There is absolutely “no risk” that America will lose its aaa rating, said America’s treasury secretary on April 19. Raising the debt ceiling “is the right thing to do for the economy.” Congress should raise it for “as long as possible.”

Infamous last words.

On Friday, August 5, at 9 p.m., for the first time in United States history, America’s sovereign credit rating was downgraded from aaa to aa+ by Standard & Poor’s.

Consequently, the credibility of the U.S. treasury secretary, along with virtually everyone in Washington, was downgraded too. And for good reason.

The agency issued its report long after the market closed for the weekend because of the potentially catastrophic consequences. On cue, Asian markets plunged. In Europe, the European Central Bank came to the rescue, promising to buy billions in Spanish and Italian debt. Euro markets breathed a sigh of relief. But on Monday in America, a battered Dow Jones opened down 2 percent and never stopped falling. It was the worst day since the Lehman bust.

In cutting America’s rating, S&P confirmed what the Trumpet has warned about for decades: America is addicted to debt.

The credit agency said the deficit reduction plan signed by the president did not go far enough to stabilize the country’s debt situation. It also put America on negative watch—meaning that it may downgrade the country even further unless something significant changes. S&P’s managing director, John Chambers, said America might be able to regain its triple-A rating—in 9 to 18 years.

Yet in comparison, American politicians sound inebriated. Only in America could a plan that raises the national debt from $14.5 trillion to $23 trillion by 2021 be declared a “win for the economy and budget discipline.” Only in Washington is adding another $9 trillion to the debt characterized as “spending cuts.”

Republicans and Democrats alike don’t really believe America has a problem. They are like alcoholics in denial.

Republican Sen. John McCain called members of the Tea Party “terrorists” for not wanting to raise the debt ceiling. Later he called them small-minded “hobbits,” with the implication that they needed to go back to Middle Earth. Now he is blaming the president for not leading with his own deficit-reduction plan.

After the S&P announcement, Democrat John Kerry said: “I believe this is without question the Tea Party downgrade … because a minority of people in the House of Representatives countered even the will of many Republicans in the United States Senate who were prepared to do a bigger deal.” Democrat Howard Dean confirmed: “I think this is [the] Tea Party’s problem …. I think they’re totally unreasonable and doctrinaire and not founded in reality. I think they’ve been smoking some of that tea, not just drinking it.”

But all the rhetoric and name-calling just goes to show how ridiculously ignorant most politicians are and how ignorant they think voters are. America didn’t get downgraded because of threats to not raise the debt ceiling. America got downgraded because politicians plan on raising it too much.

Here is the problem; it really is simple to understand: America collects over $2.1 trillion in taxes—but it spends $3.7 trillion!

And here is the proof politicians have no real plans to end America’s addiction. The details of the new budget compromise show they are not even making a credible effort to wean us off debt. For 2012, the new plan calls to cut a total of—wait for it—$21 billion. We are planning to go further into debt by $1.6 trillion next year!

In 2013, politicians will trim $42 billion—but we will go another $1.5 trillion into debt that year. In 2014, they will cut $59 billion, while the nation goes another trillion in the hole. The rest of the so-called trillion-dollar cuts will happen further off into the future—if politicians don’t change their minds.

The scary part is that these deficits happen if things go according to plan—meaning, if the economy somehow gets back to 4 percent growth! Will someone tell the budget geniuses that the economy is growing at less than 2 percent—and probably closer to 1 percent or not at all, according to some non-government estimates? Even before the recession, the long-term growth average of the U.S. was around 3 percent.

Don’t worry about sobering up to economic reality, the budget balances better that way.

On Saturday, President Obama acknowledged the challenges facing the economy. He said the country’s “urgent mission” was now to expand the economy and create jobs.

Expand the economy? That is politician-speak for more government spending. The truth is there is no real desire to fix America’s spending problem.

On Monday the president said: “We’ve always been and always will be a aaa country.”

There will be no real desire to fix our problems until Washington admits—in both words and action—that it has a problem. Unfortunately, it will take a real market-imposed crisis to make that happen. And by then it will be too late.

The hangover will be gut-wrenching.

America’s forced withdrawal is getting closer. Tuesday last week it was announced that U.S. federal debt had reached 100 percent of gdp for the first time since the World War ii era. Last time, America survived because the economic competition was bombed into rubble and so many other nations owed it money after the war.

This time, the competition is fierce, its global corporations are outsourcing jobs overseas, and America’s allies, like Britain, are equally broke.

Following S&P’s downgrade, China berated the United States in its state-run newspaper for “its addiction to debts.” The New China News Agency said that as America’s most important creditor China had the right to demand that America “learn to live within its means”—and even slash its “gigantic military.”

If America doesn’t, it warned, “the downgrade would prove to be only a prelude to more devastating credit rating cuts.”

Sadly, America’s addiction to debt will not end well. Already, financial experts are recommending other drugs to prop up the budget when the day comes that America cannot borrow money to pay all its bills.

On Monday, former Federal Reserve Bank chairman Alan Greenspan told nbc’s Meet the Press that he disagreed with the downgrade. Not because he thought America’s economy was doing well, or that politicians would make the right choices—but because the “United States can pay any debt because we can always print money to do that.”

“So, there is zero probability of default,” he said.

Yes, America can print up money, devalue the dollar, and cheat creditors—but what Mr. Greenspan did not say was that the “money printing” drug comes with a whole host of its own side effects.

When S&P downgraded America, the U.S. joined the AA club. But what the country really needs is an intervention from the Arrears Anonymous club—though, to tell the truth, America is actually even beyond that. Its economic organs are failing, it can’t think straight, and its historic response to problems is to look for ever stronger stimulants to temporarily make the pain go away.

In fact, despite the downgrade, most Americans still don’t really think we have a problem. We are so intoxicated with debt, we don’t even know we are drunk on it.