Credit rating agency Moody’s yesterday downgraded the outlook for US debt to “negative” – ​​from “stable” – citing the high deficit of the US government and the reduction of its borrowing capacity.

The decision follows a downgrade of the US debt earlier this year by another one of the so-called big three rating agencies, Fitch, after months of political conflict over the federal government’s borrowing limit.

“Continued political polarization in the US Congress raises the risk that one administration after another will not be able to forge a consensus on a fiscal plan to slow deleveraging,” Moody’s warned in a statement released yesterday.

The opposition Republicans, who control – marginally – the House of Representatives, are expected to present today a temporary measure to prevent a shutdown, the suspension of the operation of federal services, when their current funding margins are exhausted next Friday, November 17.

Moody’s is the last of the big three rating agencies to consistently maintain US creditworthiness at the top level. Fitch downgraded it from triple A to AA+ in August, following S&P Global, which downgraded it to AA+ in 2011.

Although it downgraded its outlook – which suggests that a downgrade is likely in the medium term -, the agency reaffirmed that it maintains the US’s triple-A rating for the time being, recalling its strong economic and credit profile and “the effectiveness of monetary and macroeconomic policy’ of Washington.

Officials of the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden strongly reacted to the house’s announcement.

White House spokeswoman Karin Jean-Pierre called the development “yet another consequence of the extremism and dysfunction of Republicans in Congress.”

“We disagree with changing the outlook to negative. The U.S. economy remains strong and Treasury securities are the world’s most prominent safe-haven assets,” Undersecretary of the Treasury Wally Antigemo said.

He added that Mr. Biden’s administration has demonstrated that it is committed to the sustainability of the US fiscal by promoting measures of 1 trillion. of deficit reduction dollars that were included in the June deal with Congress on the borrowing limit and crafting a proposal to reduce the deficit by nearly $2.5 trillion. dollars over the next decade.