The United States of America has lost it’s AAA credit rating for the first time in the history of time. It lost it in part because of it’s long term debt and deficits and, to be fair, because of the political nonsense displayed by the Congress and the White House.
The markets are down, at one point down nearly 400 points.
Barack Obama is going to address the nation this afternoon at 1:00.
Here’s what he should say:
- America DOES have a spending problem. While you can debate whether or not the S&P should have made the downgrade move, the point has been made; we need to address our fiscal irresponsibility and that begins with the President of the United States of America. To be sure, there have been bad decisions made along the way. But right now, right here, I am the CEO of the country; the quarterback. And it’s my job to bring us back.
- I have a plan. I am going to address the spending problems that have brought us to where we are. I’ll identify the areas where spending has increased faster than we thought and what we want. I’ll find ways to end programs that don’t work and streamline those that we can. This is going to be painful.
- Taxes on a fragile economy are dangerous; something we don’t wanna investigate. However, where possible the tax code should be rewritten to avoid needless loopholes and poor incentives. It doesn’t serve anyone to implement a 35% corporate tax rate only to have the most powerful corporations hire IRS tax attorneys to avoid paying any tax whatsoever.
Here’s what he will say:
- The credit rating was downgraded last week by Standard and Poor’s. This organization, who largely missed the worthiness of sub-prime securities during the housing boom and brought about the 2007 recession used numbers that were not accurate in arriving at the downgrade decision.
- The political infighting we saw from Congress in the last few weeks was brought about by a minority of the minority. A few select Congressmen felt that America had to be held hostage in order to maintain ideological positions.
- This downgrade is not reflective of America’s ability to pay her debts; it’s a Tea Party downgrade.
