WE CAN'T LET THE GOP DESTROY AMERICA!!!

UPDATE: Dave Johnson at SEEING THE FOREST writes that Drudge misleadingly headlined this as "US TRIPLE-A CREDIT RATING UNDER THREAT FROM SOARING WELFARE COSTS..."

The GOP's fiscal policies are voodoo economics that can only do great harm to America.

Moody’s says spending threatens US rating

By Francesco Guerrera, Aline van Duyn and Daniel Pimlott in New York

Published: January 10 2008 18:36 | Last updated: January 10 2008 18:36

The US is at risk of losing its top-notch triple-A credit rating within a decade unless it takes radical action to curb soaring healthcare and social security spending, Moody’s, the credit rating agency, said on Thursday.

The warning over the future of the triple-A rating – granted to US government debt since it was first assessed in 1917 – reflects growing concerns over the country’s ability to retain its financial and economic supremacy.

In its annual report on the US, Moody’s signalled increased concern that rapid rises in Medicare and Medicaid – the government-funded healthcare programmes for the old and the poor – would “cause major fiscal pressures” in years to come.

Unlike Moody’s previous assessment of US government debt in 2005, Thursday’s report specifically links rises in healthcare and social security spending to the credit rating.

“The combination of the medical programmes and social security is the most important threat to the triple-A rating over the long term,” it said.

Steven Hess, Moody’s lead analyst for the US, told the Financial Times that in order to protect the country’s top rating, future administrations would have to rein in healthcare and social security costs.

“If no policy changes are made, in 10 years from now we would have to look very seriously at whether the US is still a triple-A credit,” he said.

Moody’s did once threaten to cut the rating of some of the US Treasury’s debt when Congress refused to pass the president’s budget in the mid-1990s.