House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Tuesday said he was “not confident at all” that Congress and the White House could strike a major debt deal, hours after Moody’s Investor Services threatened a credit downgrade next year absent an agreement.
Boehner voiced his continued frustration that the Senate has not acted to avert both steep spending cuts and tax increases set to take effect in 2013. The cuts to defense were put in place in 2011 to spur action on a far-reaching fiscal plan.
On Tuesday, Moody’s warned that it would join Standard & Poor’s in downgrading the U.S. credit rating if leaders did not reach an agreement in 2013 that reduced the ratio of debt to gross domestic product.
At a press conference in the Capitol, the Speaker was asked if he was confident the United States could avoid that fate.
“I’m not confident at all,” he replied. “The House has done its job, both on the sequester and on the looming tax hikes that’ll cost our economy 700,000 jobs. The Senate at some point has to act. On both of these, where’s the president? Where’s the leadership? Absent without leave.”
For more on Boehner's comments, click here.
