Obama continues to hit Romney over Massachusetts record

(CBS News) President Obama is not letting up on his attacks against Mitt Romney's record as governor of Massachusetts, unveiling on Tuesday a television ad noting the Bay state's debt under Romney was the highest per capita in the nation.

"At the same time, Massachusetts fell to 47th in job creation, one of the worst economic records in the country. First in debt. Forty-seventh in job creation. That's Romney Economics. It didn't work then. It won't work now," the narrator intones.

The Obama campaign, which called its purchases of advertising time "significant," said the television ad would run in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

An accompanying press release said Romney added $2.6 billion in state debt as governor to bring the total debt to $18 billion.

The ad is part of an increasingly heated battle between the two campaigns to define each rival's economic record in unflattering terms.

Romney on Monday unveiled a web video hitting the president for telling reporters last week that "the private sector is doing fine," one week after the Labor Department said the economy added 82,000 private sector jobs in May and lost 13,000 public sector jobs.

"Has there ever been a president so out of touch with the middle class?" reads the text on the screen.

The Romney ad is reminiscent of a September 2008 spot from the Obama campaign which mocked Sen. John McCain for saying "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" as the nation was in the midst of a massive financial crisis that led to the worst recession since the Great Depression.