Biden campaign launches ad blitz capitalizing on debt ceiling deal

The lifting of the debt ceiling might not seem like bumper sticker material for a campaign. But President Joe Biden’s aides believe voters will reward him for working across the aisle to do it.

And now, they’re putting cash behind that theory.

The Biden team and the Democratic National Committee are launching a six-figure ad campaign Monday touting the bipartisan agreement that the president reached with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last month to lift the debt ceiling in exchange for some spending restraints and restrictions on food aid eligibility.

The spots, which were first shared with POLITICO, make the case that Biden managed to protect essential government programs as well as his own accomplishments in the face of far-right Republicans who wanted to strip them away during the high-stakes talks over the debt ceiling. And that he did it all while avoiding a devastating outcome that would have hampered the economy.

The advertisements also tout Biden’s handling of the economy overall, pointing to the country’s low unemployment rate and millions of jobs that have been created during his presidency. The spots will run digitally and on billboards over the next week in battleground states and Washington, D.C.

“The American people elected President Biden and Vice President Harris to provide strong and steady leadership from the White House, and this bipartisan budget deal serves as the latest example of how they’re cutting through the divisions in Washington and bringing people together to deliver results,” said Julie Chávez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager. “These ads are a powerful reminder of the President’s ability to get things done, and to rebuild the middle class and our economy at a historic pace while preventing MAGA Republicans and their extreme agenda from unraveling our progress.”

The ad campaign reflects the strategy that the Biden team has used since 2020 to portray the president as the responsible adult in the room while depicting his Republican opponents as extreme. But the spots also suggest that the president and his team know they have work to do in selling his agenda as Biden continues to receive poor marks from voters on his handling of the economy.

Sixty-one percent of adults said they are not too confident or not at all confident in Biden’s ability to make good decisions about economic policy, according to a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center in March and April.

Biden’s allies and his GOP rivals have been in a race to shape how voters view the latest clash over the debt ceiling.

Before a deal was struck, the McCarthy-aligned American Action Network ran spots accusing Biden of a my-way-or-the-highway approach and portraying the GOP’s starting offer as “reasonable.” Since then, the group has launched a spot that boasts that McCarthy “forced [Biden] to cave.”

The pro-Biden group Building Back Together, meanwhile, is out with its own ad this week arguing that the economy was held hostage by “MAGA Republicans” but that Biden “stood firm” and reached a bipartisan deal that protected Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.