Obama embracing auto bailout, tax policies in Ohio
By CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is preparing to tell Ohio voters that Republican Mitt Romney's tax proposals would spur job growth in foreign countries including China.
The president also plans Monday to highlight his administration's 2009 bailout of the auto industry, which saved thousands of jobs in Ohio, according to Democrats. Romney opposed Obama's use of massive federal loans to keep Chrysler and General Motors afloat while they reorganized under bankruptcy protection.
Obama is holding a town hall event in Cincinnati, one of the state's most heavily Republican areas. Ohio and Florida again are shaping up as the most intensely competitive states in the presidential race.
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White House aides said Obama will cite news reports suggesting that Romney's plans for limited taxing of overseas profits by U.S. companies would encourage foreign job growth. The two candidates have repeatedly accused each other of outsourcing American jobs.
The White House said Obama will renew his call for extending the Bush-era tax cuts on all households except those earning more than $250,000 a year. Romney says the wealthiest Americans also should keep their tax breaks because they are the most likely people to create jobs.
Ohio's Republican governor, John Kasich, often notes that his state's unemployment rate is lower than the national average. That has proved awkward at times for Romney, who assails Obama's stewardship of the national economy.
Kasich and other Republicans say the state's unemployment rate has dropped steadily in spite of Obama's economic policies, not because of them.
In an interview broadcast Monday on CBS's "This Morning," Obama was asked by co-host Charlie Rose about the large number of negative ads that have been run against Romney by his campaign in recent weeks.
"If you look at the ads that we do," Obama replied. "First of all, we've done a whole slew of positive ads that talk exactly about how we need to change our education system, how we need to change our tax code, how we need to rebuild America, how we need to promote American energy."
"So those just don't get attention in the news," he added. "But we are very much promoting.''
The president said, "I've got a very different approach" from Romney. "And the more detailed we get into what he's saying and what I'm saying, I think that serves the democratic process well."
ROMNEY DEFENDS BAIN
Meanwhile, Mitt Romney demanded Monday that Obama back away from his persistent attacks on Romney's record at Bain Capital, advising that it would be better "if you spent some time speaking about your record."
"What does it say about a president whose record is so poor that all he can do in this campaign is attack me," Romney said in a nationally broadcast interview Monday.
Obama said an interview broadcast Monday that he has run mostly positive campaign ads but said they have not been given much attention in the media.
In his interview on Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends," Romney was asked whether Obama should apologize for a series of statements and campaign commercials suggesting that Romney has not been truthful in his accounts of his record as head of Bain Capital, a private equity firm.
Romney responded, "I think when people have accused you of a crime, you have every reason to go after them pretty hard."
