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President Barack Obama says in a new television spot that the economic plan favored by his rival Mitt Romney is a tired approach that would only favor the wealthy.

The Obama campaign says the minute-long ad, called "The Choice," will air in nine battleground states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Obama's campaign said on Sunday they would not air any ads in Colorado through Friday in light of the shooting there last week. "The Choice" will begin airing in the state on Saturday, the Obama campaign tells CNN.

In the spot, Obama looks directly into the camera and tells voters, "Over the next four months, you have a choice to make."

The president says the choice isn't just between Democrats and Republicans, or between himself and Romney.

"It's a choice between two very different plans for our country," Obama explains. "Governor Romney's plan would cut taxes for the folks at the very top. Roll back regulations on big banks. And he says that if we do, our economy will grow and everyone will benefit. But you know what? We tried that top down approach. It's what caused the mess in the first place."

By contrast, Obama says his plan would "ask the wealthy to pay a little more so we can pay down our debt in a balanced way, so that we can afford to invest in education, manufacturing and home-grown American energy."

Obama concludes by laying out the stakes he sees in November's election: "Sometimes politics can seem very small. But the choice you face, it couldn't be bigger."

Responding to the ad, Romney's campaign attacked the president's record on job creation and said he was "unqualified" to lead the country.

“President Obama believes that government creates jobs, not hard-working entrepreneurs and small-business owners. Not only are his ‘you didn’t build that’ comments insulting to job creators, but they also reflect how unqualified he is to lead our country toward an economic recovery. Instead of meeting with his Jobs Council, he is busy holding fundraisers, playing golf and trying to tear down Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney will never be too busy to focus on jobs and the economy and it will be his top priority as president,” said Amanda Henneberg, Romney campaign spokesperson.

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• Wall Street Reform: More than anything else, a transparent system where everyone plays by the same rules is crucial to free enterprise and efficient markets. That’s why the President championed Wall Street reform that requires more rigorous disclosure and tightens oversight of the kind of speculation that caused the market meltdown. (of course, Republicans have stymied every effort and weakened the few he's managed to get through)

• Supporting Small Businesses: The President has made a priority of letting our most crucial job creators – small businesses – thrive, grow and hire. He has cut small businesses’ taxes 18 times, recognizing that they create two out of every three new jobs in America. Because of the President’s support for businesses and entrepreneurs, the S&P 500 has increased nearly 90 percent since March 2009.

• Encouraging Innovation and Competitiveness: The President streamlined the patent process to help small-business innovators more quickly move ideas from the lab to market, and protect those innovations abroad. The Department of Energy has funded more than 180 projects, including 40 start-ups, to encourage the creation of breakthrough technologies. During President Obama’s first term, investments from the Recovery Act will enable the United States to increase twentyfold our share of the world’s capacity for advanced battery manufacturing – from 2 percent in 2009 to 40 percent by 2015. President Obama has also made critical investments in groundbreaking clean-energy projects and research that bring together scientists and entrepreneurs from the private and public sectors. (Yeah, as a "nonpartisan", I know you'll probably focus on Solyndra...but Solyndra isn't the whole story)

• Rescuing American Auto-making: When Mitt Romney and others suggested America should “let Detroit go bankrupt,” the President refused to turn his back on an iconic American industry and the jobs it supports. He extended emergency loans to America’s car companies, leadership that has saved more than 1.4 million jobs up and down the supply chain. G.M., Ford and Chrysler have all seen their share of the U.S. sales market grow in the past two years, a sharp reversal from more than two decades of decline.

• Reviving Manufacturing: Manufacturing, a proud and critical sector of our economy that produces good stamped “Made in America,” has seen a resurgence since President Obama reduced import costs and increased exports for U.S. manufacturers. Manufacturing employment hadn’t grown since 1997, so President Obama cut production costs and tariffs for American companies. Now manufacturing production is increasing faster than it has in more than a decade, and private-sector manufacturing businesses have added jobs for 29 straight months – including 334,000 jobs in the past two years.

• Promoting International Trade: To level the playing field for American businesses and workers and to expand the market for U.S. goods, President Obama signed trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama that will support more than 70,000 American jobs. He’s helping American businesses compete in the global marketplace and set a goal of doubling our nation’s exports by the end of 2014 – a goal the United States is ahead of schedule to meet.

• Freeing Business from Burdensome Regulations: The President ordered an across-the-board review of the federal government to eliminate “absurd and unnecessary” regulations that waste time and money and hinder free enterprise. As a result, his administration is stripping hundreds of rules, saving businesses $10 billion over the next five years. Four out of five business economists now say the current regulatory environment is “good” for businesses and the economy as a whole.

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"I will in my first 100 days take action to eliminate government programs, to send a lot of government programs back to states (states which are having an incredibly hard time keeping the programs they HAVE because of the economy and cuts that have alredy been made) where I limit the rate of growth at inflation, and to cut back the number of federal employees through attrition (the unemployment numbers are so high largely BECAUSE of cut-backs in government employees)," Romney said. "And by the way, to link the pay of government workers with the pay that exists in the private sector.

Also on Romney's to-do list: approving the controversial Keystone pipeline (which, if you read about it, only benefits Canada in the end and creates few American jobs), slashing non-security discretionary government spending (we know what THAT means!), reducing the number of government regulations (which Obama's already doing, but Romney would focus on regulations that keep our air, water, etc., safe) and repealing 'Obamacare.'

On that issue, Romney repeated a new line of attack against the president – a slam that's being cited as taking the president's words out of context.

"The other day, when he was asked, 'Do you understand that particular small businesses [are] having a hard time because of Obamacare?' He said he didn't know – he hadn't heard that small businesses were affected by Obamacare, negatively," Romney told the CEOs, referring to the president.

It turns out, that's not exactly what the president said.

During a Tuesday interview with a local television from Iowa, the president was asked about the impact of the nation's health reform law on small businesses.

The interviewer told the president that an Iowa company said it had to close and move jobs to Wisconsin, as a "direct result of the health care reform that you initiated, that Congress passed."

"How do you react to that?" the reporter asked.

The president responded: "That would be kind of hard to explain. Because the only folks that have been impacted in terms of the health care bill are insurance companies who are required to make sure that they're providing preventive care, or they're not dropping your coverage when you get sick. And so, this particular company probably wouldn't have been impacted by that."

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VOICEOVER: “Day one, President Romney immediately approves the Keystone pipeline, creating thousands of jobs that Obama blocked.”

VOICEOVER: “President Romney introduces tax cuts and reforms that reward job creators, not punish them.”

VOICEOVER: “President Romney issues order to begin replacing Obamacare with commonsense health care reform.”

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