Obama returning to Iowa next week

President Barack Obama will return to Iowa on Thursday to meet with supporters, deliver an economic address in Newton and, perhaps, make an announcement about wind energy production.

Few details have been released other than Obama will make a presidential visit to Newton and a campaign stop in Des Moines. It will be his first campaign swing to Iowa this year.

“We are excited President Obama is coming back to host a grassroots event in Iowa,” said Iowa Obama for America spokeswoman Erin Seidler. “In Iowa, we have seen firsthand the choice in November as the president is fighting for the middle class and growing an economy that is built to last and Mitt Romney whose economic theories are based on outsourcing and tax breaks for the wealthy and biggest corporations that undercut middle class Iowans.”

Republican National Committee spokesman Ryan Mahoney called the visit a campaign visit funded by taxpayers who “continue to struggle with higher costs on gasoline, groceries, health care, and tuition.”

“Rather than jaunt around Iowa using taxpayer money,” added Iowa GOP Chairman A.J. Spiker, “President Obama should explain to Iowans why his budget has failed to garner a single vote in Congress and why he has added an unconscionable $5 trillion to the national debt after promising to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. Taxpayers in Iowa are fed up with having to finance President Obama's campaign stops while at the same time they are suffering as a result of his failed economic policies.”

Obama's visit will come little more than a week after presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney visited Des Moines to warn of the Obama administration's “prairie fire of debt.”

Their visits signal that the candidates see Iowa as one of a handful of states that are pivotal to reaching the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House.

Thursday's visit will be the president's third to Iowa this year. He visited Cedar Rapids in January, the day after delivering his State of the Union Address. Last month, Obama visited the University of Iowa in heavily Democratic Johnson County to promote legislation to keep student loan interest rates low.

It's expected the president will talk about the economy and press for congressional action on what he calls his “to-do” list, including creating tax credits for businesses that add jobs or increase wages and incentives for homeowners to refinance their mortgages at lower rates.

State Rep. Dan Kelley, D-Newton, hopes the visit to Newton signals an announcement on a wind energy production tax credit. Obama's first visit to Iowa as president was an Earth Day 2009 2009 tour of Trinity Structural Towers, a company making towers for wind turbines.

Then the president spoke of the symbolism of the former appliance plant being used to create components for the production of renewable energy, which would power the household appliances that had been built there by generations of Newton workers.

While Iowa's economy has fared better than the nation's as a whole, Newton and Jasper County have not fared as well as the state.

Iowa's unemployment in March was 5.2 percent, below the national average of 8.1 percent, but in Jasper County the figure was 8.5 percent.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.