Obama to Redirect Laser Focus Back to Jobs This Week

President Barack Obama is planning to give a series of speeches this week about job growth, government "investment" and spending. Ironically, Obama's economic push and message of big government comes just a week after the collapse of Detroit and as unemployment sits at 7.6 percent.

Drawing renewed attention to the economy, President Barack Obama will return this week to an Illinois college where he once spelled out a vision for an expanded and strengthened middle class as a freshman U.S. senator, long before the Great Recession would test his presidency.

The address Wednesday at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., will be the first in a new series of economic speeches that White House aides say Obama intends to deliver over the next several weeks ahead of key budget deadlines in the fall. A new fiscal year begins in October, and the government will soon hit its borrowing limit.

The speech comes just a week before Congress is scheduled to leave for its month long August recess and is designed to build public pressure on lawmakers in hopes of averting the showdowns over taxes and spending that have characterized past budget debates.

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It's a vision that says America is strongest when everybody's got a shot at opportunity -- not when our economy is winner-take-all, but when we're all in this together.

Revisiting that speech, it's clear that it sowed the seeds of a consistent vision for the middle class he's followed ever since. It's a vision he carried through his first campaign in 2008, it's a vision he carried through speeches like the one he gave at Georgetown University shortly after taking office that imagined a new foundation for our economy, and one in Osawatomie, Kansas on economic inequality in 2011 -- and it's a vision he carried through his last campaign in 2012.

All of these speeches -- Knox College, Georgetown, Osawatomie -- make clear that since day one, the President has had one clear economic philosophy: The American economy works best when it grows from the middle-out, not the top-down.

This Wednesday, almost five years after the financial crisis fueled a devastating recession, and two years after a debate over whether or not America would pay its bills that harmed our recovery, the President will return to Knox College to kick off a series of speeches that will lay out his vision for rebuilding an economy that puts the middle class and those fighting to join it front and center.

President Obama is returning to Martha’s Vineyard next month, making his fourth trip to the wealthy island in Massachusetts since he became president.

Obama will arrive on the Vineyard on August 10, and plans to remain on the island until August 18, according to the White House. He will arrive with First Lady Michelle Obama. Officials would not disclose any travel information about their two daughters, but they typically vacation on the Vineyard as well.