit situation, which cannot continue obviously at the level they’ve been,” he added. “It’s going to be a combination of raising revenue and cutting long-term spending.”
GE refinanced a $5 billion bond in order to avoid any disruptions to debt markets that could result if the U.S. economy went over the fiscal cliff and the company now holds enough cash on hand to run for more than a year without accessing capital markets, Sherin said.
Sherin said he believes the Congress will not be able to solve all the fiscal problems by December but it is “highly likely” they will solve the budget problems by setting up a timetable for the long term.
