MONTROSE, Colo. -- Just hours after the latest unemployment report was released Friday, Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan attacked President Barack Obama for not living up to his promise of getting more Americans back to work.

Related: Jobs data unlikely to sway undecided voters

"We just got the latest jobs report that voters are going to see before heading to the polls on Election Day. And what we saw today is that the unemployment rate is higher than the day that President Obama came into office," Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, said. "We are 9 million jobs short than what he said he would accomplish. Look, in the president's campaign for another term, he has offered nothing different and if he is reelected, nothing different is exactly what we would get."

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The U.S. economy added 171,000 jobs in October, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics Report, and the unemployment rate ticked up to 7.9 percent, still below the important psychological threshold of 8 percent.

In the shadows of the San Juan Mountains, Ryan told voters in the key battleground of Colorado to hold on for just another few days.

"Here’s what it comes down to: we can't afford to wait four more years for real change to get us on the right track. We only need to wait four more days. Four more days and we can do this. Four more days. Four more days and we can get this on the right track," he said at the Black Canyon Jet Center to a cheering crowd.

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The Friday morning rally marked Ryan’s 11th in the Centennial State where Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and Obama are in a dead heat to capture the state’s nine electoral votes. According to a CNN/ORC International poll released yesterday, Obama barely edges out Romney, 50 to 48 percent, among the state's likely voters. The two-point lead for Obama is within the polls margin of error.

Romney will hold two events in Colorado Saturday while Ryan returns on Sunday for an event in Castle Rock before Tuesday’s election.

WEST ALLIS, WI-- Mitt Romney returned to Wisconsin today for the first time since August, delivering his closing argument speech in a state where Republicans hope they can manage a chink in the President Barack Obama's Midwestern armor.

Romney received a raucous welcome from an overflow crowd of 4,000 Wisconsinites chanting "four more days" this morning, welcoming the Republican presidential nominee with some of the loudest support Romney has won since returning to a full campaign schedule in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

"What a great state. What a great welcome, and by the way this state is going to help me become the next president of the United States," Romney said, taking the stage following an introduction from the state's once-embattled Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

"I want to thank you for all that you've done and all you're going to do in the next four days and I want to tell you how much I appreciate being in the home of the next vice president of the United States," Romney said moments later, referring to his running mate Paul Ryan, who was born and raised in nearby Janesville, Wisc.

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For the Romney campaign, the presence of a native son of the Badger state on the ticket, along with Walker's strong performance in this summer's failed recall effort, highlight an opportunity to solve a vexing problem -- how to break through Obama's Midwestern firewall.

"They woke a sleeping giant here I would say during the recall," Milwaukee business owner Frank Orlando told NBC News, adding that he was volunteering for a political campaign -- Romney's -- for the first time in his life. He added that half the volunteers he works with are also engaging in politics directly for the first time that cycle.

"We love Paul Ryan," said Grace Lococo, another event attendee from Milwaukee. "We grew up following him."

Romney aides say they see that type of familiarity and enthusiasm as emblematic of a blue state ripe for flipping.

"We see Republican gains in Wisconsin for the past few cycles and we believe its an excellent opportunity for a Romney pickup," Romney spokesperson Rick Gorka said.

Related: Obama slams Romney for Jeep ad in Ohio

Recent polling lends some credence to that theory. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll released earlier this week showed Romney cutting Obama's lead in Wisconsin down to three points -- 49 to 46 percent -- half of what it had been a month prior and within the poll's margin of error.

With the president under the 50 percent threshold, Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes could help Romney succeed on Tuesday should he fail to break through in the race's most critical battlefield of Ohio, where he'll campaign the rest of the day Friday, and return later in the weekend.

For the Romney campaign, Wisconsin has already proven decisive once. The state's primary in April, which Romney won handily, was the last truly competitive contest between Romney and Rick Santorum, and helped wrap up the contentious GOP primary race later that month.

GREELEY, Colo. -- Speaking in the battleground state of Colorado, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan piled on President Barack Obama for apparently suggesting the creation of a new cabinet position.

“He's (Obama) got a new idea for the second term and here's what it is. In addition to all the borrowing and all the spending and all the money printing and all the regulating, he wants a new cabinet position,” Ryan told a crowd at the Island Grove Event Center Thursday. “He wants to create a new 'secretary of business.' You know, we already have a secretary of business. It's actually called secretary of commerce. That's what this agency does.”

Ryan continued knocking the president: “Let me ask you a question: can anybody name our current secretary of commerce? You know why? We don't have one! It's been vacant for over four months and the president hasn't even proposed to put somebody in the job. We don't need another bureaucrat or another bureaucracy, we need another president.”

Obama made the comments during an interview with MSNBC to which both Romney and Ryan talked about on the campaign trail today.

"We don’t need a secretary of business to understand business we need a president who understands business, and I do," Romney said at a rally in the battleground state of Virginia Thursday morning.

RACINE, WI – Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan joined the GOP offensive against the 2009 auto bailout engineered by President Barack Obama, arguing the rescue of GM and Chrysler hardly constitutes the success story the administration claims.

"Everybody wants a strong and vibrant auto sector. We want a strong manufacturing sector. But today you might have heard that Joe Biden again was at it again. Today he was talking about the government bailout, which they keep touting as an unqualified success story,” Ryan said, citing two plants in his home state of Wisconsin where production was halted following the bailout.

"The facts, they speak for themselves. President Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy, taxpayers still stand to lose $25 billion dollars in the president's politically managed bankruptcy," Ryan said. "These companies, Chrysler in particular we know this story, are now choosing to expand manufacturing overseas. These are the facts. Those facts are inconvenient for the president but no one disputes them. The president and the vice president, the problem is they simply can't defend their record."

Ryan's language adds to a late-in-the-campaign effort by the Republican to counter the president's record on the auto industry, which Obama and Vice President Joe Biden has used to great effect against Romney and Ryan in a series of battleground states where the auto industry looms large.

The auto bailouts have become a topic of major discussion as the Romney campaign launched a series of ads in Ohio that erroneously suggested Jeep was looking to shift production from the U.S. to China, earning the Republican campaign a rebuke from GM and Chrysler's corporate leadership.

The fact that Ryan had supported the bailout during its earliest stages -- in late 2008, when loans to the troubled automakers were initiated by President George W. Bush -- has further complicated the Wisconsin congressman's efforts to attack the bailout as executed by Obama.

The support for auto companies initiated by Bush was different from the support provided by Obama, who used funding from the Troubled Asset Relief Program to prop up GM and Chrysler and give the government an equity stake in both companies.

Ryan, like many Republicans, has focused on the suppliers, pensioners and dealerships who feel that they were shortchanged during the bankruptcy process, to the benefit of autoworkers' unions.

The Obama campaign has fought back aggressively on the issue, as Biden, speaking Wednesday in Florida, called Romney's Jeep ad an “outrageous lie” and made out of “desperation.”

“In the last hours of this campaign, if you can believe it, they're running the most scurrilous ads in Ohio ... one of the most flagrantly dishonest ads I can ever remember in my political career. In the ad they're running in Ohio, they assert that President Obama forced Chrysler into bankruptcy,” Biden said, noting the ad claimed Obama allowed Chrysler to move Jeep operations to China. ”That's what the ad says. It's an outrageous lie.”
 
"All my time I have never heard an American corporation in the waning hours of the campaign engage with that kind of description of what a presidential candidate's doing," Biden said after quoting a General Motors statement calling the Romney ad "campaign politics at its cynical worst."

Obama re-election campaign spokesman Danny Kanner added in response to the claims made by the Wisconsin congressman: "Ryan was forced to do Mitt Romney’s dirty work in Wisconsin today – telling blatant falsehoods about the auto rescue in a desperate attempt to salvage their campaign. But the American people aren’t going to buy it. When the American auto industry and more than one million workers’ jobs were on the line, President Obama stepped up and Mitt Romney turned his back."

EAU CLAIRE, Wisc. -- Six days before Election Day, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan is devoting an entire day of campaigning in his home state of Wisconsin, a state which hasn’t gone for Republicans in a presidential election in nearly two decades.

“We are used to being battleground states. There are a handful of states that will determine the outcome of this election and Wisconsin is one of them. And so know that we have a unique responsibility and a unique opportunity to help determine the course of this country for along time,” Ryan said after proclaiming his excitement to be back home.

Mary Altaffer / AP

Republican vice presidential candidate, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. greets supporters during a campaign event, Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012, in Eau Claire, Wis.

The Badger State, which last awarded its electoral votes to a Republican presidential candidate in 1984, could be a determining factor on Nov. 6.

The seven-term Wisconsin congressman (who's up for re-election to his House seat next week) was optimistic about next week’s results, speaking at his first of three events Wednesday.

“So this is Wednesday morning. Think about next Wednesday morning,” Ryan told the crowd packed inside Florian Gardens. “We are going to wake up next Wednesday morning and know that we have elected a leader to put our country back on the right track.”

Ryan’s stop here marks his 12th event in Wisconsin.

Romney was originally planning to hold a rally in Milwaukee on Tuesday but was forced to cancel the event due to Hurricane Sandy's impact on the East Coast. The GOP VP nominee stopped by two Wisconsin Victory Centers on Tuesday to thank volunteers for gathering donations to send to victims of the storm.

Ryan will head to rallies in Green Bay and Racine later today before taking part in Halloween trick-or-treating with his three children tonight.

FERNANDINA BEACH, FL -- Speaking under clear blue skies here as Hurricane Sandy pounds the Northeast, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan asked Floridians to keep those in the path of the storm in their thoughts and prayers.

“Look, Floridians, you are no stranger to big storms. You know better than anyone on the need for communities to come together and for neighbors to help one another,” Ryan said. “You know, as we were driving over here, Adam [Putnam, Florida commissioner of Agriculture] was telling me about the hundreds of Floridians, about the hundreds of utilities crews that left just today from Florida to go to the Northeast. Thank God for men and women like that. Thank you for sending your people. That’s what we do for each other in this country.”

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The Wisconsin congressman, who along with his running mate Mitt Romney cancelled all of their remaining events this evening and all day Tuesday, encouraged the nearly 2,300-person crowd to send financial assistance to the numerous states that have declared states of emergency.

“When you get home today, take a look at the Red Cross website. Think about donating to the Red Cross. We know how to help each other in this country. If you have friends and family in the path of the storm, make sure you call them. Make sure they listen to the warnings, make sure they check on their elderly neighbors,” Ryan said.

He noted that the campaign is in touch with “regional leaders” and are collecting supplies at their victory offices throughout the Sunshine State.

Before continuing on with his normal stump speech and encouraging people to help the GOP ticket beat President Barack Obama in 8 days, Ryan said: “Since we all love this country, lets put our neighbors in the north in our prayers. Lets do what we need to do to help them get through what is coming their due – what is coming in their way – and lets not forget the fact that this is the greatest country on the face of the earth.”

CELINA, Ohio – As Hurricane Sandy makes its way up the Eastern Seaboard, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign has decided to not only cancel all events in the storm’s path but also stop sending fundraising appeals in several states that will likely be affected.

The Romney campaign will halt fundraising efforts in North Carolina, Virginia, Washington, D.C., New Jersey and Pennsylvania for the duration of the storm, adviser Kevin Madden told reporters following a rally here.

This news comes just a day after Romney himself was forced to cancel stops in the battleground state of Virginia Sunday so that emergency personnel could focus on storm preparations. The Republican presidential nominee headed to Ohio instead, meeting up with his running mate, Paul Ryan, for the conclusion of a two-day bus tour across the Buckeye State.

"Our top concern is safety and security and making sure that people who are in the presumed track of the storm are safe and that we're not taking away from response efforts, that's why we cancelled our events there today," Madden said.

Romney spoke about Hurricane Sandy while in Findlay, Ohio Sunday evening, telling the crowd: "I know that right now some people in the country are a little nervous about a storm about to hit the coast. And our thoughts and prayers are with the people who will find themselves in harm's way."

The campaign announced that Romney's event in Milford, N.H. on Tuesday is now cancelled due to the impending weather.

Ryan also discussed the storm and those in its path at the top of his remarks today.

“Look, first let me start on a slightly different note. Let’s today when we get home put in our prayers the people who are in the east coast in the wake of this big storm that’s coming. Let’s not forget those fellow Americans of ours,” Ryan told a crowd of roughly 2,000 supporters.

Thousands of people have already been ordered to evacuate along the East Coast as Hurricane Sandy begins to make landfall. States of emergency have been declared in nine states and D.C.

Romney-Ryan and Victory offices across Virginia are collecting donations in preparation for storm relief efforts and Madden told reporters the campaign is in constant communication with their regional offices and indicated that the campaign may have to cancel more events, depending on the storm's impact.

“Our folks in headquarters are staying in contact with folks in the states to get the best assessment on the storm and how it’s impacting the states, so we're just continuing to get updated on it,” Madden said.

ZANESVILLE, OH – With a mere 10 days before Election Day, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan kicked off a two-day bus tour in Ohio, arguably the biggest battleground state of all.

"As Ohio goes, so goes America. I think you know that," Ryan told the crowd inside Zanesville High School at his second stop on the ‘Victory In Ohio’ Bus Tour. 

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Mitt Romney’s running mate is helping illustrate the GOP ticket’s final argument going into Election Day on his 400-mile tour of Ohio.

"As you look at the closing arguments, we’re talking about what it’s going to take to get people back to work. We’re talking about the kind of leadership that Mitt Romney has provided throughout his life, at running at problems to solve problems,” Ryan said shortly after the “Momentum” web video played on screens in the gymnasium. “There have been hundreds of millions of dollars of negative advertising from the spring on trying to disqualify Mitt Romney. But what we learned at the debates is that this is a man of integrity, this is a man of principle, this is a man who knows how to create jobs, this is a man we would be proud to call our president. 

The seven-term Wisconsin congressman, who attended college at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, also tried to make a personal appeal to Ohioans on a rainy Saturday in Big 10 Country.

"We come from Big 10 country," Ryan said to applause at Gradall Industries in New Philadelphia, Ohio. "I'm just happy the Badgers and Buckeyes play after the election."

The latest TIME poll shows President Barack Obama with a 5-point lead in the Buckeye State, ahead of Romney 49 percent to 44 percent.

Both the Romney and Obama camps have been campaigning in the state frequently plus being up on the airwaves with ads in order to try and secure Ohio’s 18 electoral votes. Obama beat Sen. John McCain in Ohio during the 2008 election by 4 percent points.

Speaking before nearly 1,000 people at his first stop of the day in New Philadelphia, Ryan tried to fire up the crowd in the homestretch of the campaign: “The debate is going to last for about 10 more days. The choice is yours on November the sixth. Think about November the seventh. Think about how you will feel the next morning when you wake up and turn on the TV….Are we gonna wait four more years before we have real change or are we just gonna wait ten days? We can turn this around.”

Ryan has three more events Saturday in Circleville, Yellow Springs and Sabina. He has another three events Sunday. As a result of the impending weather conditions on the East Coast, Romney will join Ryan for the final event of the bus tour tomorrow evening at the fairgrounds in Marion, Ohio.

KENOSHA, Wis. -- Three days after Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock sparked a firestorm for saying that pregnancies from rape are "something God intended to happen," Vice President Joe Biden linked the remark - along with another by controversial candidate by Missouri GOP Senate candidate Todd Akin -- to the Republican ticket. 

"They made it very clear that they do not believe a woman has a right to control her own body," Biden said of Republican standard-bearers Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. "They can't even get up the gumption to condemn the statements made by 2 of their candidates for United states Senate."  

This summer, Missouri candidate Akin designated "legitimate rape" as a scenario in which physical pregnancy could not occur, prompting Republican leaders - including Romney - to urge him to exit the competitive race. 

Romney called Akin's language "offensive and wrong" but was less vigorous about Mourdock's statement, saying he "disagreed" but still backs him. 

"It's not enough to tell me you don't agree," Biden said Friday, alluding to Romney's distance from Mourdock's statement but refusal to rescind his endorsement of the Indiana candidate. "It's having the moral courage to stand up and say what they said was wrong, simply wrong." 

Biden has consistently been critical of the Republican ticket's views on abortion, but he has not specifically named either of the two controversial Senate candidates before. 

The vice president's critique came at his last event of a day-long swing through Wisconsin. He will travel to Lynchburg, VA tomorrow for a rally, but the campaign has cancelled a planned Virginia Beach event due to an impending storm. 

BRISTOL, VA – Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan was back in the battleground state of Virginia on Thursday, hammering away at President Barack Obama for lacking a 2nd term agenda.

"Just a couple of days ago he came up with a slick new brochure, you know, with less than two weeks left to say, 'Oh I do actually have an agenda,'" Ryan said.

"It is a slick -- well, comic book -- that was his word,” acknowledging a man in the crowd. "To me, a slick re-packaging of more of the same. And look at what it has gotten us. You see, where we are today is our economy is barely limping along. It is slower than it was last year, last year was slower than the year before."

On Tuesday, President Obama released the "Blueprint for America's Future," which featured proposals for a 2nd term published in millions of glossy pamphlets. The 20-page document came after heavy criticism that Obama hadn't been spending enough time laying out specifics. 

Ryan asked voters here in Bristol to give both he and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney the “moral obligation” to put the Republican agenda in place come Nov. 6.

“The worst thing that could happen, president Obama gets reelected and we have more of the same with a debt crisis. The second worst thing that could happen is we get elected by default without a mandate. This is why we’re asking you to give us the moral authority and the obligation to honor you by putting this agenda in place to get America back on the right track,” Ryan said outside Universal Fibers in Southwest Virginia.

As Ryan returned to Virginia today for two rallies -- the next happening in Charlottesville -- President Barack Obama himself was campaigning just a couple hundred miles away in Richmond during his 48 hour "campaign extravaganza."

Polls are tight in this swing state; the Oct. 11 NBC News-Wall Street Journal-Marist poll showed Romney with a narrow lead over President Obama in the state, 48 percent to 47 percent among likely voters.

Early voting is underway in the state and the GOP VP nominee begged the nearly 1,500 person crowd Thursday to help with voter turnout.

“Virginia, we need your help. Don’t forget, early voting has already started. If you haven’t voted absentee, you can still do it, And go find somebody who thought the hope and change sounded good in 2008 but know it isn’t true now. Get them to vote for us,” he said.

Just before departing for his second event of the day in Charlottesville, Ryan, joined by his wife and three kids, met racecar driver Richard Petty on the tarmac in Blountville, TN and posed for a picture.

“It is a real pleasure to meet you in person,” Ryan said after introducing Petty to his kids as one of the “most famous racecar drivers ever.”

CLEVELAND, OH -- Appearing in an economically hard-hit corner of the crucial battleground state of Ohio, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan attempted to put a softer edge on the GOP ticket’s plans to reform social programs.

In one of his only major policy speeches of the campaign, the Wisconsin congressman sought to widen the GOP ticket's appeal beyond Republicans and to Independents and Democrats -- just as President Barack Obama's campaign warns that GOP nominee Mitt Romney's proposals would wreck the social safety net and stunt upward mobility.

“Upward mobility is the central promise of life in America. But right now, America’s engines of upward mobility aren’t working the way they should,” Ryan told the crowd at Cleveland State University. “Mitt Romney and I are running because we believe that Americans are better off in a dynamic, free-enterprise-based economy that fosters economic growth, opportunity and upward mobility instead of a stagnant, government-directed economy that stifles job creation and fosters government dependency.”

Slideshow: On the Trail

The speech hit on policy more than politics, evinced by the fact that Ryan mentioned Obama's name only once in his speech.

“Mitt and I have a message that’s bigger than party. We are speaking to all Americans in this campaign,” Ryan said in front of nearly 600 people, adding, “Wherever we are in life, whether we are rich or poor, black, brown, or white, American by chance or by choice, we are one nation, rising or falling together.”

He continued: “Whatever your political party, this nation cannot afford four more years like the last four years.  We need a real recovery,” Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, said with both American and Ohio flags lining the stage behind him.

The seven-term Wisconsin congressman referenced his former mentor, Jack Kemp, in the speech and said that a Romney administration, if elected, would do everything it could to help the 46 million Americans in poverty today.

“In this war on poverty, poverty is winning. We deserve better. We deserve a clear choice for a brighter future,” he said, speaking off a teleprompter.

Slideshow: Twin sons of different parties 

The list of topics Ryan on which touched didn’t stop there, extending into themes he discusses regularly on the campaign trail -- but counched differently for the more formal speech. He also included standard Romney agenda items, such as "urgent" reforms of the school system, repealing Obama's health care law, and protecting religious liberties.

“Look, I am a proud Republican,” the GOP VP nominee said. “Our party does a good job of speaking to the part of the American Dream that involves taking what you’re passionate about and making a successful living from it. But part of what makes America great is that when we don’t succeed, we look out for one another through our communities. My party has a vision for making our communities stronger – but we don’t always do a good job of laying out that vision.”

Wednesday’s speech in the Buckeye State was a step toward trying to help better illustrate that vision.

"In a Cleveland speech today less than two weeks before the election, Congressman Ryan will attempt to hide the truth about Mitt Romney’s policies," responded Danny Kanner, a spokesman for the Obama campaign. "But one last-minute speech won’t be able to mask the truth: the Romney-Ryan approach would close ladders to the middle class with a budget that, according to one expert, would “likely increase poverty and inequality more than any other budget in recent times (and possibly in the nation’s history)."

The last major policy speech on the Republican side came back on Oct. 8, when Romney spoke in the battleground state of Virginia on foreign policy. Ryan’s event in Swanton, OH that day was delayed to watch his running mate’s address.  Today, shortly after Ryan took the stage in Ohio, Romney started his campaign rally simultaneously in Reno, NV.