Politics
Election 2012: Obama heads to Ohio to tout auto bailout, tax policies
U.S. President Barack Obama (l) and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney (r). PHOTO/File
President Barack Obama is preparing to tell voters in the crucial industrial state of Ohio that Republican Mitt Romney’s tax proposals would spur job growth in foreign countries including China.
The 2012 race for the White House looks to be very close and hinges, at this point, on which candidate can convince voters they are best suited to fix the stagnant U.S. economy.
The Obama campaign has kept up attacks on Romney’s business record, including the drumbeat that companies that his private equity firm invested in sent jobs overseas, the so-called “outsourcing” of jobs needed by Americans at a time of deep economic troubles at home. U.S. unemployment remains at 8.2 percent and the economy is the top issue for voters who will choose between Obama and Romney in November.
President Obama 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, which is fought state by state.
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 US$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.
