Obama to address economy, Romney predicts "cheap words"

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama, seeking to counter deep doubts about his economic leadership, will ask voters on Thursday for more time to boost growth while arguing that his Republican rival Mitt Romney would resurrect policies that plunged the United States into crisis.

Obama will use a campaign speech in the battleground state of Ohio to try to bounce back from setbacks over the last two weeks.

These include an anemic jobs report and a misstep in which he seemed to play down the economy's woes by saying the private sector was "doing fine." He later told reporters he did not think the overall economy was fine.

The Democratic president risks losing the November 6 election if he cannot convince voters that his economic remedies are working. He is scheduled to speak in Cleveland at 1:45 p.m. EDT (5:45 p.m. GMT).

Romney will also be campaigning in Ohio and plans to attack Obama's economic record in a speech around the same time.

Obama's approval ratings have slipped to their lowest level since January - from 50 percent a month ago to 47 percent - because of deep economic worries, wiping out most of his lead in the White House race, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Tuesday.

A campaign aide said Obama's remarks for Thursday had been in the works for weeks, with the president trying to reset the election-year narrative as he kicks off an intensive schedule of summer campaigning. The speech will be the first in a series in which he will try to frame the choice in the election.

"The more time he spends talking about his vision for how we get out of this morass long term, the better off he is," said Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress and a former policy adviser to Obama and President Bill Clinton.

Romney and his fellow Republicans seized on Obama's comments about the private sector last week to portray him as lacking understanding of Americans' economic troubles and accuse him of putting government spending at the center of his efforts to lift the economy.

The Romney campaign has released an ad titled "Doing Fine" criticizing Obama's handling of the economy.

Romney, who is to speak about the economy in Cincinnati, predicted on Wednesday that Obama's speech would have soaring rhetoric but little else. "My own view is that he will speak eloquently but that words are cheap," he said, accusing Obama of lacking the ideas and business know-how to make a difference in growth and hiring.

"He is not responsible for whatever improvement we might be seeing," Romney said. "Instead he's responsible for the fact that it has taken so long to see this recovery, and the recovery is so tepid."

LACK OF VISION?

In his appearance at Cuyahoga Community College, Obama will argue that Romney is the one lacking ideas.

The White House has frequently said the former Massachusetts governor would revive the policies of Republican President George W. Bush, including lax financial regulation and budget-busting tax cuts that set the stage for economic crisis.

"Governor Romney and his allies in Congress believe that if you simply take away regulations and cut taxes by trillions of dollars, the market will solve all our problems on its own," the Obama campaign official said.

"The president believes the economy grows not from the top down, but from the middle class up, and he has an economic plan to do that," the aide added.

As Obama looked to link Romney's policies to those of Bush, a Gallup poll on Thursday showed that more than two-thirds of Americans believe Obama's predecessor -- Bush -- was responsible for the economy's woes.

In the poll, about 68 percent said Bush, who left office in January 2009, deserves a "moderate amount" or a "great deal" of the blame for the troubled economy versus 52 percent who pointed to Obama.

But a report on the job market on Thursday underscored the economy's weakness as the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose for the fifth time in six weeks.

Initial claims for state jobless benefits climbed 6,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 386,000, according to the Labor Department.

Obama rolled out economic proposals in a speech to Congress last September and in his State of the Union address in January, pitching ideas such as spending on roads and bridges and aid to states to help keep teachers and police officers on payrolls.

But congressional Republicans have balked at those plans, saying they would only add to the budget deficit without helping the economy regain momentum.

"The president has already laid out his vision in terms of what steps he thinks this Congress needs to take. Mitt Romney has not," said Jen Psaki, a former White House aide. "It's not a lack of plans or lack of vision. It's a lack of action by Congress."

After the Cleveland speech, Obama will travel to New York to visit the One World Trade Center site and then attend an exclusive fundraiser at the home of actors Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, co-hosted by Vogue editor Anna Wintour.

Parker, star of the television series "Sex and the City," could help the president reach out to women voters and young people, but the event also risked undercutting his efforts to connect with middle-class voters. Parker's glamorous image may be difficult to square with Obama's economic message.

Republicans have drawn attention to Obama's fundraisers with celebrities, including one last month with actor George Clooney, saying his preoccupation with hobnobbing with the elite had made him out of touch with the plight of Americans struggling with job losses and financial hardship.

(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Jim Loney)

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