Bond's maturity is 10+ years, T-bills are short term up to one year, and T-notes are from one year to 10 years.
Another thing to note is that only rating agency downgrading is S & P.
What America needs is more savings not more spending. Monetary policy is total disaster.
The rating was NOT for 10+ years, it was for maturities of 1 year and more which includes both Notes and Long Bonds. (Sorry if I forgot to mention notes in the long term category, but I was in a hurry when I typed that)
Every rating agency (S & P, Moodys, and Fitch) only measure risk for short term (0-1 year) and long term (1+ years).
What people DONT understand, is that there are far more rating classifications for long term compared with short term. (I could explain the reasoning, but I its kinda long and boring) For example for the long term, PRIME & HIGH GRADE, S & P has 4 levels: AAA, AA+, AA, and AA-.
However, for short term, there is only 1 level: A-1+ in the High grade & Prime category. So while it may appear that S & P believes that the short term HASN'T changed its opinion of The U.S.'s short term risk, the fact is, S & P (along with Moodys and Fitch) only have 1 category, and it doesnt switch down to the next lowest category (A-1) until the Short term instruments becomes Upper Medium grade. (equiv of A+ to A in Long term). This is just off the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure I've included everything. (maybe I should copy and paste my lecture notes, LOL)