ASHWAUBENON, Wis. (WFRV) - President Obama got a warm Wisconsin welcome Thursday morning. He spoke to a crowd of 2,600 people at Austin Straubel International Airport in Ashwaubenon. Obama won the state by a 14-point margin back in 2008, and he's now asking for that same support on Tuesday.

"In 2008, we were in the middle of two wars and the worst economic crisis since The Great Depression," President Obama said. "Today our businesses have created over 5 million new jobs. The American car industry is back on top. American manufacturing is growing at the fastest pace in 15 years."

Obama pushed the progress he's made over the past four years, such as reforming health care, ending the war in Iraq and getting Osama bin Laden. But the president said his fight is far from over and he's asking voters to see through Mitt Romney's empty promises.

"In the closing weeks of this campaign, Governor Romney has been using all his talents as a salesman to dress up these same policies that failed our country so badly," said Obama. "They are the very same policies we've been cleaning up after for the last four years and he is offering them up as change. He's saying he's the candidate of change. Well let me tell you Wisconsin, we know what change looks like."

Obama also refuted republican claims that he refuses to work with congress.

"The protectors of the status quo are a powerful force in Washington," he said. "And over the last four years, every time we tried to make change, they fought back with everything they got. They spent millions to stop us from reforming health care and wall street and student loans and their strategy from the start was to engineer pure gridlock in congress refusing to compromise on ideas that both democrats and republicans have supported in the past."

Some in the crowd thought Obama's message was moving.

"I think he's the future," said one woman. "We need a president like Barack. "We can't go backwards. We have to go forwards."

President Obama will be back in Wisconsin for a rally on Saturday in Waukesha, then again on Monday in Madison with rocker Bruce Springsteen.