The outside group Crossroads GPS on Friday said it plans to spend $25 million on television ads hitting President Obama on jobs and the federal debt.
"We’re suffering through one of the weakest economic recoveries in our history, and the only thing President Obama is offering is slogans and excuses," Crossroads GPS President Steven Law said in a statement. "People are hungering for practical solutions to our skyrocketing debt and flat-lined economy, and that’s what we are putting forward in our New Majority Agenda."
The first ad in the new campaign highlights Friday's June job report, which showed the economy added only 80,000 jobs over the past month, while the unemployment rate remained at 8.2 percent.
The Karl Rove-backed group plans to run television ads next week in the battleground states of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia.
The bleak jobs report comes as Obama's making a bus trip through swing states Ohio and Pennsylvania, with his campaign appearances focusing mainly on the economy. The Bureau of Labor Statistics's numbers suggest Obama will continue to run with a weak economy under his belt as his presumptive Republican opponent Mitt Romney gains steam.
Republicans have jumped on this new opportunity to harp on Obama's "failed" economic policies.
"Today's report shows the private sector clearly isn’t 'doing fine' and that President Obama’s policies have failed," Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Friday. He criticized Obama's stimulus package, his healthcare law and his investments in green energy companies as failures.
“The president needs to stop betting on his failed policies and start working with Republicans to remove government obstacles to job creation," Boehner said.
