Obama maintains outsourcing attack on Romney

DURHAM, N.H. -- President Obama continued his attack on Mitt Romney and his former firm’s business practices, mocking the response of his rival’s campaign to a report that Bain Capital had invested in companies that shipped jobs overseas.

Aides to the former Massachusetts governor disputed the report, saying it had confused the business practices of offshoring and outsourcing.

“If you’re a worker whose job went overseas, you don’t need someone trying to explain to you the difference,” Obama said. “You need someone who’s going to wake up every single day and fight for American jobs!”

Obama said that unlike his GOP rival, he would close a loophole in the tax code that offers an incentive to companies that move operations abroad.

The president, speaking at a New Hampshire high school at the start of a two-day campaign swing, said his argument against Romney was more than about his business practices.

“It’s part of an overall economic vision that he and Republicans in Congress want to implement,” he said. “It’s been voted on in Congress, it’s right there on Gov. Romney’s website.”

Voters have a choice in the election, one in which they can break the stalemate in Washington between two very different paths for the country, the president said.

Appealing to the fiscal Yankee conservatism of Granite State voters, Obama spoke specifically about the deadlock between him and Republicans on the deficit, spotlighting their resistance to asking the wealthy to pay “even a nickel more in taxes.”

Obama also said he cut taxes for typical working families by $3,600 a year, and cut small business taxes 18 times.

“I don’t believe every regulation is smart or that every tax dollar is spent wisely,” he said. “I share a belief of our first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, that through government we should do together what we do not do as well for ourselves.”

New Hampshire supported Obama by a double-digit margin in 2008, but swung back toward Republicans in the 2010 midterm elections. Both Democratic members of Congress lost reelection, Republican Kelly Ayotte claimed the state’s open Senate seat, and both chambers of the state Legislature shifted overwhelmingly toward the GOP.

As the administration awaits a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the healthcare reform law, the state’s Democratic governor, John Lynch, just last week signed legislation prohibiting the state from creating its own insurance exchange, a central part of the law. A spokesman for the governor said the move was not a rebuke of the president’s reform law and that the state would participate in any federal exchange.

White House spokesman Jay Carney, speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One en route from Washington, said administration officials “are ready for whatever decision is rendered by the Supreme Court,” and he dismissed reports questioning the administration’s legal strategy.

“The president and his team remain confident that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. And the administration has pressed forward with implementing various aspects of the Affordable Care Act and will continue to do so,” Carney said.

From New Hampshire, Obama is to travel to Boston for three campaign fundraisers, the largest of which is at the city’s Symphony Hall. Democratic Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren, a star among national progressives who faces Republican incumbent Scott Brown in November, is to introduce the president at one event.

On Tuesday, Obama will continue his trip with an event in Atlanta before returning to Florida for the second time in less than a week for campaign events in Miami. Singer Marc Anthony is to provide entertainment at one stop.

The two-day trip to start the week continues what aides say will be a steady ramping-up of the president’s campaign activity in coming weeks.

michael.memoli@latimes.com