Free Republic

What caused the United States to lose its AAA rating for the first time in 94 years, a rating that withstood two world wars, the Great Depression and (most of) the Great Recession, and a costly military buildup that bankrupted and demolished our Cold War foe, the Soviet Union, without a direct shot fired? Was it the dastardly Tea Party, with its demands for fiscal sanity and a solution to an oncoming tsunami of entitlement liabilities? According to the man who rates sovereign debt for the agency that downgraded the US, not really:

Two years into the Obama administration and the overused tactic of claiming crises to push legislation is becoming tiresome. Remember, immediately after President Obama came into office, we were warned that if the massive Stimulus program wasn't passed immediately, unemployment would go up above 8.1 percent. And the health care takeover had to be passed by August 2009 or public and private health care costs would spiral out of control. Of course, it is now obvious that neither the stimulus program nor Obamacare had any prospect of accomplishing their stated goals. And then there was the start treaty with Russia...