House Democratic leaders today took the presidential election into their own hands to present a unified front against Mitt Romney and Congressional Republicans.

With President Barack Obama and the presumptive GOP nominee squaring off with economic speeches in Ohio — and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) stepping into the presidential contest — Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) led a Democratic countercharge against the Republicans’ jobs message.

Boehner released a Web video today trying to boost Romney’s case, calling on Obama and Senate Democrats to take up about 30 House-passed bills that he said would create jobs.

To rebut the Speaker in his first surrogate role, Pelosi’s office released a hastily thrown together video of news clips, lawmaker remarks and excerpts from Boehner’s video calling on the Speaker to take up a Senate-passed transportation bill if he really wants to create jobs.

“The Republicans will say they sent 30 bills over to the Senate,” Pelosi said in a clip included in the video. “They sent pieces of message over to the Senate. We don’t need 30 message bills. We need one good bipartisan bill, and that’s the transportation bill.”

Pelosi’s video was followed by emailed statements from other Democratic Congressional leaders, reinforcing Obama’s message that Romney and “his allies in Congress,” as Obama put it, want to return to the policies of the past decade.

“Mitt Romney and Congressional Republicans are offering the same failed policies of the past that exploded our debt, crashed our economy and led to higher costs for middle-class families,” House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.) said in a statement.

“Tea party Republicans in Congress have obstructed the president’s American Jobs Act and propose turning back the clock to policies that got us into this economic mess in the first place,” Budget ranking member Chris Van Hollen (Md.) echoed.

Boehner’s video marked his first serious attempt to back up Romney since he endorsed the former Massachusetts governor in April. The Speaker will be campaigning with Romney on Sunday.

And while Obama and Congressional Democrats have not always shown a coordinated front against Romney and Republicans up to this point, Pelosi’s rapid-response video seems to indicate a change.

The video marks the Democrats’ most high-profile leader trying to block Boehner as he steps into the presidential surrogate game.

“I think you’re going to see more of this, especially on jobs,” a senior Democratic source said. “This is a message that unifies Democrats. This is a message that unifies the White House and isolates Romney and isolates the House Republicans.”