President Obama spoke in Cleveland, OH today to a crowd of 1,500 people at the Cuyahoga Community College recreation center.  He set the case against trickle down economics and said the only long term solution for the economy will come “from a growing middle class”.  He rightly called out Mitt Romney for his plan to cut taxes for millionaires by another 40% that would only lead to a further burden on the federal deficit.

He made it clear – Romney supports a “trickle down” economic theory and President Obama supports a bottom-up economic theory.  President Obama made it clear that Romney’s economic policy was the exact same game plan the country had under George W. Bush.  He made it clear that the Republicans have not been honest brokers interested in what’s best for the country … but what’s best for their party politically.

In the late 1800′s – “trickle down” economics used to be called “Horse and Sparrow”.  If you don’t know what that is – you need to read THIS.  Seriously.

Here are a few pieces of that speech:

They promise to not only keep all of the Bush tax cuts in place, but add another $5 trillion in tax cuts on top of that.

Now, an independent study said that about 70 percent of this new $5 trillion tax cut would go to folks making over $200,000 a year. And folks making over a million dollars a year would get an average tax cut of about 25 percent.

Now, this is not my opinion. This is not political spin. This is precisely what they have proposed.

Now, your next question may be: How do you spend $5 trillion on a tax cut and still bring down the deficit?

Well, they tell us they’ll start by cutting nearly a trillion dollars from the part of our budget that includes everything from education and job training, to medical research and clean energy.

Now, I — I want to be very fair here. I want to be clear.

They haven’t specified exactly where the knife would fall, but here’s some of what would happen if that cut that they proposed was spread evenly across the budget.

10 million college students would lose an average of a thousand dollars each on financial aid. 200,000 children would lose the chance to get an early education in the Head Start program. There would be 1,600 fewer medical research grants for things like Alzheimer’s and cancer and AIDS; 4,000 fewer scientific research grants, eliminating support for 48,000 researchers, students and teachers.

Now, again, they have not specified which of these cuts they choose from, but if they want to make smaller cuts to areas like science or medical research, then they’d have to cut things like financial aid or education even further.

You can find the full transcript of President Obama’s speech HERE.

Greg Sargent from the Washington Post said HERE:

Obama framed that choice as one between GOP adherence to free market and anti-tax fundamentalism on one side, and concerted government action to rebuild the middle class on the other. Crucially, he said the main obstacle to progress on the deficit and on jobs legislation is GOP opposition to raising taxes on the wealthy. “It’s the biggest source of gridlock in Washington today — and the only thing that can break the stalemate is you.”

Obama cast GOP deficit-hawkery as fraudulent, pointing out that Republicans only care about the deficit when they’re out of power, and repeatedly noted that the GOP solution is that the “market will solve our problems all on its own.”

Andrew Sullivan says HERE:

My bottom line? A home run. Simply constructed, carefully reframed, aggressive while positive: the Obamaites have been listening to critics and are responding. If this is his message, and if he is able to keep articulating it this clearly, he will win. And in my view, the experience of the last thirty years is that he should win. If I have to choose between a governing philosophy espoused by Bill Clinton or one espoused by George W. Bush, it’s a no-brainer. And I can’t stand Bill Clinton.

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