Obama to tout job creation at Ohio stops

GOP labels bus trip 'Broken Promises' tour

Mitt Romney.

Associated Press

President Obama, who spoke at Ohio State in March, is to kick off his 'Betting On America Bus Tour' Thursday. The Romney campaign says Mr. Obama's stimulus failed to help employment.

President Obama's re-election campaign has labeled its two-day swing through Ohio and Pennsylvania the "Betting On America Bus Tour."

Republicans fought back Tuesday labeling it the "Middle Class Broken Promises" bus tour.

Mr. Obama is to kick off the campaign trip Thursday Morning at the historic Wolcott House complex in Maumee and then continue on to Sandusky for a "Betting on Sandusky Ice Cream Social."

The presidential bus tour will pull up in Washington Park in Sandusky for the 3:40 p.m. event. Ticket details for that event were not available Tuesday afternoon.

Mr. Obama's bus tour ends for the day with a 7:15 p.m. rally in Parma, a suburb of Cleveland.

The President is to continue on to Pittsburgh on Friday.

Mr. Obama will highlight his efforts get the economy back on track, saving the auto industry, investing in manufacturing, and bringing jobs back to America, the Obama campaign said.

The President will also continue the case he made in his last Ohio visit, at Cuyahoga Community College June 14, in which he presented the election as a choice between "investing" in education, energy, and infrastructure, paid for in part by higher taxes on the wealthy, versus tax cuts for the wealthy and not making those investments.

And the President will keep up the assault on Mr. Romney as a "corporate buyout specialist," and for planning to return to policies that "crashed our economy and devastated the middle class in the first place," the campaign said.

Mitt Romney.

The Romney campaign describes the choice another way, saying voters in 2008 looked to the President to rebuild the economy but that his solution, the "a trillion-dollar stimulus," has left unemployment above 8 percent for 40 straight months.

"We are happy to put Governor Romney's record of job creation in the private sector, and as governor, up against President Obama's any day," the Romney campaign said in a prepared statement.

"Spending millions of dollars on untrue ads won't change the fact that President Obama's policies have left more than 23 million Americans, and 430,000 Ohioans, struggling for work," the campaign said.

Mr. Obama's bus tour is to take him through communities that are at the heart of the automotive industry. The recovery of Chrysler Group LLC and General Motors Co. after going through a bankruptcy reorganization in 2009 is being claimed as major successes of Mr. Obama's policies.

The Obama Administration backed loans and stock purchases totalling about $82 billion in 2009 to help stabilize the companies in the aftermath of a recession and global credit crisis. Taxpayers are still on the hook for about $27 billion in GM stock.

Mr. Romney opposed a bailout, saying Detroit should be allowed to go bankrupt and face the realities of the marketplace.

Contact Tom Troy at: tomtroy@theblade.com or 419-724-6058.