When the S&P downgraded our credit rating last Friday one of the reasons they gave was the inability of Congress to raise revenues, IE tax increases. That’s rather interesting given the Republican front-runner’s handling of credit ratings in the past:
Gov. Mitt Romney lobbied the credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s in 2004 to raise his state’s credit rating in part because Massachusetts had raised taxes during an economic downturn two years earlier.
The claim was part of a presentation to the ratings agency obtained by POLITICO under a state freedom of information law from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Administration and Finance. The Nov. 4 presentation, stamped “confidential,” helped persuade S&P to raise the state’s grade and handed Romney the perfect talking point for last week’s humiliating national downgrade by the same agency.
Romney used tax hikes as a reason to improve his state’s credit rating. That’s interesting coming from the man who wants to lead the party that dismissed that idea from the onset of the debt ceiling debate.