Aug. 8 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama, breaking his silence on the downgrade of federal debt, said that the U.S. “always will be a AAA country” and that he will release a new proposal to deal with the federal deficit in the coming weeks.
The main obstacle facing the U.S. is the “lack of political will in Washington” to solve the country’s problems, Obama said at the White House in his first public comment since Standard & Poor’s lowered the credit rating on U.S. debt to AA+ from AAA on Aug. 5.
The debt downgrade is “not so much because they doubt our ability to pay our debt,” but because, after a month of wrangling, the rating service “doubted our political system’s ability to act,” he said.
“Markets will rise and fall, but this is the United States of America,” Obama said. “No matter what some agency may say, we’ve always been and always will be a AAA country.”
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