White House uses social media to up pressure on payroll tax cut

The Obama administration is promoting the Twitter hashtag "#40dollars" and asking followers to share how the expiration of the payroll tax cut might affect their family budgets. 

According to a White House blog post: "If Congress fails to extend the payroll tax cut, the typical family making $50,000 a year will have about $40 less to spend or save with each paycheck."

White House press secretary Jay Carney read some followers' tweets in the press briefing on Wednesday.

"I think the thousands of responses we've had so far are representative of the hundreds of thousands and millions of responses you would get if you were, and if the members of the House of Representatives were to survey their own constituents," Carney said, reading off some responses from North Carolina and Texas asserting that the money that might be cut from their paycheck if the payroll tax is allowed to expire was equal to the amount used to buy gas or groceries for a week.

"I suspect that the voices of the people who are responding to the hashtag '40dollars' that we started yesterday are representative of the folks all around the country for whom $40 a paycheck is a big deal," Carney continued.

The White House has been using social media to lean on Congress over payroll tax cut legislation, which President Obama, Democrats and Republicans all want to extend but has been held up in the House by debate over pay-fors and the duration of the extension.

"Amazing to read how #40dollars less in each paycheck would affect middle-class Americans. Check it out & RT best ones (we certainly are!)," the White House account tweeted Wednesday.

The current payroll tax cut program is set to expire at the end of the year.

Both the official White House Twitter account and Obama's account, which is run by his reelection campaign, have been retweeting some of the responses to the ongoing digital campaign since Tuesday.

---