BOSTON (AP) — Sensing an opening on the economy, President Barack Obama launched an aggressive new effort Saturday to convince voters in the most competitive states that Republican rival Mitt Romney is risky for the nation's recovery with a plan that caters to multimillionaires over the middle class.

"They want to go back to the same old policies that got us in trouble in the first place," former President Bill Clinton is shown saying in the 60-second TV ad set to run in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, and Virginia.

"We're not going back, we are moving forward," Obama adds in the commercial.

Romney doesn't agree and says Obama's leadership has done little to jolt an economy hampered by an unemployment rate just over 8 percent.

Obama's campaign spent about $6 million to buy airtime for the new ad in the key battleground states.

The fresh Obama push, coupled with ads this past week by both candidates squaring off over China's impact on the U.S. economy, comes seven weeks before Election Day and as polls point to modest gains for the president following the national political conventions. Both campaigns say they expect the race to be decided by eight or nine states.

Romney, a former business executive who argues that only he can fix the sluggish economy, was taking Saturday off from campaigning. He was trying to refocus his campaign on the economy after a difficult week dominated by foreign policy, a vulnerability, in the wake of unrest at U.S. embassies.

© 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. Material may not be redistributed.

More From KYBB-FM / B102.7