Politics
Election 2012: Obama to make pitch on tax cuts
On Tuesday, the Obama campaign reiterated calls for Romney to release more of his tax returns. In a video posted on YouTube, the campaign asks: “How long can Romney keep information on his investments in overseas tax havens secret? And why did he do it in the first place?”
Emphasizing the consequences to families, Obama was meeting Tuesday with an Iowa couple that the White House said would benefit from his tax plan. He was then holding a campaign event at a Cedar Rapids community college where he planned to make the case for the extension for those earning US$250,000 or less.
Obama was making another visit to a battleground state with a more positive economic outlook than other parts of the nation. Iowa’s strong farm economy has pushed the state’s unemployment rate down to 5.1 percent, well below the national average of 8.2 percent. Obama took a bus tour through parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania last week, both states have more positive jobless rates than the rest of the nation, and was campaigning in Virginia on Friday and Saturday. Virginia’s unemployment rate is 5.5 percent.
Yet polls in Iowa have shown Obama locked in a tight race with Romney for the state’s six electoral votes, a potential warning sign after Obama triumphed in Iowa’s leadoff caucuses in 2008 and then captured the state in the general election.
Senior campaign adviser David Plouffe said Tuesday the Obama campaign wants to focus its appeal on battleground states “to educate voters about what the choice is” in 2012.
Plouffe said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that the Obama camp is concerned about the role of super PACs in bankrolling Romney’s challenge, charging that they want to “buy the White House” for the former Massachusetts governor.
“Money matters in politics,” he said.
