Plouffe: Romney camp attacks on Obama over Europe crossed the line

Senior White House adviser David Plouffe blasted Romney surrogates who have publicly criticized the administration’s handling of Europe’s debt crisis ahead of Sunday’s crucial vote in Greece.

“It was a remarkable thing to see and really unprecedented,” Plouffe said of the criticism on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

Plouffe, in particular, took aim at an op-ed published in Germany by Romney’s chief economic adviser Glenn Hubbard arguing that President Obama had taken the wrong approach to aiding Europe with its fiscal ills. 

Plouffe compared the Hubbard op-ed, to congressional Republicans who he said “don’t want to do anything on the economy over the next few months.”

When asked if Romney’s campaign had crossed a line with the article, Plouffe agreed.  

“Europe doing the right things here to stabilize their situation is important to our small businesses, our workers, the middle class here, and overall economy. And to inject yourself in this for some short-sighted partisan gain, perhaps, is really unbelievable,” he said.

Plouffe added that Obama believes it’s “Europeans’ responsibility” to solve their current crisis and that it was “within their power to do so.” He said Europe could learn from the United States and take lessons from how the White House and lawmakers had “dealt with” the country’s own debt standoff.

Greek parliamentary elections on Sunday may dictate whether the country remains within the eurozone or exits, throwing the global financial system into crisis. 

The White House fears that the growing European debt crisis could further weaken the U.S. economic recovery ahead of the November general election.

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