Photo of the Day: President Barack Obama shakes hands at the John S. Knight Center in Akron, Ohio, August 1, 2012 (Larry Downing/Courtesy Reuters).

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President Barack Obama continued his economic appeal to middle-class voters (NPR) Wednesday while campaigning in Ohio, where the auto industry bailout is helping him hold a small lead over his opponent (TheHill).

Obama discussed his plans to provide health care and tax cuts for middle-income families and rebuild the U.S. economy “from the middle out” while asking high income earners to pay more in taxes, saying that these plans represent a clear difference between him and Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

In the latest installment of the election-year partisan tax battle, the House voted on Wednesday (NYT) to pass a Republican plan to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for all incomes, pitting it against a Senate-passed Democratic plan that would allow rates to rise on earnings over $250,000.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers say the work to resolve the so-called fiscal cliff will begin in earnest only after the November election. Meanwhile, they are patching together a bipartisan agreement to extend $152 billion in business and individual tax breaks that they hope will ease economic pain if a larger deal eludes them, writes the Times’ Jonathan Weisman.

The New York Times profiles Dan Senor, one of the Romney campaign’s top foreign policy advisers who “blends a foreign policy background, high-volume punditry and ties to wealthy hedge fund investors in the United States to become a triple threat as an insider in Mr. Romney’s presidential campaign.” Senor is a former adjunct senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations.

– Gayle S. Putrich, Contributing Editor