President Barack Obama will come to the key battleground state of Ohio on Thursday to weigh in on the economy -- and to argue that he needs more time to turn back the economic policies backed by former President George W. Bush.

Obama is also expected to attempt to tie former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, who has won enough delegates to claim the Republican presidential nomination, to the policies backed by the Bush White House.

With Ohio expected to be one of the chief battlegrounds in November, Obama will be speaking in Cleveland on Thursday. The Obama campaign is hyping the speech, encouraging supporters to watch it online at their website.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Jay Earnest offered some hints as to what his boss will say in the speech when he spoke to the media in Maryland on Tuesday.

Saying that Obama was about to open a “very important debate for us to have in this country about what kinds of economic policies should be put in place,” Earnest said that the president would go after Romney and try to argue that the former Massachusetts governor would follow Bush’s playbook on the economy.

“There is, as we've discussed extensively, a pretty stark difference between the vision that’s being articulated by the president's Republican opponent,” Earnest said. “That is a vision that is characterized by the same kinds of policies that were put in place by the previous administration that led to a pretty significant economic downturn and a pretty significant spike in our federal budget deficit.”

Earnest attempted to contrast Bush and Romney with Obama.

“The president has a different approach,” Earnest insisted. “The president believes that we need to adopt a balanced approach in dealing with our deficit challenges, and that includes important and significant cuts in federal spending, including the largest -- including the cuts that he's already enacted, which have brought our discretionary spending down to the lowest levels since the Eisenhower administration as a percentage of GDP, but also making important investments in innovation, in infrastructure, in energy. The president believes that is the key to strengthening our economy ... in the short run, but also laying the kind of foundation that we need to ensure the economic strength of our country in future generations.”

Earnest left little doubt that Obama and his allies would pursue this theme in the general election season.

“That represents a pretty stark difference in the approach that’s being advocated by the Republicans in Congress and by the president's Republican opponent,” Earnest said. “And that’s a debate that we'll have over the course of the next five months. I think you'll hear the president flesh out those themes.”

The Republicans launched a pre-emptive strike on Wednesday, arguing that Obama’s economic record was abysmal and that he would launch no new proposals on Thursday to help turn the economy around.

"President Obama spent his first term focused on government-run health care, more regulation and higher taxes instead of helping the private sector create good-paying middle class jobs," said Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), in a statement released on Wednesday.

"President Obama has become out of touch with everyday Americans who trusted him to focus on jobs and turn the economy around,” Priebus added. “Instead, he decided to focus on a liberal agenda that has made it harder for middle class Americans to put food on the table and pay their mortgages. Tomorrow, as he once again 'pivots' his economic message without offering any new proposals, President Obama will make clear that from day one he lost focus on jobs and now he has no new plans to create them."

The RNC also launched a Web video attacking Obama’s record and insisting that he will bring nothing new to the table in his speech on Thursday.

When Obama took office in January 2009, the national unemployment rate stood at 7.6 percent -- the highest it had been since 1992. The national unemployment rate has gone up under Obama’s watch and, as of May, it stood at 8.2 percent.



Reach Kevin Derby at kderby@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.