Credibility of Budget Plans

The Labor Party's shadow chancellor of the UK, Ed Balls' blog on August 6, 2011 read, “As I said in my LSE speech in June, deficit reduction plans are only credible if they have political agreement and they deliver on what they promise." Balls questioned whether the US Congress's plans can be delivered with confidence.  

Ed Balls, British Labor MP

Watching the debt fiasco on CSPAN, it was clear that Republicans were the party facilitating the doubt - to say the least. The S&P press release singled out Republicans directly as reason for the downgrade, "Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act."  S&P had counted on the Bush tax cuts to expire and gave the Republicans stance on revenue as reason for the downgrade, whereas nowhere does the release single out Democrats.  

Republican Rep.

Tom Graves (grave digger)

There were talks of shutting down the government.  Republican representative Tom Graves said, "Let's put government in a box and shrink the box over five years."  Democrat Representative Anna Eshoo posted a message in her facebook notes on April 8, 2011 that in the event of a shutdown of the federal government, she would keep her offices in California and Washington DC open and that her staff would remain on duty without pay.  

A June 30, 2011 Bloomberg article noted, "S&P would lower its sovereign top-level AAA ranking to D, the last rung on its scale if the U.S. can’t pay its debt..." and "...Moody’s Investors Service said it will probably reduce its ranking if the government fails to increase the debt limit, leading to a default."  All the while  presidential candidate Michele Bachmann passed through media outlets vowing that she would not raise the debt ceiling.  Of  course FOX News was on board with Senate and House republicans including Republican Representative Bachmann along the way, downplaying the consequences of a downgrade to the creditworthiness of the county's debt or a US default.  When later, S&P did end up downgrading the country's rating to a AA+, even though the ceiling was raised.

Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann

Ed Balls alludes to the mirroring US budget plans of the British budget plans and how the Republicans have not learned lessons by observing the British austerity outcomes, "That is why I am fearful that Republican Congressional leaders have learned the wrong lesson from the British experience over the past twelve months."