Obama Jobs Speech After...Vacation

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Seeking to jolt the economy, President Barack Obama will unveil new ideas to create jobs and help the struggling poor and middle class in a major speech after Labor Day. And then he will try to seize political advantage by spending the fall pressuring Congress to act on his plan.

Obama's plan is likely to contain a mix of tax cuts, jobs-boosting construction projects and steps to help the long-term unemployed, a senior administration official told The Associated Press. The official emphasized that Obama's proposals would be fresh ones, not a rehash of plans he has pitched for many weeks and still supports, like his idea of an "infrastructure bank" to finance construction jobs.

On a related front, Obama will also present a specific plan to cut the staggering national debt and to pay for the cost of his new short-term economic ideas. It will challenge the new "supercommittee" of Congress to go beyond its goal of finding $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction. Read More