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Egan-Jones Ratings Co. over the weekend lowered its rating on U.S. debt, the ratings firm's president said Monday.

The downgrade on U.S. sovereign debt, to double-A-plus from triple-A, isn't expected to have a significant impact on the market because the Haverford, Pa.-based Egan-Jones is among the smallest of the nationally recognized rating agencies, analysts said.

But it comes as the much larger and more influential ratings firms, Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's, have warned they, too, would downgrade the U.S.'s rating if the $14.29 trillion debt ceiling isn't raised soon.

In Egan-Jones's ratings analysis, dated Saturday, the firm cited the "relatively high level of debt and the difficulty in significantly cutting spending" as being behind its ratings action, rather than the delay in raising the debt ceiling.

"We are less concerned about a short delinquency caused by a delay in raising the debt ceiling than we are about the relatively high debt" to gross domestic product, the firm's president, Sean Egan, said in an email. "We also are concerned about the costs of three undeclared wars [near $3 trillion], failures to take meaningful actions to address the causes of the debt crises [the cost was near $2 trillion], and the rise in entitlement payments stemming from the retirement of the baby boom generation."

Mr. Egan announced the downgrade Monday on CNBC.

Treasury Department officials warn that after Aug. 2, the government will run out of cash to meet all its financial obligations, including debt payments and Social Security benefits.

Republicans and Democrats have proposed reducing the budget deficit by close to $4 trillion over 10 years, but efforts to craft such a "grand bargain" which would pave the way for Congress to increase the debt ceiling have crumbled largely over the impasse over raising taxes. Democrats want to include tax increases; Republicans don't.

With few signs of movement over the weekend on negotiations, Senate leaders are planning this week to unveil a backup plan that would force more budget wrangling before the end of the year.

In its seven-page ratings analysis, Egan-Jones noted that the U.S's debt to GDP was in excess of 100% compared to Canada's 35%.

Egan-Jones placed the U.S. on negative ratings watch March 1. Unlike Moody's and Standard & Poor's, Egan-Jones adopts a subscription-based model for distributing its research, in which investors pay it to rate securities. Its analysis typically aren't immediately made public.