Obama to tout auto bailout, tax policies in Ohio

[July 16, 2012]  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.

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."

[Associated Press; By CHARLES BABINGTON]

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