The Hill News

The White House blamed Capitol Hill Democrats in part on Wednesday for the tax-cut deal that many in the president's party have criticized.

Senior administration officials defended President Obama's deal with Republicans to extend expiring tax cuts for two years, seeking to quell sustained anger from liberals, who complain that the Obama White House caved too quickly and too substantially to Republicans' demand that high-end tax cuts be extended.

But Democrats are at least partially to blame for the deal, said White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer.

"He and the White House, frankly, urged the House and Senate to hold votes on this before the election," he said on the liberal Bill Press radio show. "But they didn't do that, in part because there's not unanimi! ty in the Democratic Caucus on this."

Pfeiffer's remarks underscore the tensions between the White House and members of its own party on Capitol Hill, where Democrats have threatened to vote down the tax proposal.

Those Democrats argue that the president should have been more willing to pick a fight with Republicans and allow the tax cuts for households making over $250,000 to expire, as he had campaigned for all of this year.

But the administration rejected the notion that Republicans would cave in a prolonged fight on Capitol Hill over the tax cuts. The White House said, rather, that the eventual compromise would almost certainly have been worse.

"If you ask them where this ends if we don't compromise now, basically they say we can have this protracted struggle and show Republicans favor the wealthy over the middle class," White House senior adviser David Axelrod said Wednesday on CNN. "But nobody can tell you it would end be! tter than this compromise."

Pfeiffer blamed the Sen! ate in p articular, and said that the handful of Democrats who had voted with Republicans in two test votes last weekend against bills allowing taxes to rise on high earners made it virtually impossible for Obama's original view to prevail.

"Right now, because Democrats don't all agree with the president on this in the Senate, and there are enough Republicans to filibuster a bill, you have two choices: You can either let taxes go up on everyone, or work to find some sort of compromise," he said.

Vice President Biden will head to Capitol Hill on Wednesday afternoon to try to sell the tax plan to House Democrats.

But if those Democrats are hoping to extract changes in the deal, they might find resistance from the administration; Axelrod said the administration views the compromise it struck with Republicans as largely a finished product.

"I think the framework of the deal is in place," he said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

This article was originally posted at 7:51 a.m. and was updated at 9:49 a.m.