Debt Ceiling Debate Nears Deadline, Obama Gets Busy On Twitter

As the deadline to raise the debt ceiling fast approaches, the White House is using Twitter to rally support for what the call the “balanced approach.” In the simplest terms, this means an approach to tackle the national debt that both cuts spending and raises revenues through tax increases and/or elimination of tax breaks.

House Republicans and the President (with congressional Democrats) have been in negotiations for weeks, but a comprehensive plan has yet to emerge that analysts feel could pass the legislature and be signed by the President.

While the White House’s Twitter account is livening up the mood by Rickrolling its followers during an open Twitter forum, President Barack Obama’s Twitter account is busy rallying support for his vision.

In a continuation of Obama’s message from Monday night’s primetime speech on the debt situation (that resulted in the shutting down of dozens of congressional websites), his Twitter account is in the middle of a giant feed-swarming campaign to ask Twitter users to tweet their congressman.

Ever since it was announced that tweets coming directly from the mouth of the President would all be signed “BO,” they have been elusive. But we got one a couple of hours ago –

After that, his team has been busy tweeting out messages to his near-10 million followers about how they can contact their congresspeople via Twitter to express their support for his plan.

As of right now, the Barack Obama account has listed the Twitter handles of Republican members of Congress in Alabama, Arkansas, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado…are you sensing a pattern? As of the writing of this article, they are on Kentucky in the alphabetical listing of the states. Here’s what they are saying –

Put this in the “aggressive social media politicking” folder, as the White House is in the middle of an impressive Twitter campaign.

Is this type of Twitter interaction a good thing for either party? Should all politicians be using Twitter to this degree to spur debate? Let us know in the comments.