WASHINGTON, Sept. 11 (Xinhua) -- U.S. House Speaker John Boehner on Tuesday said he had no confidence in reaching an overall debt reduction deal between the White House and Congress to avoid a credit downgrading, hours after global rating agency Moody's Investors Service warned that it could strip the United States of its triple-A credit rating.
The top GOP lawmaker said he was "not confident at all" in reaching a bipartisan debt reduction plan in the near term at a news conference, adding that the Senate has not done its job of addressing the looming tax increases and spending cuts.
U.S. Congressional leaders on July 31 inked an agreement of a short-term spending bill to extend government funding for six months after it runs out by Oct. 1, but the agreement stopped short of listing long-term fiscal adjustment goals to slash the ballooning U.S. public debt.
"Budget negotiations during the 2013 Congressional legislative session will likely determine the direction of the U.S. government 's Aaa rating and negative outlook," Moody's said Tuesday in a statement.
"If those negotiations lead to specific policies that produce a stabilization and then downward trend in the ratio of federal debt to GDP over the medium term, the rating will likely be affirmed and the outlook returned to stable. If those negotiations fail to produce such policies, however, Moody's would expect to lower the rating, probably to Aa1," said Moody's.
About 53 percent of the surveyed U.S. economists did not think Congress would be able to lessen the impact of 560 billion U.S. dollars in tax increases and spending cuts, set to take effect by the end of this year, a scenario dubbed as the "fiscal cliff," revealed a recent USA TODAY survey.
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