CLEVELAND, June 14 (UPI) -- The U.S. presidential vote is a choice between President Obama's economic leadership and a return to policies that caused the crisis, Obama's campaign said.
Obama planned to spell out that choice in stark terms at a campaign in Cleveland Thursday, aides and the campaign said.
His 1:45 p.m. EDT address at Cuyahoga Community College was expected to contrast his efforts to strengthen the middle class -- through education, the auto-industry bailout and infrastructure investment -- with what presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney says he would do as president, aides said.
Obama was expected to argue Romney's plans to extend and expand tax cuts for the richest Americans and sharply cut government spending without generating new revenue would repeat policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush, that resulted in huge federal deficits and the Great Recession, the aides and the Obama campaign said.
"The president believes that this election is a fundamental choice between two very different visions for how we grow the economy, create middle-class jobs and pay down our debt," White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday.
"The other side's plan is a $5 trillion tax cut that explodes the deficit while gutting the investments we need to grow," Carney said. "The president's plan is to pay down our deficit in a balanced way -- a way supported by the majority of the American people -- while still investing in education, energy, innovation and infrastructure."
Obama's campaign address is not expected to include any new policy proposals, USA Today reported.
He was expected to argue he needs four more years to undo Bush administration damage, compared with Romney, whose vision of repetition would return the nation to Bush-era policies, Obama's campaign said.
"Romney Economics is familiar and troubling," the campaign said. "More budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy; fewer rules for Wall Street -- the same formula that benefited a few, but that crashed our economy and devastated the middle class."
The Republican National Committee created a video preemptively responding to Obama's "economic framing speech."
The video, titled "Lost Cause," asserts Obama pretends to focus on creating jobs, when he is actually doing the opposite.
"Even though he claimed to be focused on jobs, Obama instead spent his time making it harder for job creators by passing Obamacare, more regulation and pushing for higher taxes," the committee said in a statement.
Speaking Wednesday before the Business Roundtable in Washington, Romney said, "My guess is [Obama] will speak eloquently -- but the words are cheap."
Romney called Obama one of the most "anti-business, anti-jobs" presidents in U.S. history and accused the president of advocating "the most anti-investment, anti-business, anti-jobs series of policies in modern American history."
He said he would "in my first 100 days take action to eliminate government programs, to send a lot of government programs back to states where I limit the rate of growth at inflation, and to cut back the number of federal employees through attrition."
"And by the way, to link the pay of government workers with the pay that exists in the private sector. And those things save about $500 billion a year by my fourth year in office, if I am lucky enough to be elected, and get us to a balanced budget within eight to 10 years."