Our political Quote of the Day comes from President Barack Obama who reportedly said this at the contentious debt ceiling reduction talks that have failed so far:
If Moody’s, the credit rating agency that announced a review of U.S. credit, downgrades the United States, President Obama said, “it will be a tax increase on every American.”
There needs to be a long-term debt extension, the president argued.
“This may bring my presidency down, but I will not yield on this,” he said.
And, indeed, increasingly some may start come away with the view that this in fact is a goal of some behind the stalemate in talks all along. Anything (even risking the American economy) for a political “win” and defeat.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.