House Democrats are privately seething at President Joe Biden’s rhetoric on the debt limit and said House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s messaging is winning… but they’re still going to follow a leaked playbook to try and sell the deal to their constituents.
In fact, the Democrats have publicly adopted Biden’s exact messaging on this issue.
On Monday, a leaked memo of “messaging guidance” from the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee (DPCC) was published by Axios.
The memo, released Sunday, gave the House Democrats a two-pronged talking point.
It said —
House Democrats are working responsibly to avoid a devastating default on our debt
Extreme MAGA Republicans are recklessly threatening a job-killing recession
“President Biden’s Bipartisan Budget Agreement protects the American people, preventing extreme MAGA Republicans from forcing a devastating default on our debt that would trigger a job-Killing recession and raise costs for working families,” the memo added.
The White House has been using the phrase “extreme demands” for over a week.
Earlier this month, Biden used his concluding news conference in Hiroshima, Japan, to warn House Republicans that they must move off their “extreme positions” over raising the debt limit and that there would be no agreement to avoid a catastrophic default only on their terms.
House Republicans were demanding broader work requirements for SNAP, the official name for the food stamp program. They also wanted more cuts to spending to keep the deficit from continuing to spiral.
Sure enough, Hakeem Jeffries — the House’s top-ranked Democrat — parroted the memo’s exact wording during a stint on CBS’s Face the Nation.
Speaking about Biden’s deal, Jeffries said Sunday, “It protects the American people from the types of devastating spending cuts that were proposed by Republicans in their Default on America Act.”
Some Democrats have chided the White House for its relative silence on the debt limit. “Kevin’s consistently on message,” one House Democrat told Politico anonymously Thursday. “It’s time to bring the president off the bench, or bring somebody off the bench.”
Rep. Joseph Morelle, D-N.Y., told the outlet, “The American people need to understand just what’s at stake, and I’m not sure that for the broad public that case has been made.”
However, Biden has reportedly been quietly whipping Democratic support behind the scenes. The White House even held some Zoom briefings on Sunday, according to the DPCC memo.
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article.