While the press and the American people focused on the Justice Department’s latest indictment of President Trump, another no less significant event was taking place on Tuesday afternoon. Specifically, Fitch Ratings announced it had officially downgraded the United States’ credit rating.
The action by Fitch comes a dozen years after Standard and Poor’s downgraded the federal government’s debt rating, meaning that two of the three credit rating agencies have stripped Washington of its vaunted “AAA” status.
It is but the latest indication of how presidents and politicians from both parties have ignored the serious fiscal problems within our nation — and yet another warning of the reckoning we will ultimately face as a people.
Storm Clouds Ahead
Fitch’s statement said that “the rating downgrade … reflects the expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years, a high and growing general government debt burden, and the erosion of governance … over the last two decades that has manifested in repeated debt limit standoffs and last-minute resolutions.”
The objections to “standoffs and last-minute resolutions” seems off-base, seeing as how Congress only pretends to care about fiscal reform in the face of an imminent deadline. None other than Joe Biden himself admitted back in 1984 that Congress “should be focused on taking on the tough measures” to lower spending “when you have to raise the debt ceiling again.”
But when it comes to the deterioration of the nation’s fiscal position, Fitch is bang on the money in highlighting the depth of our problems.
