President Barack Obama says the U.S. always is and always has been a triple-A country, despite its rating agency downgrade.
President Barack Obama took care not to name Standard & Poor’s as the organization that downgraded the United States credit rating from AAA to AA+.
Lack of political will in Washington is a problem according to the president.
The challenge is the need to tackle deficits over the long term. Obama claimed that we have made about all the cuts we can.
He says now that two more additional steps are necessary. Tax reform and adjustments to health care programs — tax reform that will ask those who can afford it to pay their fair share, and modest adjustments to health care programs like Medicare.
Obama discarded the decision of Standard & Poor to lower the credit rating — claiming that Warren Buffet would give the United States a quadruple-A rating if there were such a thing.
Moody has said a downgrade is possible from their agency. A top Moody’s analyst, Steven Hess, reiterated that the United States is running out of time to reduce its debt burden before Moody’s, too, would downgrade the the U.S. rating if lawmakers fail to come up with additional deficit-reduction measures by the end of 2013.
The Dow dropped another 200 points in the 10 minutes following his press conference.
Timothy Geithner has told President Obama that he will stay on the job as Treasury secretary, ending speculation he would leave the administration.