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A Moody's downgrade of the US credit score reverberated through financial markets Monday and pushed down stocks , but the response from Republicans crafting a bill that could add trillions in new red ink was to immediately try to minimize the news.

"There a lot of optimism in this economy, and the president disagrees with that assessment," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday morning.

Both the White House and its congressional allies have taken pains to appear unfazed by the development, with lawmakers even taking a step forward Sunday night on the package after Moody's directly cited the ongoing effort in its Friday statement that it had stripped the US government of its top AAA rating.

The rating agency wrote that "if the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is extended, which is our base case, it will add around $4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade," adding that the result could be a debt burden of 134% of GDP by 2035.

"While we recognize the US' significant economic and financial strengths," Moody's added in a statement that noted the fiscal situation was the result of successive administrations, "we believe these no longer fully counterbalance the decline in fiscal metrics."

Friday's move was the third major downgrade of US creditworthiness since 2011, after similar moves from Fitch in 2023 and Standard & Poor's in 2011.

"There's something very different about this downgrade than the last two," said Harvard economist and professor Jason Furman, who was an economic adviser to President Obama, in a Yahoo Finance live appearance on Monday.

He noted that early downgrades had been about government dysfunction and fears that Washington would be unable to wrestle with the debt situation.

"This time, it's unified Republican control, and what Moody's is concerned about is what those unified Republicans will do," he said. "They are set on increasing the debt, with the only debate being by how much."

A variety of Trump-world explanations of the move

Members of Trump's orbit brushed off the move using a variety of reasoning.

Many of Trump's closest allies assigned political motives to Moody's move.

The White House communications director reacted to the news over the weekend by attacking Mark Zandi — the chief economist of Moody's Analytics, which is not involved in ratings decisions — writing that "nobody takes his 'analysis' seriously."

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, meanwhile, tried to shift the blame to former President Biden.

"Moody's is a lagging indicator," Bessent said Sunday on NBC, calling the downgrade about the Biden administration. Hassett echoed the assessment Monday on Fox Business, saying US Treasuries are "the safest bet on Earth."

Both advisers have repeatedly brushed off questions about the fiscal impact of the current bill under consideration on Capitol Hill, as well as Trump's first-term record.

Others in Trump's orbit tried to cast the bill as fiscally responsible, with Trump budget director Russell Vought saying that the bill "ends decades of fiscal futility" and will balance out because of "$2.5 trillion in assumed economic growth."

But it's an assessment that few outside economists agree with.

The tax pieces of the bill alone are set to cost over $3.8 trillion if enacted, according to Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation. That's split between $7.7 trillion in tax cuts and $3.9 trillion in tax-specific offsets.

Once the entire bill is considered, it could see over $3.2 trillion in new red ink, according to an analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget . And if many of the temporary but politically popular cuts are eventually extended, the costs could balloon to more than $5.2 trillion over the next decade, the group found.

"It's not backward looking," Furman added Monday of Moody's, noting that "Congress is in the process right now of adding trillions of dollars to what is already a very high deficit."

Not slowing down progress on the ‘big beautiful bill’

The move from Moody's also did little to slow progress on the bill , which includes trillions in additional costs beyond the extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that the ratings agency cited.

The legislative effort got a boost on Sunday when it was advanced by the House Budget Committee. The effort had stalled on Friday, but conservative Republicans relented and voted "present" late Sunday night to allow the effort to continue, even as they said they would keep pushing for more changes.

House Speaker Mike Johnson also reiterated Sunday that he was undeterred from his goal of passage in the House this week before the coming Memorial Day recess.

"We are going to try and get this vote done by Thursday, that's my plan," he told reporters.

It was part of an overall muted response in Washington.

Tennessee Republican Rep. Mark Green was one of the few lawmakers to cite the news, posting Sunday that the downgrade was "yet another wake up call."

Yet the staunch Trump ally and chair of the House Homeland Security Committee has signaled he will be a strong supporter of the package after overseeing a section of the bill focused on new border security spending.

Green is a member of the House Freedom Caucus, which said Sunday night the bill "does not yet meet the moment" as it pushes for more changes, especially on provisions that would spike deficits in the next few years (as politically popular spending kicks in quickly) while holding off on politically painful cuts until after Trump is scheduled to leave office.

This post has been updated.

Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.