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President Obama Speaks In Kansas, Echoing Teddy Roosevelt's 'Square Deal'

Aired December 06, 2011 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: And you can see the president now walking into this event in Osawatomie, Kansas. The president getting ready to deliver the speech.

He's obviously being well-received, he's got a lot of supporters there, even though Kansas is not one of those states likely to go for a Democratic presidential candidate in 2012.

All right. Let's listen to the president. He's going to welcome some of his special guests, but that will be brief. And then he's going to get right into the substance of what he has to say.

This will set the stage. A lot of the themes he's going to outline right now will be themes we'll be hearing over the course of the next several months.

(BEGIN LIVE SPEECH)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Please, please, have a seat. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Well, I want to start by thanking a few folks who have joined us today. We've got the mayor of Osawatomie. Phil Dudley is here.

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We have your superintendent, Gary French, in the house.

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And we have the principal of Osawatomie High, Doug Chisam.

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And I have brought your former governor who is doing now an outstanding job as secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius is in the house.

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We love Kathleen. Well, it is great to be back in the state of Texas -- oops -- state of Kansas. I was giving Bill Self a hard time. He was here a while back.

As many of you know, I have roots here.

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I'm sure you're all familiar with the Obamas of Osawatomie. Actually, I like to say that I got my name from my father, but I got my accent and my values from my mother.

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She was born in Wichita. Her mother grew up in Augusta. Her father was from El Dorado. So my Kansas roots run deep.

And my grandparents served during World War II. He was a soldier in Patton's Army, and she was a worker on a bomber assembly line. And together, they shared the optimism of a nation that triumphed over the Great Depression and over fascism. They believed in an America where hard work paid off and responsibility was rewarded, and anyone could make it if they tried, no matter who you were, no matter where you came from, no matter how you started out.

(APPLAUSE)

And these values gave rise to the largest middle class and the strongest economy that the world has ever known. It was here in America that the most productive workers, the most innovative companies turned out the best products on Earth. And you know what? Every America shared in that pride and in that success, from those in the executive suites, to those in middle management, to those on the factory floor.

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So you could have some confidence that if you gave it your all, you'd take enough home to raise your family and send your kids to school and have your health care covered, put a little away for retirement. And today, we're still home to the world's most productive workers, we're still home to the world's most innovative companies, but for most Americans, the basic bargain that made this country great has eroded.

Long before the recession hit, hard work stopped paying off for too many people. Fewer and fewer of the folks who contributed to the success of our economy actually benefited from that success. Those at the very top grew wealthier from their incomes and their investments, wealthier than ever before, but everybody else struggled with costs that were growing and paychecks that weren't. And too many families found themselves racking up more and more debt just to keep up.

Now, for many years, credit cards and home equity loans papered over this harsh reality, but in 2008, the house of cards collapsed. And we all know the story by now: mortgages sold to people who couldn't afford them, or even sometimes understand them, banks and investors allowed to keep packaging the risk and selling it off, huge bets and huge bonuses made with other people's money on the line, regulators who were supposed to warn us about the dangers of all this but looked the other way or didn't have the authority to look at it all.

It was wrong. It combined the breathtaking greed of a few with irresponsibility all across the system, and it plunged our economy and the world into a crisis from which we're still fighting to recover. It claimed the jobs and the homes and the basic security of millions of people, innocent, hardworking Americans who had met their responsibilities but who were still left holding the bag. And ever since, there's been a raging debate over the best way to restore growth and prosperity, restore balance, restore fairness.

Throughout the country it sparked protests and political movements from the Tea Party to the people who have been occupying the streets of New York and other cities. It's left Washington in a near constant state of gridlock. It's been the topic of heated and sometimes colorful discussion among the men and women running for president.

But, Osawatomie, this is not just another political debate. This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class, because what's at stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, secure their retirement.

Now, in the midst of this debate, there are some who seem to be suffering from a kind of collective amnesia After all that's happened, after the worst economic crisis, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, they want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess. In fact, they want to go back to the same policies that stacked the deck against middle class Americans for way too many years.

And their philosophy is simple: We are better of when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules. I am here to say, they are wrong.

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I'm here in Kansas to reaffirm my deep conviction that we're greater together than we are on our own. I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules.

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These aren't Democratic values or Republican values. These aren't one percent values or 99 percent values. They're American values, and we have to reclaim them.

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You see, this isn't the first time America has faced this choice. At the turn of the last century, when a nation of farmers was transitioning to become the world's industrial giant, we had to decide, would we settle for a country where most of the new railroads and factories were being controlled by a few giant monopolies that kept prices high and wages low? Would we allow our citizens and even our children to work ungodly hours in conditions that were unsafe and unsanitary? Would we restrict education to the privileged few? Because there were people who thought massive inequality and exploitation of people was just the price you paid for progress.

Theodore Roosevelt disagreed. He was the Republican son of a wealthy family. He praised what the titans of industry had done to create jobs and grow the economy.

He believed then what we know is true today, that the free market is the greatest force for economic progress in human history. It's led to a prosperity and a standard of living unmatched by the rest of the world. But Roosevelt also knew that the free market has never been a free license to take whatever you can from whomever you can.

(APPLAUSE)

He understood the free market only works when there are rules of the road that ensure competition is fair and open and honest. And so he busted up monopolies, forcing those companies to compete for consumers with better services and better prices. And today, they still must.

He fought to make sure businesses couldn't profit by exploiting children, or selling food or medicine that wasn't safe. And today, they still can't.

And in 1910, Teddy Roosevelt came here to Osawatomie, and he laid out his vision for what he called a new nationalism. "Our country," he said, "means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy, of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him."

(APPLAUSE)

Now, for this, Roosevelt was called a radical, he was called a socialist, even a communist. But today, we are a richer nation and a stronger democracy because of what he fought for in his last campaign -- an eight-hour workday and a minimum wage for women, insurance for the unemployed and for the elderly and for those with disabilities, political reform, and a progressive income tax.

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Today, over 100 years later, our economy has gone through another transformation. Over the last few decades, huge advances in technology have allowed businesses to do more with less, and it's made it easier for them to set up shop and hire workers anywhere that they want in the world. And many of you know first hand the painful disruptions this has caused for a lot of Americans.

Factories where people thought they would retire suddenly picked up and went overseas, where workers were cheaper. Steel mills that needed 100 -- or 1,000 employees are now able to do the same work with 100 employees. So, layoffs too often became permanent, not just a temporary part of the business cycle. And these changes didn't just affect blue-collar workers. If you were a bank teller or a phone operator or a travel agent, you saw many in your profession replaced by ATMs and the Internet. Today, even higher- skilled jobs like accountants and middle management can be outsourced to countries like China or India. And if you're somebody whose job can be done cheaper by a computer, or someone in another country, you don't have a lot of leverage with your employer when it comes to asking for better wages or better benefits, especially since fewer Americans today are part of a union.

Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt's time, there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said let's respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. The market will take care of everything, they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes, especially for the wealthy, our economy will grow stronger.

Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers, but if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn't trickle down, well, that's the price of liberty.

Now, it's a simple theory, and we have to admit, it's one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That's in America's DNA, and that theory fits well on a bumper sticker.

But here is the problem. It doesn't work. It has never worked.

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It didn't work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It's not what led to the incredible post-war booms of the '50s and '60s. And it didn't work when we tried it during the last decade.

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I mean, understand it's not as if we haven't tried this theory. Remember in those years, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts for the wealthy in history. And what did it get us? The slowest job growth in half a century, massive deficits that have made it much harder to pay for the investments that built this country and provided the basic security that helped millions of Americans reach and stay in the middle class, things like education and infrastructure, science and technology, Medicare and Social Security.

Remember that in those same years, thanks to some of the same folks who are now running Congress, we had weak regulation, we had little oversight. And what did it get us? Insurance companies that jacked up people's premiums with impunity and denied care to patients who were sick, mortgage lenders that tricked families into buying homes they couldn't afford, a financial sector where irresponsibility and lack of basic oversight nearly destroyed our entire economy.

We simply cannot return to this brand of, you're on your own economics if we're serious about rebuilding the economics in this country.

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We know that it doesn't result in a strong economy. It results in an economy that invests too little in its people and in its future.

We know it doesn't result in a prosperity that trickles down, it results in a prosperity that is enjoyed by fewer and fewer of our citizens. Look at the statistics.

In the last few decades, the average income of the top one percent has gone up by more than 250 percent to $1.2 million per year. I'm not talking about millionaires, people who have a million dollars. I'm saying people who make a million dollars every single year.

For the top 100th of one percent, the average income is now $27 million per year. The typical CEO who used to earn about 30 times more than his or her worker now earns 110 times more. And yet, over the last decade, the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by about six percent.

Now, this kind of inequality, a level that we haven't seen since the Great Depression, hurts us all. When middle class families can no longer afford to buy the goods and services that businesses are selling, when people are slipping out of the middle class, it drags down the entire economy from top to bottom.

America was built on the idea of broad-based prosperity, of strong consumers all across the country. That's why a CEO like Henry Ford made it his mission to pay his workers enough so that they could buy the cars he made. It's also why a recent study showed that countries with less inequality tend to have stronger and steadier economic growth over the long run.

Inequality also distorts our democracy. It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and it runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder.

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It leaves everyone else rightly suspicious that the system in Washington is rigged against them, that our elected representatives aren't looking out for the interests of most Americans. But there is an even more fundamental issue at stake.

This kind of gaping inequality gives lie (ph) to the promise that's at the very heart of America, that this is a place where you can make it if you try. We tell people, we tell our kids that in this country, even if you're born with nothing, work hard and you can get into the middle class. We tell them that your children will have a chance to do even better than you do.

That's why immigrants from around the world historically have flocked to our shores. And yet, over the last through decades, the rungs on the ladder of opportunity have grown farther and farther apart. The middle class has shrunk.

You know, a few years after World War II, a child who was born into poverty had a slightly better than 50/50 chance of becoming middle class as an adult. By 1980, that chance had fallen to around 40 percent. And if the trend of rising inequality over the last few decades continues, it's estimated that a child born today will only have a one in three chance of making it to the middle class, 33 percent.

It's heartbreaking enough that there are millions of working families in this country who are now forced to take their children to food banks for a decent meal, but the idea that those children might not have a chance to climb out of that situation and back into the middle class, no matter how hard they work, that's inexcusable. It is wrong. It flies in the face of everything that we stand for.

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Now, fortunately, that's not a future that we have to accept, because there's another view about how we build a strong middle class in this country, a view that is truer to our history, a vision that's been embraced in the past by people of both parties for more than 200 years. It's not a view that we should somehow turn back technology or put up walls around America. It's not a view that says we should punish profit or success, or pretend that government knows how to fix all of society's problems. It is a view that says in America, we are greater together when everyone engages in fair play and everybody gets a fair shot and everybody does their fair share.

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So what does that mean for restoring middle class security in today's economy? Well, it starts by making sure that everyone in America gets a fair shot at success.

The truth is, we'll never be able to compete with other countries when it comes to who's best at letting their businesses pay the lowest wages, who's best at busting unions, who's best at letting companies pollute as much as they want. That's a race to the bottom that we can't win, and we shouldn't want to win that race.

(APPLAUSE)

Those countries don't have a strong middle class. They don't have our standard of living.

The race we want to win, the race we can win is a race to the top, the race for good jobs that pay well and offer middle class security. Businesses will create those jobs in countries with the highest skills, highest educated workers, the most advanced transportation and communication, the strongest commitment to research and technology.

The world is shifting to an innovation economy, and nobody does innovation better than America. Nobody does it better.

(APPLAUSE) No one has better colleges, no one has better universities, nobody has a greater diversity of talent and ingenuity. No one's workers or entrepreneurs are more driven or more daring.

The things that have always been our strengths match up perfectly with the demands of the moment. But we need to meet the moment. We've got to up our game.

We need to remember that we can only do that together. It starts by making education a national mission -- a national mission.

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Government and businesses, parents and citizens, in this economy a higher education is the surest route to the middle class. The unemployment rate for Americans with a college degree or more is about half the national average, and their incomes are twice as high as those who don't have a high school diploma, which means we shouldn't be laying off good teachers right now, we should be hiring them.

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We shouldn't be expecting less of our schools, we should be demanding more.

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We shouldn't be making it harder to afford college, we should be a country where everyone has a chance to go and doesn't rack up $100,000 in debt just because they went.

In today's innovation economy, we also need a world class commitment to science and research, the next generation of high-tech manufacturing. Our factories and our workers shouldn't be idle.

We should be giving people the chance to get new skills and training at community colleges so they can learn how to make wind turbines and semiconductors and high-powered batteries.

And by the way, if we don't have an economy that's built on bubbles and financial speculation, our best and brightest won't all gravitate towards careers in banking and finance because if we want an economy that is built to last, we need more of those people in science and engineering.

This country should not be known for bad debt and phony profits. We should be known for creating and selling products al around the world that are stamped with three proud words, "made in America."

Today manufacturers and other countries are setting up shop with infrastructures that communicate with the rest of the world and that's why the over one million construction workers who lost their jobs when the housing market collapsed, they shouldn't be sitting at home with nothing to do.

They should be rebuilding our roads and bridges, laying down faster railroads and broad band and modernizing our schools. All the things other countries are already doing to attract good jobs and businesses to their shores.

Yes, business, and not government, will always be the generator of good jobs that lift people into the middle class and keep them there. But as a nation we've always come together through our government to help create the conditions where both workers and businesses can succeed and historically that haven't been a partisan idea.

Teddy Roosevelt worked with Democrats and Republicans to give veterans of World War II, including my grandfather, the chance to go to college on the G.I. Bill. It was a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, proud son of Kansas, who started the interstate highway system and doubled down owe science and research to stay ahead of the soviets.

Of course, those productive investments cost money. So we've also paid for those investments by asking everybody to do their fair share. Look, if we had unlimited resources, no one would ever have to pay any taxes and we would never have to cut any spending. But we don't have unlimited resources and so we have to set priorities.

If we want a strong middle class, then our tax code must reflect our values. We have to make choices. Today that choice is very clear. To reduce our deficit, I've already signed nearly $1 trillion of spending cuts into law.

And I propose trillions more, including programs that would lower the costs of Medicare and Medicaid. But in order to structurally close the deficit, to get our fiscal house in order, we have to decide what our priorities are.

Now, most immediately, short term, we need to extend a payroll tax cut that's set to expire at the end of in month. If we -- if we don't do that, people will see their taxes go up by an average of $1,000 starting in January and it would badly weaken our recovery. That's the short term.

In the long term, we have to rethink our tax system more fundamentally. We have to ask ourselves, do we want to make the investments we need in things like education and research and high- tech manufacturing, all those things that helped make us an economic superpower.

Or do we want to keep in place the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans in our country because we can't afford to do both, that is not politics. That's just man. Now, so far most of my Republican friends in Washington have refused under any circumstance to ask the wealthiest Americans to go to the same tax rate they were paying when Bill Clinton was president.

So let's just do a trip down memory lane here. Keep in mind, when President Clinton first proposed these tax increases, folks in congress predicted they would kill jobs and lead to another recession. Instead, our economy created nearly 23 million jobs and we eliminated the deficit.

Today, the wealthiest Americans are paying the lowest taxes in over half a century. This isn't like in the early 50s when the top tax rate was over 90 percent. This isn't even like the early '80s when the top tax rate was about 70 percent.

Under President Clinton, the top rate was only about 39 percent. Today, thanks to loopholes and shelters, a quarter of all millionaires now pay lower tax rates than millions of you. Millions of middle class families.

Some billionaires have a tax rate as low as 1 percent, 1 percent. That is the height of unfairness. It is wrong. It's wrong that in the United States of America a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker maybe earns $50,000 a year should pay a higher tax rate than somebody raking in $50 million.

It's wrong for Warren Buffett's secretary to pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett. And by the way, Warren Buffett agrees with me so do most Americans, Democrats, independents, and Republicans.

And I know that many of our wealthiest citizens would agree to contribute a little more if it meant reducing the deficit and strengthening the economy that made their success possible. This isn't about class warfare. This is about the nation's welfare.

It's about making choices that benefit not just the people who have done fantastically well over the last few decades but that benefits the middle class and those fighting to get into the middle class and the economy as a whole.

Finally, a strong middle class can only exist in an economy where everyone plays by the same rules, from Wall Street to Main Street. As infuriating as it was for all of us, we rescued our major banks from collapse.

Not only because the full-blown financial meltdown would have sent us into a second depression, but because we need a healthy, strong financial sector in this country. But part of the deal was that we wouldn't go back to business as usual.

And that's why last year we put in place new rules of the rope. That refocused the financial sector on what should be their core purpose. Getting capital to the entrepreneurs with the best ideas and financing millions of families who want to buy a home or send their kids to college.

Now, we're not all the way there yet and the banks are fighting us every inch of the way, but already some of these reforms are being implemented. If you're a big bank or a risky financial institution, you now have to write out a living will that details exactly how you'll pay the bills if you fail so the taxpayers are never again on the hook for Wall Street's mistakes.

There are also limits for the size of banks and reform for the bank going under. The new law bans banks from making risky bets with the customer deposits and takes away big bonuses from failed CEOs while giving shareholders a say on executive salaries. This is the law that we passed. We are in the process of implementing it now.

All of this is being put into place as we speak. Now, unless you're a financial institution who's business model was built on breaking the law, cheating customers and making risky bets that could damage the entire economy, you should have nothing to fear from these new rules.

Some of you may know, my grandmother worked as a banker for most of her life, worked her way up, started as a secretary and ended up being vice president of a bank. And I know from her and I know from all of the people that I've come in contact with, that the vast majority of bankers and financial service professionals, they want to do right by their customers.

They want to have rules in place that don't put them at a disadvantage for doing the right thing. And yet Republicans in congress are fighting as hard as they can to make sure that these rules aren't enforced. I'll give you a specific example.

For the first time in history, the reforms that we passed put in place a consumer watchdog who is charged with protecting every day Americans from being taken advantage of by mortgage lenders or payday lenders or debt collectors.

And the man we nominated for the post, Richard Cordray is a former attorney general of Ohio who has the support of most attorney generals, both Democrat and Republican throughout the country. Nobody claims he's not qualified.

But the Republicans in the Senate refuse to confirm him for the job. They refuse to let him do his job. Why? Does anybody here think that the problem that led to our financial crisis was too much oversight of mortgage lenders and debt collectors?

Of course, not. Every day we go without a consumer watchdog is another day when a student or a senior citizen or a member of our armed forces because they are very vulnerable to some of this stuff, could be tricked into a law that they can't afford something that happens all the time.

And the fact is that financial institutions have plenty of lobbyists looking out for their interests. Consumers deserve to have someone whose job it is to look out for them. And I intend to make sure that they do.

And I want to you hear me, Kansas, I will veto any effort to delay or defund or dismantle the new rules that we put in place. We shouldn't be weakening oversight and accountability. We should be strengthening oversight and accountability.

Give you another example. Too often we've seen Wall Street firms violating anti-fraud laws because the penalties are too weak and there's no price for being a repeat offender. No more. I'll be calling for legislation that makes those penalties count so the firms don't see punishment for breaking the law as just the price for doing business.

You know the fact is, this crisis has left a huge deficit of trust between Main Street and Wall Street. The major banks rescued by the taxpayers have an obligation to go the extra mile in helping to close that deficit of trust. You know, at a minimum they should be remedying past mortgage abusers that led to the financial crisis.

They should be working to keep responsible homeowners in their homes. We're going to keep pushing them to provide more time for unemployed homeowners to look for work without having to worry about immediately losing their house. The big banks should increase access to refinancing opportunities, to borrowers who haven't yet benefited from historically low interest rates.

And the big banks should recognize that precisely because she's steps are in the interest of middle class families and the broader economy, it will also be in the banks' own long-term financial interest. What will be good for consumers over the long term will be good for the banks.

Investing in things like education that give everybody a chance to succeed. A tax code that makes sure everybody pays their fair share and laws that make sure everybody follows the rules. That's what will transform our economy. That's what will grow our middle class again.

In the end, rebuilding this economy based on fair play, a fair shot, and a fair share will require all of us to see that we have a stake in each other's success. And it will require all of us to take some responsibility. It will require parents to get more involved in their children's education. It will require students to study harder.

It will require some workers to start studying all over again. It will require greater responsibility from homeowners not to take out mortgages they can't afford. They need to remember that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

It will require those of us in public service to make government more efficient and more effective, more consumer-friendly, more responsive to people's needs. That's why we are cutting programs that we don't need to pay for those we do.

That's why we've made hundreds of regulatory reforms that will save businesses billions of dollars. That's why we're not just throwing money at education. We're challenging schools to come up with the most innovative reforms and the best results.

And we'll require American business leaders to understand that their obligations don't just end with their shareholders. You know, Andy Grove, the legendary former CEO of Intel, put it best. He said, there is another obligation I feel personally.

Given that everything I've achieved in my career and a lot of what Intel has achieved were made possible by a climate of democracy, an economic climate and investment climate provided by the United States.

This broader obligation can take many forms. You know, at a time when the cost of hiring workers in China is rising rapidly, it should mean more CEOs deciding that it's time to bring jobs back to the United States. Not just because it's good for business, but because it's good for the country that made their business and personal success possible.

I think about the big three auto companies, who during recent negotiations, agreed to create more jobs and cars here in America and then decided to give bonuses not just to their executives, but to all of their employees so that everyone was invested in the company's success.

I think about a company based in -- Marvin windows and doors, in Minnesota. During the recession, Marvin's competitors closed dozens of plants, let hundreds of workers go, but Marvin's did not lay off a single one of their 4,000 or so employees. Not one.

In fact, they've only laid off workers once in over 100 years. Mr. Marvin's grandfather even kept employees during the great depression. Now, at Marvin's when times get tough, the workers agree to give up some perks and some pay and so did the owners.

As one owner said, you can't grow if you're cutting your life blood and that's the skills and experience your works force delivers. For the CEOs of Marvin's, it's about community. He said, these are people that we went to school with. We go to church with them.

We see them in the same restaurants. Indeed, a lot of us have married local girls and boys. We could be anywhere, but we are in war road. That's how America was built. That's why we're the greatest nation on earth. That's what our greatest companies understand.

Our success has never just been about the survival of the fittest. It's about building a nation of where we're all better off. We pull together. We pitch in. We do our part. We believe that hard work will pay off, that responsibility will be rewarded and that our children will inherit a nation where those values live on.

And it is that belief that rallied thousands of Americans to Osawatomie. Maybe even some of your ancestors on a rain-soaked day more than a century ago, by train, by wagon, on buggy, on bicycle, on foot, they came to hear the vision of a man who loved this country and was determined to perfect it.

We are all Americans, Teddy Roosevelt told them that day. Our common interests are as broad as the economy. In the final years of his life, Roosevelt took that message all across the country, from tiny Osawatomie to New York City. Believing that no matter where he went or who he was talking to, he believed that everyone gets a fair chance.

And well into our third century as a nation, we have grown and we have changed in many ways since Roosevelt's time. The world is faster and the playing field is larger and the challenges are more complex. But what hasn't changed? What can never change are the values that got us this far. We still have a stake in each other's success. We still believe that this should be a place where you make it if you try.

And we still believe in the words of a man who called for a new nationalism all those years ago, the fundamental rule of our national life, he said. The rule which underlies all others is that on the whole we shall go up or down together.

And I believe America is on the way up. Thank you. God bless you. God bless the United States of America.

(END LIVE SPEECH)

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: President Obama speaking there in Osawatomie, Kansas, speaking for just about an hour there. This was obviously an economy speech. In case you're curious, by the way, Osawatomie is essentially an amalgamation for two different American tribes there out of Kansas.

And you know what? He picked this spot because 101 years ago Teddy Roosevelt stood there issuing his famous call new nationalism and also a square deal, essentially the idea of leveling the playing field.

You heard the word a lot. The president, President Obama used inequality, opportunity, middle class, levelling the playing field. Let's talk about this. I've got the A-team standing by.

We've got Gloria Borger is standing by for me in Washington. I also have our chief White House correspondent Jessica Yellin as we continue to watch these live pictures here with the president shaking some hands in Osawatomie, Kansas.

Also Alison Kosik is standing by in New York. Jessica Yellin, I'm going to pick you first. I want to begin with you and obviously, I want to go in some of the themes that we heard there.

But if I may, I don't know if it was a gaffe or not, but off the tip top, did you hear the president say hello Texas, and then he said Kansas and then he mentioned of Bill Self who I know is the Kansas State Hawk's basketball head coach. Was that purposeful or not?

JESSICA YELLIN, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I think that the president was just riffing with the crowd a little bit there. I don't know if he made a gaffe or not, Brooke. But I think it was a pretty big speech for the president and also sort of his natural forte.

What his specialty is, we all know he is good at speeches, weaving big themes and threads together and reframing discussions and he really did look very, not only comfortable and at ease, but seemed to be enjoying himself in the speech.

You heard a major theme here, the big topic, you know, sort of overarching this one was he believes that restoring opportunity for the middle class is the defining issue of our time. And it's not only the defining issue of our time, in his view, but he would like it to be the defining issue of the campaign because I'll tell you something, this is the campaign in a nutshell.

That theme is what the white house would like to be the defining issue of the campaign. At the same time he was speaking, I got an e- mail from a Republican operative who said that the president was here in Kansas, not the same town, but in January 2008 and he said we need to restore fairness to the economy and balance to our economy and look what he's done.

Has he done enough in the last few years? The Republicans would like the next election to be referendum on his presidency and right there in a nutshell is the tug-of-war you're seeing between the two parties.

Republicans would like it to be about the president. The president would like it to be about two different visions of what our government should do.

BALDWIN: OK. So that's a Republican reaction that you got in during that speech. Gloria Borger, let me jump over to you. You know, at the top of the speech, as Jessica had pointed out, free speech, sort of weaving his own personal narrative.

That he's born in Hawaii. Dad's from Kenya. Mom born in Kansas and perhaps the president himself sort of this Michael, the melting pot that is America.

What's your reaction to the speech and also just curious, the fact that he invoked President Clinton in that top tax rate when he raised taxes back in the '90s.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, first of all, President Clinton is probably the most popular politician in America's history and so any time you can invoke President Clinton's name and harken back to a time when there was no deficit in this country and over 20 million new jobs were created.

And he's a Democratic president and his your friend and his wife is your secretary of state, that's probably not a bad political move, but I agree with Jess. I think that he is really trying to define the campaign.

The first thing you do in a presidential campaign is you try and define your opponents before they get to define who you are. And what he is saying is --

BALDWIN: Do you think he did that successfully?

BORGER: I think he -- well, see, what Republicans have to say about it but I do think this was a good speech in this sense. That he tried to sort of simplify, which is what you do in political speeches.

Simplify the Republican philosophical position on tacks and tax cuts and the economy. And his simplification of their philosophy was, quote, they believe that, quote, "we are better off when everyone is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules."

Now I think the Republicans obviously will take some issue with that. He is saying, that is our responsibility, to take care of the middle class because the wealth gap is the defining issue in this country right now.

The question I might ask is, OK, then why did you bail out Wall Street. Right? It's the president who bailed out Wall Street. Republicans were opposed to it. And in this speech today, it's interesting, he called it infuriating that he had to bail out Wall Street, but he said, you know what, now, because of our regulations, they have to play by a different set of rules that makes them more responsible.

BALDWIN: Yes, we heard him also, again, talking about, you know, pleading, extending that payroll tax cut. We know it expires by the end of the year. If it does expire, he was essentially saying Americans will not have an extra $1,000 in their pockets come next year.

We will talk to Alison Kosik, who is standing by at the New York Stock Exchange with more of what that means for you.