Plouffe: GOP Picks Tea Party House Members Over 300 Million Americans

Top White House adviser David Plouffe made the rounds on Sunday's news talk shows to lay out the theme of President Barack Obama's re-election campaign: Republicans running for president would "take dead aim" at middle class Americans.

Speaking Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union," Plouffe said the election will offer voters a "profound choice." The race, he says, will be "a tough, close election" that Obama will narrowly win. Plouffe says Obama will defend his record on health care and avoiding a depression.

Plouffe, Obama's 2008 campaign manager, said that Republican candidates share the goal of loosening restrictions on Wall Street bankers and giving more tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. He said all of the benefits going to the rich would be paid for by seniors and the middle class.

On "Fox News Sunday," Plouffe had a heated discussion with host Chris Wallace, as Plouffe placed the blame for the deadlock in Washington on House Leadership putting the wants of 30 Tea Party Republicans in front of the needs of 300 million Americans.

"We're not going to make progress on the deficit, on things we can do right now for jobs, on tax cuts, unless those 30 or 40 Tea Party members of the Republican House stop being the focal point of our discussion," Plouffe said to Fox News.

Senate Democrats defeated a House GOP-backed stopgap continuing resolution to fund the government through Nov. 18 by a vote of 59-36 on Friday. The $1.04 trillion measure contained $3.7 billion for disaster aid, $200 million of which was offset by cuts to green energy programs, including a loan account that once helped fund the now-defunct, controversial solar panel firm Solyndra.Plouffe insists that Congress must pass a resolution to keep government functioning without tying diaster aid to offsets.

While Plouffe placed a large portion of the blame for failure in Washington on the Tea Party, he defended the "Buffet Rule" and called on Congress to pass the President's jobs plan,which along with Obama's recent rhetoric, has been labeled "class warfare" by critics.

"The American people are screaming out, saying it's unfair that the wealthiest, the largest corporations who can afford the best attorneys, the best accountants, take advantage of these special tax treatments that the lobbyist have, along with lawmakers, have cooked in the books here," said Plouffe on Fox News.

On ABC's This Week with Christiane Amanpour, Plouffe said Obama's jobs plan would make it to the Senate floor by October.

"We need action. The American people know that the economy is too weak; too many of them are suffering. So the question for Washington is, are we going to continue to play political games or are we going to say we can do something right now to create jobs?"

The $447 billion jobs plan would be a two-pronged approach of spending initiatives and tax cuts. Last week Mitch McConnell called it "a hodge-podge of retread ideas aimed at convincing people that a temporary fix is really permanent."

The Associated Press contributed to this article.