Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Wednesday blamed "misguided” Bush administration policies for running up huge fiscal deficits and called for an end to tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

Striking a note of austerity in prepared remarks to a conference sponsored by the Center for American Progress and the American Action Forum, Geithner said extending tax cuts for those making over $250,000 a year will only add to deficits.

"Borrowing to finance tax cuts for the top two percent would be a $700-billion fiscal mistake,” he said in speech excerpts released by the U.S. Treasury ahead of the address later on Wednesday. “It’s not the prescription the economy needs now, and the country can’t afford it.”

Ahead of November’s U.S. congressional elections, President Barack Obama’s Democratic party is struggling to maintain its support as the economic recovery slows with unemployment high.

Geithner harked back to the former Clinton administration’s record of posting surpluses in the late 1990s, contrasting it with the succeeding Bush administration that he said ran up huge debts, caused Americans’ incomes to stagnate with few jobs created.

"We are living today with the damage that misguided policy caused,” Geithner said, adding that country needed to choose a new course.

"Rather than recreating a false prosperity fueled by debt and passing the bills on to the next generation, we need to restore America to a pro-growth tax and fiscal policy,” he said.

It was Geithner’s second major address of the week, following his trip to Wall Street on Monday to urge big banks to step up and make more loans, while pledging not to pile new rules on top of old during the implementation of a financial regulatory overhaul.

Tax cuts that were put in place during the Bush administration are scheduled to expire at the end of this year. Republicans have been making a case for extending them by saying that not doing so would effectively mean a tax increase that might further hobble a soft recovery from recession.

Geithner has argued that ending the cuts for those earning over $250,000 — while extending them for those who make less — would only affect one or two percent of Americans.

Global investors are closely monitoring U.S. efforts to rein in budget deficits for fear that failing to do so might hurt the country’s ability to keep borrowing and to expand output.

Geithner said on Tuesday in an New York Times editorial that the U.S. economy was healing but conceded it “has a long way to go before reaching its full potential.”

He also said the effects of the deep recession that followed the 2007-2009 financial crisis were a lingering burden that needed to be dealt with in order to spur more vigorous growth.

"We have a long way to go to address the fiscal trauma and damage across the country, and we will need to monitor the ups and downs in the economy month by month,” Geithner wrote