'This Week' Transcript: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is interviewed on 'This Week.'

ByABC News
April 14, 2012, 9:23 AM

NEW YORK, April 15, 2012— -- (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS (voice-over): Good morning, and welcome to "This Week."

And they're off. The general election begins, and so do the wars over women.

ROSEN: His wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She's never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing.

ANN ROMNEY: My career choice was to be a mother. We need to respect choices that women make.

STEPHANOPOULOS: The economy.

ROMNEY: The president is so out of touch, I don't think he knew that number.

BIDEN: Could it be that he's out of touch? I tell you what, he missed the movie (ph).

STEPHANOPOULOS: And taxes.

OBAMA: Don't give tax breaks to folks like me who don't need them.

ROMNEY: Does anyone think that raising taxes is going to create more jobs?

STEPHANOPOULOS: Topics this morning for our headliner, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, and our powerhouse roundtable, with Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal, Katrina vanden Heuvel from The Nation, dueling strategists Melody Barnes for Obama, Kevin Madden for Romney, and ABC's Cokie Roberts.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: From ABC News, "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos. It's your voice, your vote. Reporting from ABC News election headquarters, George Stephanopoulos.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Good morning, everyone. The treasury secretary and our powerhouse roundtable are coming right up.

But first, two breaking stories. Overnight, more than 120 tornadoes swept across the Midwest, killing at least five. Ginger Zee from our extreme weather team has been chasing the storms, and she joins us from Wichita, Kansas. And, Ginger, we can see how hard Kansas got hit, and these storms aren't over yet.

ZEE: Luckily, no one was in this house behind me, George, flipped over "Wizard of Oz"-style, but that wasn't the case everywhere. The storm that did this, the tornado, was on the ground for at least five hours, covering 250 miles. A lot of these storms happened overnight. So as the sun comes up around the heartland, we're going to be able to assess the damage and understand more of how many injuries and deaths occurred.

Now, of course, we followed those storms, and we'll continue to follow the threat as it heads northeast today. From the Great Lakes, Northern Plains, all the way south to Houston, the threat exists for isolated tornadoes, damaging wind, and hail. If I had to be more concerned about anyone, it would be northeast Iowa, southeast Minnesota, southwest Wisconsin, and far northwest Illinois.

George?

STEPHANOPOULOS: Right down the middle of country. OK, Ginger, thanks very much. And I know you'll be updating all day long on abcnews.com.

And now to that other breaking story, a scandal involving the Secret Service detail with the president in Colombia. Eleven agents advancing the trip have been put on leave and are being investigated for inappropriate conduct involving local prostitutes. Some U.S. military personnel may also have been involved.

Pierre Thomas joins us with the latest. And, Pierre, do officials now have a handle on exactly what happened? And are they confident the president's security was not compromised?

THOMAS: George, this was an incredible breach of security and a potential security risk, if true. They do think they've accounted for everyone involved. Yesterday, the 11 agents and officers were interviewed and placed on administrative leave.