WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney are both getting new talking points on the economy, with the government reporting the addition of 163,000 jobs in July while the overall unemployment rate rose to 8.3 percent.
With the presidential election now less than 100 days away, the economy still looms as the key issue in determining whether Obama will get a second term.
Romney is ready to take advantage of any new statistics that would buttress his argument that he'd better serve the country than Obama as a steward of the economy. But Obama can boast that the pace of hiring last month was the best since February, and that the American people would be better off to keep him at the helm.
