2010 United States elections

'A shellacking' was Barack Obama's own word for it the next day. Two years after his election, Republicans gained 63 House seats, the most in any midterm since 1938, and took the House while his Democrats held on to the Senate. With John Boehner as Speaker, every bill now needed a Republican House and a Democratic Senate to agree, and the first big test, the 2011 debt-ceiling standoff, ended with Standard & Poor's cutting America's credit rating for the first time.