CHANDLER, Ariz. — Fresh from a State of the Union address he used to make his case for re-election, President Barack Obama took to the road on Wednesday to build support for his economic message of fairness, calling for Congress to eliminate tax deductions for companies that move jobs overseas.

“If you’re a company that wants to outsource jobs or do business around the world, that’s your right,” Obama said at a conveyor-belt manufacturer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “But you shouldn’t get tax breaks for it.”

Instead, the president is proposing that Congress instead give tax breaks to companies that hire more U.S. workers, or “insource”— a term the administration has adopted of late.

“It’s become more expensive to do business in places like China,” Obama said. “Meanwhile, America is getting more productive.” So for many companies, he said, it is starting to make more sense to bring jobs home. “We have to seize this opportunity,” he said. “And it starts with changing our tax code.”

Despite the push, the reality is this is an election year for a deeply divided Congress that has shown itself barely able to take care of routine business, so the chances of Obama’s tax code proposal getting approved are remote, at best.

Obama is using a page out of his playbook from last fall, when he unveiled his jobs proposal in an address before a joint session of Congress, and then went around the country assailing Republicans for not passing it.

From their responses, Republicans seem set on sticking to their playbook from last fall as well: bashing Obama and his proposals. “While it’s an exciting event any time the president of the United States comes to town, Iowans don’t need a president concerned about hitting the campaign trail, giving speeches and rehashed promises, just to save his own job,” said Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee. “They need one who’s actually concerned about their job.”

Obama’s backers say the president can credibly make the argument that even in an election year, he is out there fighting for U.S. jobs.

Gingrich, Romney fight for Florida’s Latino vote

MIAMI — Mitt Romney is defending an increasingly precarious position among Florida’s Latino voters, a key voting bloc whose growth and diversity has complicated efforts to unify it behind one prospective nominee in Tuesday’s Republican primary.

Newt Gingrich opened the newest front against Romney on Wednesday by mocking his comment in Monday’s debate that illegal immigrants will “self-deport” when they can’t find jobs. Gingrich called Romney’s position an “Obama-level fantasy.”

“I think you have to live in worlds of Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island accounts and an automatic $20 million-a-year income with no work to have some fantasy this far from reality,” he said, speaking at a Univision presidential forum that Romney appeared at later in the day.

Romney later snipped at Gingrich for running radio ads that labeled Romney “anti-immigrant” — ads that Gingrich withdrew after a scolding from Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.

— Los Angeles Times