Senior Democratic Party flacks are using Twitter to spin the credit-downgrade blame away from the White House and toward the GOP.
On Saturday, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer used his official White House Twitter account to direct his 18,707 followers — including many reporters, editors, producers, and bloggers — to Washington Post blogger, Ezra Klein. The well-known liberal opinion writer claimed earlier in the day that the S&P move to downgrade America’s debt “didn’t happen because an earthquake wrecked our factories or a plague hit our workers. It was Congress. Particularly GOP in Congress.”
In a Twitter exchange with Time magazine columnist Mark Halperin, Pfeiffer wrote that Obama “has said repeatedly both parties are to blame for deficit, but they,” meaning Republicans, “are the reason we didn’t have a $3-4t deficit deal.”
The budget ceiling talks broke down in July after Obama pushed House Speaker John Boehner to support a conditional tax-hike worth $400 billion over 10 years. Boehner had reportedly agreed earlier to most of a deal reducing the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years, and including extra tax revenue of $800 billion. That deal was ultimately sidelined, with Boehner instead brokering a 10-year, $2.4 trillion deficit reduction without tax hikes included.
“Compromise is possible, but to date GOP hasn’t been willing. This isn’t a case of both sides being wrong,” Pfeiffer tweeted.
Brad Woodhouse, the Democratic National Committee’s top spokesman, tweeted out a message an hour later saying: “It’s hard to read the S&P analysis as anything other than a blast at Republicans.”
That blame-the-GOP message came via Think Progress, an arm of the elite left-wing Center for American Progress. That organization was quoting an article published by National Journal, an inside-the-beltway magazine.
Woodhouse also retweeted a Reuters blog that blamed the tea party movement for the S&P downgrade. His tweet read: “Reuters: S&P downgrade caused by “Tea Party bazooka.”
On Friday night Woodhouse attempted to inspire the use of a new Twitter hashtag to galvanize his allies’ objections to the downgrade. The tag, #DowngradeSandP, has attracted few comments.
Pfeiffer’s and Woodhouse’s tweets complemented a midday press release from White House spokesman Jay Carney. “Over the past weeks and months,” Carney said, “the President repeatedly called for substantial deficit reduction through both long-term entitlement changes and revenues through tax reform, with additional measures to spark jobs and strengthen our recovery … the President pushed for a grand bargain that would include all of these elements and require compromise and cooperation from all sides.”
Prior to July, Obama pressed Congress to pass a $2.5 trillion debt ceiling bill, without any program changes, that would fund federal programs until after the 2012 election. In July, he began instead pushing for a $4 trillion “grand bargain” that would also trim future spending while increasing government tax revenues, in what the president called a “balanced” approach.
Now White House officials say they want to reach a broad agreement via the 12-member Joint Committee of Congress that is required to identify $1.5 trillion in new spending cuts by the end of November.
“Over the coming weeks the President will strongly encourage the bipartisan fiscal committee as well as all members of Congress to put our common commitment to a stronger recovery and a sounder long-term fiscal path above our political and ideological differences,” Carney’s statement said.