Obama to Launch First Bus Tour of Campaign

By Newsroom America Staff at 5 Jul 2012

(Newsroom America) -- President Obama will launch the first bus tour of his reelection campaign and will focus his message primarily on the economy, officials said Wednesday.

The event will begin in the key battleground state of Ohio, where Obama will set off a two-day "Betting on America" tour. The president will travel to Pennsylvania on Friday.

The tour follows an Obama television ad blitz in both states accusing presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney of being an "outsourcing pioneer." The message refers to Romney's days at Bain Capital, an equity investment firm where, Obama says, the former Massachusetts governor did more to outsource jobs than to create them.

"Mitt Romney's companies were pioneers in outsourcing U.S. jobs to low-wage countries," says the ad. "He supports tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. President Obama believes in insourcing."

Romney has said the portrayal of Bain as an outsourcing firm is inaccurate. A Washington Post editorial last month said the same thing, noting that the Obama campaign's accusations were incorrect.

Obama plans to stop in manufacturing centers in Ohio and Pennsylvania. General Motors and Chrysler, which were bailed out by the government in 2009, have large operations in Ohio.

The president plans to use those stops to remind voters that Romney, whose Republican-politician father was an automotive company chairman in the 1950s and '60s, was opposed to the bailouts.

Chrysler has rebounded following the bailouts and has paid back the $7.6 billion in loans the automaker received, though critics noted that the payback was little more than a financial reshuffling deal involving Italian automaker Fiat. GM stock, meanwhile, has slipped for weeks, and as such, taxpayers have continued to lose money in that deal, say critics, since the government still owns about 27 percent of GM stock.

The White House said Obama is scheduled to arrive in Toledo, Ohio, at 10:55 a.m. EDT and travel until the evening, delivering remarks at campaign events in Maumee, Sandusky and Parma.

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