Obama Enlists Campaign Army In Budget Fight

President Obama will kick off an all-out grass-roots effort today urging Congress to pass his $3.55 trillion budget, activating the extensive campaign apparatus he built during his successful 2008 candidacy for the first time since taking office. The campaign, which will be run under the aegis of the Democratic National Committee, will rely heavily on the 13 million-strong e-mail list put together during the campaign and now under the control of Organizing for America (OFA), a group overseen by the DNC. Aides familiar with the plan said it is an unprecedented attempt to transfer the grass-roots energy built during the presidential campaign into an effort to sway Congress.

A new online tool, to be unveiled this week on the DNC/OFA Web site, will help constituents find their congressional representatives' contact information so they can call the lawmakers' offices to voice approval of the proposal. A midweek follow-up message to the mailing list will ask volunteers to call the Hill -- the first time the OFA e-mail database has been used to urge direct contact with Congress in support of legislation.

David Plouffe, who was Obama's campaign manager and is now an adviser to OFA, called this effort the "first major engagement" of the group in the legislative process and said in a statement that it will call on supporters "to help the President win the debate between those who marched in lockstep with the failed Bush economic policies and now have no new ideas versus the Obama agenda which will help us manage the short term economic crisis and puts us on the path to long term prosperity."