Obama: We'll Always Be AAA

Barack Obama did his best to reassure the country after the Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the US credit rating. S&P pulled the trigger “not so much because they doubt our ability to pay our debt,” Obama explained, but because “they doubted our political system’s ability to act.” But Obama sees no reason to worry; markets still value US debt as safe, and “we didn’t need a ratings agency to tell us we need a balanced, long-term approach to deficit reduction.”

Obama reiterated calls for policy initiatives like tax code reform, cuts to Medicare, an extension of payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits, and a new infrastructure bank. “We’ve been going through a tough time for the last two and a half years,” Obama said, but thanks to its people, the country will survive. “Markets will rise and fall, but this is the United States of America. No matter what some agency may say, we’ve always been and always will be a AAA country.” (More Barack Obama stories.)