Obama: Politics stalling economic recovery – Post

ATKINSON, Ill. — President Barack Obama continued to portray Republicans as blocking efforts to improve the U.S. economy as he wrapped up a three-day tour of the rural Midwest on Wednesday.

Seeking to cast himself as the rational figure in a contentious debt ceiling drama that ended earlier this month with the U.S. narrowly averting a historic default, Obama argued that politics was at least partly to blame for the sputtering U.S. economy. He pointed out that Standard Poor’s, in explaining its downgrade of the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+, was not worried that the country could not pay its bills, but instead expressed concern over whether the country’s lawmakers could agree on a plan to address the nation’s long-term debt problems in the current U.S. political climate.

And Obama said that he had pushed for a 10-year deficit-reduction deal of about $4 trillion, built on cuts in spending and a tax increase on the wealthiest Americans, but it was blocked by Republicans.

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