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President Obama said Monday he hopes Standard & Poor's downgrade of the country's credit rating will give lawmakers a "renewed sense of urgency" on dealing with the nation's deficit problems. In his first public remarks since Friday's downgrade, Obama blamed political gridlock for the nation's setback and insisted the markets still consider the United States a "triple-A country."
S&P's move, Obama said, was "not so much because they doubt our ability to pay our debt … but because after witnessing a month of wrangling over raising the debt ceiling, they doubted our political system's ability to act."
"We didn't need a ratings agency to tell us that we need a balanced, long-term approach to deficit reduction," he added. "That was true last week. That was true last year. That was true the day I took office."
Obama insisted the nation's economic woes are "eminently solvable, and we know what we have to do to solve them."
Still, amid major turmoil on the stock market, Obama stopped short of calling for Congress to come back to Washington from vacation and work on a deficit deal. Instead, he shifted focus to a planned "super committee" in Congress that is set to report its findings by November on how to cut an estimated $1.5 trillion in spending over the next 10 years.
The president said he would lay out his own proposals for spending cuts "shortly" but insisted two steps are crucial: tax reform, including raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, and "modest adjustments" to entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security.
"It's not a lack of plans or policies that's the problem here," Obama said, citing proposals previously floated by the Senate's Gang of Six and an agreement he had previously reached with House Speaker John Boehner. "It's a lack of political will in Washington. It's the insistence on drawing lines in the sand, a refusal to put what's best for the country ahead of self-interest or party or ideology. And that's what we need to change."

NEW YORK (AP) -- Lawmakers weren't able to prevent the country from losing its coveted AAA debt rating.
Although the downgrade late Friday by Standard & Poor's was historic, it wasn't entirely unexpected. The three main credit agencies, which also include Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings, had warned during the fight over the debt ceiling that if Congress did not cut spending far enough, the country faced a downgrade.
And just like a lower consumer credit score implies that a borrower is a less reliable, a lower credit rating for government bonds implies there is more risk involved in lending money to the government.
Prices for U.S. government debt rose in the first few hours of trading on Monday, a sign of increased demand despite the downgrade. But it is unclear what will happen in the long term, because of the unprecedented nature of the lower rating and the decisions by Moody's and Fitch to keep their highest ratings for now.
"If they all were saying exactly the same thing that would clearly have more impact than with a split rating," Alex Pollack, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
If investors get skittish and Treasury prices reverse course, that could send the interest rate on Treasury bonds up. Essentially, the rate, or yield, would climb in order to make the bonds more attractive to investors. That could lead to higher borrowing rates for consumers, because the rates on mortgages and other loans are often pegged to the yield on Treasury bonds.