The lowering of the nation’s credit rating by Standard and Poor’s is the latest evidence of how reckless Republican economic policies are harming the country. S&P directly referred to the uncertainty in the political process (created by Republicans who prevented an agreement on raising the debt limit until the last minute) as well as the difficulty in resolving the deficit crisis because “the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act.”
Republicans, who created the deficit crisis, and who have an excellent history of winning the spin wars in recent years due to their expertise in distorting the facts and their domination of the news media, immediately began to distort the report in their favor. The White House has responded:
Over the past weeks and months the President repeatedly called for substantial deficit reduction through both long-term entitlement changes and revenues through tax reform, with additional measures to spark jobs and strengthen our recovery,” press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement.
“That is why the President pushed for a grand bargain that would include all of these elements and require compromise and cooperation from all sides.”
Rather than Obama, who is now the target of more fallacious attacks from the right, Matthew Yglesias sees John Boehner as the big loser here:
The person who looks bad here, in my view, is John Boehner. President Obama wanted to do a “grand bargain.” The Gang of Six Senators wanted to do a “grand bargain.” And it looked for a moment like Speaker Boehner was going to be part of a grand bargain. But ultimately he decided that he didn’t want to sign a deal that would fracture his caucus, so the grand bargain talks fell apart. And yet the little bargain that did eventually pass the House ultimately couldn’t pass with Republican votes alone. So what did Boehner really achieve? If he was ultimately destined to strike a deal with the White House that needed Democratic votes to pass the House, why not go for the grand bargain? According to Boehner “When you look at this final agreement that we came to with the white House, I got 98 percent of what I wanted. I’m pretty happy.” How happy is he now?
Far more people than John Boehner will be big losers here if the facts get out over the propaganda from the right wing noise machine. Besides Boehner, the big losers here include the Republicans who voted for the massive increase in the deficit under George Bush, listening to claims that “deficits don’t matter,” while opposing Obama’s plans to rescue the economy. The losers also include the extremists, including the Tea Party supporters, who played hostage with the economy and made default a real possibility, precipitating the reduction on the credit rating. Unfortunately this turned out to be a hostage crisis where the right wingers killed the hostage.
