Congressional supporters of the tea party were the driving force behind S&P’s downgrading of the U.S. credit rating, David Axelrod said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” according to
Politico.
“If we had defaulted on our debt, the consequences would have been dramatic and lasting,” President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign strategist said. “It was the wrong thing to do to push the country to that point.”
While the president pushed for compromise, “the tea party brought us to the brink of default,” Axelrod said.
“It was something that should never have happened that clearly is on the backs of those who were willing the see the country default, those very strident voices in the tea party,” he added. “This is essentially a tea-party downgrade.”
Axelrod defended the nation’s full faith and credit and said the United States remains “the safest place to put your money.”
“We can debate the strength of the analysis they did,” Axelrod said, referring to S&P’s downgrade. “They made an egregious error here, but theirs was largely a political analysis, and that is what we should focus on.”
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