Obama: Rating Downgrade Brings ‘New Urgency’ on Deficit

Posted August 8th, 2011 at 2:10 pm (UTC-5)
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U.S. President Barack Obama says he hopes last week’s downgrading of the U.S. credit rating will give lawmakers “a renewed sense of urgency” to agree on more significant reductions in the government budget deficit.

Mr. Obama repeated his calls for wealthy Americans to pay more in taxes, and what he called “modest adjustments” in costly government health care programs like Medicare, in order to cut the gap between government revenue and spending.

The president said he disagreed with the decision by Standard & Poor’s to lower the U.S. credit rating by one level , and he said the markets “continue to believe our credit is triple-A.” But he said the downgrade does reflect “a legitimate source of concern” about the ability of U.S. politicians to make the hard choices needed for long-term deficit reduction.