Making the Cut

摘要

In early August, Standard & Poor's (S&P) downgraded the United States' credit rating to AA+, one level below the top tier of AAA, knocking the U.S. out of the elite class and sending the stock market into a frenzy. S&P is one of three agencies that rate credit issues (Moody's Investor Service and Fitch Ratings are the others) and the only one to downgrade the U.S. In the same month, Congress passed a deficit reduction mandate that created a super-committee charged with finding ways to cut spending from Cabinet-level agencies by $971 billion over the next decade. The super-committee is supposed to come up with a plan by November for an additional $1.2 to $1.5 trillion in savings. With the national debt hovering in the trillions of dollars, U.S. taxpayers can only speculate what will be cut next.