Credit Rating

So here I am, in the Detroit area visiting with family, and I see this article in the New York Times about Standard and Poor's downgrading of the US credit rating. Its emphasis is on how lawmakers are questioning S&P and other credit rating agencies' legitimacy as financial evaluators. (Funny, no one seemed to care about S&P's legitimacy while we had a perfect credit rating)

This kind of thing really irks me. It's so typical of a politician to royally screw up, but after being called out on it by someone or an organization, the reaction is to ridicule that person or organization and create false doubt in their competence. Totally hackneyed and bogus blame shifting tactic.

Is it because Congress is pulling dumb stunts like this that they can't get anything real accomplished?