Romney returns to criticizing Obama on economy

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama speaks at a cam­paign rally in Golden, Colo., Thurs­day. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski)

BEN FELLER, DAVID ESPO

Asso­ci­ated Press

FAIRFAX, Va. — Repub­li­can Mitt Rom­ney accused Pres­i­dent Barack Obama on Thurs­day of “fail­ing Amer­i­can work­ers” by ignor­ing Chi­nese trade vio­la­tions, and seized on new Fed­eral Reserve attempts to boost the econ­omy as proof the administration’s poli­cies are not working.

Obama cam­paigned as com­man­der in chief after the vio­lent deaths of four U.S. offi­cials at a diplo­matic post in Libya. “No act of ter­ror will go unpun­ished … no act of vio­lence shakes the resolve of the United States of Amer­ica,” he said.

The pres­i­dent spoke in Col­orado and Rom­ney in Vir­ginia with less than eight weeks remain­ing in a close cam­paign for the White House in tough eco­nomic times. The two states are among a hand­ful likely to set­tle the race, and most polls rate Obama a shaky favorite.

With cam­paign costs mount­ing, Rom­ney and Obama com­peted for the most inno­v­a­tive fundrais­ing appeal.

The Repub­li­can challenger’s cam­paign urged peo­ple in an email to make a $15 dona­tion for a chance to join “Mitt on board the cam­paign plane for an excit­ing day on the cam­paign trail — at 30,000 feet!”

Singer and actress Bey­once Knowles and hip-hop-artist-hubby Jay Z coun­tered for the pres­i­dent. “Jay and I will be meet­ing up with Pres­i­dent Obama for an evening in NYC some­time soon,” she wrote. “And we want you to be there.” As with a day aboard Romney’s char­tered jet, a dona­tion was requested for a chance to win.

Only the fine print of both fundrais­ing appeals made clear that no con­tri­bu­tion was nec­es­sary to win.

Romney’s focus on the econ­omy fol­lowed a one-day cam­paign detour into a foreign-policy thicket that left him bruised and his quarry largely unscathed. He made lit­tle men­tion dur­ing the day of the events in Egypt and Libya that he had cited Tues­day as evi­dence of national secu­rity weak­ness on the president’s part.

The issue intruded, though, when a heck­ler at Romney’s rally yelled out, “Why are you politi­ciz­ing Libya?” The crowd responded with chants of “U-S-A” and sup­port­ers tried to place a Romney/Ryan plac­ard in front of the heckler’s face.

“We’re going to crack down on China,” the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor vowed in an appear­ance in the Vir­ginia sub­urbs around Wash­ing­ton, D.C. He spoke after his cam­paign unveiled a tele­vi­sion com­mer­cial claim­ing that China has out­paced the United States in new man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs since the pres­i­dent took office. “Seven times Obama could have stopped China’s cheat­ing. Seven times he refused,” it says.

The pres­i­dent pushed back.

White House spokesman Jay Car­ney told reporters that all the actions the admin­is­tra­tion has ini­ti­ated at the World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion to rein in China have been suc­cess­ful. The president’s cam­paign said Obama has brought as many cases chal­leng­ing China trade poli­cies in 3 ½ years as for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush did in eight.

Inevitably, the Fed’s new attempt to inter­vene in the econ­omy became enmeshed in the campaign.

The nation’s cen­tral bank said it will spend $40 bil­lion a month to buy mort­gage bonds for as long as it deems nec­es­sary to make home buy­ing more afford­able. It plans to keep short-term inter­est rates at record lows through mid-2015 — six months longer than pre­vi­ously planned — and made clear it’s ready to try other mea­sures to stim­u­late the econ­omy if hir­ing doesn’t improve.

“The idea is to quicken the recov­ery,” said Fed Chair­man Ben Bernanke at a news con­fer­ence where he announced the lat­est attempts to jolt a slow-growth econ­omy that has left job­less­ness at 8.1 percent.

Car­ney, the White House press sec­re­tary, declined to com­ment, cit­ing a long-standing pol­icy when it comes to Fed actions.

But Rom­ney, in an inter­view for ABC’s “Good Morn­ing Amer­ica,” sum­ma­rized the cen­tral bank’s moves as an admis­sion of the fail­ure of the president’s own steps to restore robust eco­nomic growth. “And now the Fed­eral Reserve, it says, ‘Look, this econ­omy is not going well. … They’re going to print more money.”

He added: “The president’s say­ing the economy’s mak­ing progress, com­ing back. Bernanke’s say­ing, ‘No, it’s not. I’ve got to print more money.”

Rom­ney has said pre­vi­ously that he opposes more mea­sures along the lines that Bernanke announced dur­ing the day, and said in the inter­view he thought they would not suc­ceed in boost­ing the economy.

For his part, Obama vowed to do “what­ever is nec­es­sary” to pro­tect Amer­i­cans serv­ing abroad.

“We are going to bring those who killed our fel­low Amer­i­cans to jus­tice,” he said in Golden, Colo. as two U.S. war­ships head for the Libyan coast.

Halfway around the world, anti-American protests spread to Yemen.

Obama said the U.S. would not con­sider Egypt an ally, “but we don’t con­sider them an enemy.”

The gov­ern­ment in Cairo receives roughly $1.5 bil­lion in U.S. aid annu­ally, most of it for the military.

The pres­i­dent said in an inter­view with the Spanish-language net­work Tele­mu­ndo that Egypt is a “new gov­ern­ment that is try­ing to find its way.” And he warned that if the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment takes actions show­ing “they’re not tak­ing respon­si­bil­ity,” then it would “be a real big problem.”

Admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials later said the pres­i­dent was not try­ing to down­grade the rela­tion­ship between the U.S. and Egypt.

Posted by AP News on Sep 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.