Boehner: Deal on Fiscal Cliff Unlikely
John Boehner, the Republican House speaker, said Tuesday it was unlikely a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff could be reached.
"I'm not confident at all," Boehner said in response to a reporter's question.
"Listen, the House has done its job" on the fiscal cliff "that will cost our economy some 700,000 jobs," he said.
"The Senate at some point has to act. And on both of these, where is the president? Where's the leadership? Absent without leave."
Moody's said if the fiscal cliff happened, it would need evidence "that the economy could rebound from the shock before it would consider returning to a stable outlook."
Mufteeva Inna, an analyst at Natixis, noted that Moody's final outcome depended heavily on the Nov. 6 election results.
Will Partisanship Prevail?
"If the Congress remains divided, independently of the name of the president, one should expect another round of fierce partisan negotiations on all fiscal issues involved," she said.
Moody's said its rating outlook also assumes a relatively orderly process for the increase in the government's legal debt limit, which likely would be reached around the end of this year.
It said it would likely place the U.S. debt rating under review after the debt limit is reached but several weeks before the Treasury's resources are exhausted, noting it took a similar action during the summer of 2011's debt-ceiling battle.
A year ago the United States, for the first time in its history, lost its triple-A rating as another ratings firm downgraded the nation after lawmakers remained in an impasse over fixing the fiscal deficit.
Standard & Poor's cut the rating one notch to AA+ in August 2011 and lowered its outlook to negative, citing the political deadlock over the deficit.
In June, S&P maintained that action, warning that the reasons for the downgrade remained in place and that if anything they were deteriorating.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2012
