From S&P’s downgrade to Mitch McConnell — connecting the dots
Politics • August 2011 • Views: 1,835
Standard & Poor’s U.S. credit rating downgrade press release (Page 3, under the Rationale heading):
The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy.
Here’s Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell agreeing that the GOP did exactly what S&P describes above:
“I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting. Most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this — it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming. And it focuses the Congress on something that must be done.”
And here he also broadcasts his plans to continue doing it in the future:
“What we have done, Larry, also is set a new template. In the future, any president, this one or another one, when they request us to raise the debt ceiling it will not be clean anymore. This is just the first step. This, we anticipate, will take us into 2013. Whoever the new president is, is probably going to be asking us to raise the debt ceiling again. Then we will go through the process again and see what we can continue to achieve in connection with these debt ceiling requests of presidents to get our financial house in order.”
I covered the McConnell quotes in my previous LGF Page but I felt it was worth putting it all together in one place.