Obama’s Partisanship Threatens Our Financial Outlook

Standard & Poor’s (S&P) shifted their outlook on the United States’ long-term AAA credit rating from “stable” to “negative,” citing the unlikely bridging of partisan divides on serious fiscal reform until after the 2012 elections. This is the first time since Pearl Harbor that the long-term outlook has been negative. Nikola Swann, S&P’s credit analyst, said, “We believe there is a significant risk that congressional negotiations could result in no agreement on a medium-term fiscal strategy until after the 2012 congressional and presidential elections.”

It is no coincidence that the drop in our rating outlook occurred within a week of President Obama’s fiscal speech in which he spent more time demonizing the Republican proposal than offering solutions of his own to address our $14.3 trillion (a new record hit on April 15, appropriately, our traditional Tax Day) national debt. The politicized speech was not that of a leader looking to fix the problem and move towards putting us on the path to fiscal solvency, but rather one looking to kick the can down the road so he doesn’t have to deal with such a difficult issue during an election season.

President Obama has set the tone for more partisan gridlock, and in doing so has put the country at further financial risk.  This crisis is bigger than any one man, but one man is taking the lead in ushering us into financial ruin for his own personal short-term political gain.  The only way to improve our country’s outlook is to make sure that President Obama’s 2012 election outlook is “negative.”