Biden coming back to Iowa to campaign

Eastern Iowa will be a scene of the 2012 presidential campaign yet again next week, with Vice President Joe Biden planning a two-day swing through the area to campaign for President Barack Obama.

It will be Biden's second stop in the Quad-City region since March.

The Obama campaign said Wednesday that Biden will be making visits to Waterloo, Dubuque and Clinton. Full details have not been announced, but they are expected in the coming days.

Biden's visit will come only a week after Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney took his campaign bus through through eastern Iowa, stopping in Dubuque and Davenport while criticizing the Democratic president's economic record.

The Biden stop also will center on the economy. The Obama campaign is dubbing his Tuesday-Wednesday swing the “Strengthening the Middle Class Tour.”

“In remarks during the tour, the vice president will discuss how President Obama is helping create an economy built to last - one focused on reclaiming the security of the rural middle class and restoring the basic values of hard work and fair play that made our country great,” the campaign said.

Biden will emphasize Iowa's improved manufacturing picture and higher farm incomes while also laying out “the clear economic choice” between the president and Romney, the campaign added.

The Obama and Romney campaigns have been hammering away in television ads at each other's respective economic records.

On Wednesday, the Obama campaign released two new TV ads critical of Romney. The ads will run in nine states, including Iowa. One ad, titled “Mosaic,” says that as governor of Massachusetts, Romney cut taxes on wealthy people but raised fees affecting the middle class 1,000 times. Those included additional fees on such things as nursing homes, driver's licenses and health care, the ad states.

Romney's campaign responded Wednesday by saying that the Obama campaign was engaging in distortions.

“Mitt Romney was a successful businessman and governor with a decades-long record of helping to create American jobs, in contrast to President Obama's hostility to free enterprise that has left millions of Americans out of work. It's still the economy and the American people aren't stupid,” Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul said.

Iowa is among a handful of battleground states in the 2012 election and is seeing an increasing amount of campaign activity.

Romney's stop here last week was his third in Iowa since he sewed up the GOP nomination this spring. He's also been to Council Bluffs and Des Moines.

Biden was in Davenport in late March, making a campaign stop at PCT Engineered Systems, where he talked extensively about manufacturing's recovery. He's also been to Ames and Sioux City during 2012.

The president himself has also stepped up his activity in the state. He's been to Des Moines, Newton, Iowa City and Cedar Rapids this year.