This last weekend, Standard & Poors downgraded the credit rating of the United States of America from 'AAA' to 'AA+'. This, of course, created an uproar in political circles. Wasn't the raising of the debt ceiling passed by congress and signed into law by the president supposed to prevent something like this?

Many on the left are blaming the downgrade on the Tea Party, calling it the "Tea Party downgrade." John Kerry and David Axelrod are both on record using that term.

Others are calling the Tea Party terrorists for holding up the legislative process and preventing proposed legislation from being passed because Tea Party-minded members of the House of Representatives wouldn't compromise.

David Beers of S & P has come out and explained, specifically, why they downgraded the US's rating.

"Entitlement reform is important because entitlements are the biggest component of spending, and the part of spending where the cost pressures are greatest," Beers said according to a story posted by Fox News. He added that "political gridlock has prevented the U.S. from reaching a plausible solution to getting its financial house in order."

Because the "poltiical gridlock" was caused, largely, by the Tea Party-minded members of Congress holding their ground, yeah, based on that reasoning, you could say they're responsible for the downgrade. But, what if there were no Tea Party-minded members of Congress? What if the 2010 elections hadn't given the Republicans a majority in the House (comprised of a number of freshmen Tea Party congressmen?) If the House was voting as it had prior to 2010, there probably would not have been much, if any, debate about raising the debt ceiling at all. Sure, some Republicans would have hollered about it, but more likely the Democrat majorities would have passed new legislation to raise the debt ceiling along with sweeping tax increases in the name of raising revenues accordingly.

We might have been downgraded all the way to "AA."

While it's true that Washington currently can't act cohesively at the moment, I contend the Tea Party contingent in Congress prevented a worse scenario.

The only way our government could have prevented any downgrade at all would have been if congress passed legislation including sweeping entitlement reforms and cuts, across the board cuts of discretionary spending, and some sort of commitment to a balanced budget. Under Obama and Reid, this never would have happened! The credit rating downgrade was completely unavoidable.