JUDY WOODRUFF: The debate over whether the health care mandate is a tax remained front and center in the campaign today, even as the president shifted his attention to economic issues at the start of a battleground state bus tour.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

JUDY WOODRUFF: President Obama was back on the stump today in Ohio, touting his own economic policies and taking a shot at those of Republican Mitt Romney.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I don't think that Mr. Romney's plan to spend trillions of dollars more on tax cuts for folks that don't need them and aren't even asking for them is the right way to grow our economy, especially since they want to pay for it by cutting education spending, and cutting job training programs, and raising middle-class taxes.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The president's stop was part of a two-day bus tour across Ohio and Western Pennsylvania, to draw attention to economies in both states which have been buoyed by a stronger auto industry. But, in his first campaign event since last week's Supreme Court's decision to uphold his health care law, Mr. Obama also issued a firm defense of his overhaul of the system.

BARACK OBAMA: I will work with anybody who wants to work with me to continue to improve our health care system and our health care laws, but the law I passed is here to stay.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Yesterday, in an interview with CBS, Mitt Romney said he disagreed with the court's decision, and for the first time, called the requirement that all Americans buy health insurance, the individual mandate, a tax.

MITT ROMNEY (R): Well, the Supreme Court has the final word, and their final word is that Obamacare is a tax. So it's a tax. It's -- they decided it was constitutional, so it is a tax, and it's constitutional. That -- that's the final word.

There's no way around that. You can try and say you wish they had decided a different way, but they didn't. They concluded it was a tax. That's what it is. And the American people know that President Obama has broken the pledge he made.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But that comment signaled a shift in position. A similar requirement is part of the state health care law that Romney fought for as governor of Massachusetts.

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Campaigns Duel Over Calling Health Care Mandate a 'Tax'