WASHINGTON (AP) — Targeting Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail, President Barack Obama is heading to New Hampshire, a political battleground, to begin a year-end push to extend payroll tax cuts.

During a speech today at a Manchester high school, the president was to argue that a failure to extend the tax breaks would hurt middle-class families already struggling amid a shaky economy, effectively daring congressional Republicans to block the extension and thus increase taxes.

“If we don’t act, taxes will go up for every single American, starting next year. And I’m not about to let that happen,” Obama said Monday.

But if Republicans are in Obama’s sights, he’s firmly in theirs, too.

Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is airing his first TV ads in the Granite State, and they are sharply critical of Obama’s economic record. He also ran ads in New Hampshire newspapers that say to Obama, “I will be blunt. Your policies have failed.”

The president’s trip follows the collapse of the special congressional deficit-reduction supercommittee, which failed to reach a deal on $1.2 trillion in cuts. Democrats had hoped to tuck the payroll tax extension, as well as a renewal of jobless benefits for the unemployed, into a supercommittee agreement.

With that option seemingly off the table, the White House plans to make a full- court press for a separate measure to extend the payroll tax cuts before they expire at the end of the year — and set up Republicans as the scapegoat if that doesn’t happen.

The White House says a middle-class family making $50,000 a year would see its taxes rise by $1,000 if the payroll tax cuts are not extended.

Republicans aren’t wholly opposed to the extension. In fact, party members sent the White House a letter in September stating that extension of the payroll tax cut is one element of Obama’s $447 billion jobs bill where the two sides may be able to find common ground.