Somewhat unexpectedly, Standard and Poors downgraded the US debt debt rating to AA+ from our once pristine AAA. I say unexpectedly because one has to assume that the Obama administration was using it's considerable weight to bully S & P into not taking this action and embarrassing an already reeling White House.
The view from the left can be easily summed up by this headline at liberal circle jerk Think Progress:
Boehner’s Folly Leads To S&P Downgrade of US Debt
No, it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Obama has mired us in more debt in his first 2.5 years than the rest of the presidents prior to him. That cannot be it and to admit it would be to rebut every single liberal economic thought of the last 60-years.
According to liberal shill and all-around hack Matt Yglesias, it's no big deal:
I’m no expert, but I don’t think S&P downgrading its rating of US debt will, as such, have any really big practical implications other than becoming the next political football. If you look at S&P’s definition of the AA rating, after all, it says: “An obligation rated ‘AA’ differs from the highest-rated obligations only to a small degree. The obligor’s capacity to meet its financial commitment on the obligation is very strong.” Scared yet? Me neither.
I'm sure Matt would have written the exact same thing if this had occurred during the Bush years. But you see, this is the lefty talking point on this; no big deal, it has nothing to do with Obamanomics as a whole or scams like Obamacare in particular and the damn GOP and especially the f-ing "teabaggers" are responsible.
If only they'd have accepted that we need to raise tax rates on those damn rich "millionaire's" (defined by liberals and Obama as anyone making over $200,000 per year) we'd not be in this position. Obama is not to blame at all you see.
I guess acting like a petulant child and screaming "I'm not listening!" when us tea partiers explained the dire situation to them made them miss
this crucial piece of information:
When comparing the U.S. to sovereigns with ‘AAA’ long-term ratings that we view as relevant peers–Canada, France, Germany, and the U.K.–we also observe, based on our base case scenarios for each, that the trajectory of the U.S.’s net public debt is diverging from the others. Including the U.S., we estimate that these five sovereigns will have net general government debt to GDP ratios this year ranging from 34% (Canada) to 80% (the U.K.), with the U.S. debt burden at 74%. By 2015, we project that their net public debt to GDP ratios will range between 30% (lowest, Canada) and 83% (highest, France), with the U.S. debt burden at 79%. However, in contrast with the U.S., we project that the net public debt burdens of these other sovereigns will begin to decline, either before or by 2015.
Note that the lowest debt-to-GDP nations are one with leadership that is described as conservative and where austerity measures have been implemented (Canada and Germany). As an aside, Canada is also a nation that has utilized it's vast natural resources to keep its people employed, a measure the US has not employed.
Again, at Think Regress, it's all about
increasing revenue (read: tax increases) and not shrinking spending.
Here's a simple solution: cut personal and business taxes, institute a two-year long tax incentive to businesses to hire and expand, repeal Obamacare, incur no new debt in the next year, reform entitlement programs, open up ANWR and the Gulf of Mexico to drilling, rein back on the EPA (and allow newly discovered deposits of
rare earth metals to be exploited for instance) and force Obama to submit a budget--something he shamelessly has not done for years.
Here's a
collection of opinions on the debt rating downgrade at the Atlantic--a website that has skewed so far left the late, great Michael Kelly must be rolling over in his grave.
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