President Barack Obama said Monday that problems facing the United States, with its credit rating downgraded Friday by the Standard & Poor’s agency “can be resolved” but it takes political will.
Obama said it would make its own recommendations “in the coming weeks” to reduce the deficit and urged his Republican opponents to accept higher taxes for the wealthiest Americans.
This is the first public appearance of the U.S. president after the historic decision of the agency Standard & Poor’s on Friday to reduce the rating of the biggest world economy from AAA to AA+.
“Whatever some agencies say, our country has been and will always be a AAA-rated country”, Obama said in a speech at the White House, insisting that global investors continue to see the U.S. economy as one of the most safe.
The President admitted, however, that disputes between Democrat and Republican parties undermine Washington’s efforts to solve the problems of the U.S. economy and urged Democrats and Republicans to work together to find a balanced solution to the country’s huge deficit that would reach 1,600 billion dollars in 2011.
“The good news is that economic issues can be resolved quickly and we know what to do to solve them”, assured the U.S. president.
He said that the solution to the deficit is to increase taxes for the wealthiest Americans while cutting moderately the federal budget on health insurance programs for the elderly.
“The use of these reforms do not require radical decisions. It requires common sense and compromise”, he said.
Barack Obama has already proposed this formula in complex negotiations on raising the debt ceiling, which resulted in an agreement last week.