Politico...
Standard & Poor’s
steps on White House’s deficit-reduction sales pitch
By Carrie Budoff Brown & Abby Phillip
4/18/11
President Barack Obama opens a three-day campaign Tuesday to sell
voters on his deficit-cutting plan — his first sustained attempt at
explaining why the country may need to accept higher taxes and fewer
government benefits.
But even before he began his push, the White House had to deal with the
repercussions of a Wall Street rating firm’s skepticism that Obama and
congressional Republicans can ever reach an agreement on the deficit.
The report by Standard & Poor’s downgrading the United States’s
credit outlook to negative resulted in the stock market declining by
140 points.
White House press secretary Jay Carney took issue with the political
analysis from S&P, telling reporters that “the political process
will outperform” the rating agency’s expectations.
“The president is committed, as he made clear in his speech Wednesday,
to moving forward in a bipartisan way to reach common ground on this
important issue of fiscal reform. And he believes that the fact that he
and Republicans agree on a target of $4 trillion in deficit reduction
over 10 to 12 years is an enormously positive development. They also
agree the problem exists.”
“The third part is the hard part, which is reaching a bipartisan
agreement, but two out of the three is important, and it demonstrates
progress,” Carney said.
The S&P warning, however, served as a stark reminder that, unlike
negotiations over a health care or education bill, the daily ups and
downs of the fiscal talks will sway markets, not simply vote counts on
the Hill.
After months of cajoling by lawmakers to elevate the deficit-reduction
debate, Obama will try to lay out the case for voters — a task that
rivals his push for health care reform in terms of complexity and
challenge. He will conduct three town hall meetings, starting Tuesday
in Annandale, Va., followed by Palo Alto, Calif., where he will speak
at Facebook headquarters Wednesday, and Reno, Nev., on Thursday.
Aides say the president’s aim for the tour, which includes stops in two
key swing states, is to explain why the debate in Washington matters to
the average voter.
“This can be extremely arcane and esoteric stuff when Americans out
there are worrying principally about the economy and job creation and
gas prices,” Carney said. “He wants to explain why, for the sake of our
economy, we need to move forward on fiscal reform, shared
responsibility and share the burden going forward.”
The president’s challenge is significant. A majority of voters support
the goal of reducing the deficit and the debt but oppose the proposals
under consideration, such as eliminating popular tax breaks for
mortgage interest and charitable contributions or making major changes
to Medicare.
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