Benjy Sarlin August 8, 2011, 4:00 PM

Michele Bachmann simultaneously chided the White House for paying too little and too much attention to Standard and Poor’s downgrade of US debt on Monday.

“After a weekend of hiding out at Camp David, pretending that the Standard and Poor’s ratings do not matter and hoping the markets wouldn’t notice, the President discovered he was wrong on both counts,” Bachmann said in a statement. “He came out just long enough today to again declare that raising taxes and cutting Medicare are his only solutions to our nation’s economic crisis. He dismissed the downgrade of our country’s credit rating, and argued that there’s no more room for spending cuts in Washington.”

Bachmann’s criticisms are contradictory. While she clearly believes Obama is “wrong” to dismiss the downgrade, the ratings agency made it abundantly clear that the president’s proposals to fix the problem — entitlement reform and tax increases — are exactly what is needed to strengthen America’s credit rating.

According to S&P’s own downgrade announcement,“We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related fiscal policy debate indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenues is less likely than we previously assumed and will remain a contentious and fitful process.”

Perhaps more than any other presidential candidate, Bachmann is on shaky ground tying herself to the S&P, since the agency also cited Republicans’ threats not to raise the debt ceiling as a major cause for the downgrade. Bachmann took the position early in the debate that the debt ceiling should never be raised under any circumstances, meaning by S&P’s account she contributed to the problem as much as any lawmaker in the country.

2012, 2012 Presidential Primaries, 2012 elections, Michele Bachmann, Standard & Poors