Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Obama policies such as the health care law and financial regulations are "slowing the economy down" and making it hard to create jobs.
"We've got plenty to run against," McConnell said on CNN's State of the Union. "Clearly what they're doing is not working."
Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, a surrogate for Obama's re-election team, said on CNN that the economy is coming back from near-collapse, "and it takes a while to dig out of that hole."
Gibbs said that proposals by Republican Mitt Romney and other Republicans amount to nothing more than tax breaks for the wealthy and fewer regulations for business, the recipe tried during the George W. Bush years and found wanting.
"We tried it in eight years and it ended in this huge economic calamity," Gibbs said.
Gibbs and McConnell spoke two days after a new Labor Department report said the economy added only 80,000 new jobs in June, with the unemployment rate staying at only 8.2%.
Obama's approach is steadily working, Gibbs said, with an emphasis on such middle class concerns as education and health care.
"We've made progress," Gibbs said, "but we've got a long way to go."
