(White House photo)
AP's Ben Feller:
Seeking a jolt for a wilting economy, President Barack Obama will give a major speech in early September to unveil new ideas for speeding up job growth and helping the struggling poor and middle class, a senior administration official told The Associated Press.
The president's plan is likely to contain tax cuts, jobs-boosting infrastructure ideas and steps that would specifically help the long-term unemployed. The official emphasized that all of Obama's proposals would be fresh ones, not a rehash of plans he has pitched for many weeks and still supports, including his "infrastructure bank" idea to finance construction jobs.
President Obama's speech won't be limited to jobs, however.
On a significant and related front, Obama will also present a specific plan to cut the suffocating long-term national debt and to pay for the cost of his new short-term economic ideas.
His debt proposal will be bigger than the $1.5 trillion package that a new "supercommittee" of Congress must come up with by late November.
According to the AP report, no final decisions have been made on the contents of the President's economic proposal. On the question of tax cuts, it is expected to go beyond the proposal for extending the payroll tax cut. In addition to deeper tax cuts and increased spending on job creation, the report suggested President Obama may call for as much as $4 trillion in deficit reduction in the coming decades.