“It starts,” he said, “with making sure that everyone has a fair shot at success.”

That means giving Americans the education, infrastructure, and resources necessary to out-innovate our global competitors, structuring our tax system fairly to pay for those investments, and it means creating an environment where everyone — from Main Street to Wall Street — plays by the same set of rules. The President said:

As infuriating as it was for all of us, we rescued our major banks from collapse, not only because a full blown financial meltdown would have sent us into a second Depression, but because we need a strong, healthy financial sector in this country.

But part of the deal was that we would not go back to business as usual. That’s why last year we put in place new rules of the road that refocus the financial sector on this core purpose: getting capital to the entrepreneurs with the best ideas, and financing to millions of families who want to buy a home or send their kids to college. We’re not all the way there yet, and the banks are fighting us every inch of the way.

And Republicans are standing with Wall Street to block broader reform by refusing to confirm a head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — the watchdog group is charged with protecting everyday Americans from lenders who are out to take advantage of them. Here’s what President Obama had to say:

The man we nominated for the post, Richard Cordray, is a former Attorney General of Ohio who has the support of most Republican and Democratic Attorneys General throughout the country.

But the Republicans in the Senate refuse to let him do his job. Why? Does anyone think the problem before that led to this crisis was too much oversight of mortgage lenders or debt collectors? Every day we go without a consumer watchdog in place is another day when a student, or a service member, or a senior citizen could be tricked into a loan they can’t afford – something that happens all the time. Financial institutions have plenty of lobbyists looking out for their interests. Consumers deserve to have someone whose job it is to look out for theirs. And I intend to make sure they do.

The Senate is slated to vote on Richard Cordray’s confirmation later this week. Check back at WhiteHouse.gov for more information.

• President Obama: “In America, We Are Greater Together”

  Posted by Matt Compton on December 6, 2011 at 5:43 PM EST
  Members of the audience listen as President Barack Obama delivers remarks at Osawatomie High School in Osawatomie, Kansas, Dec. 6, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

  More than a century after Teddy Roosevelt outlined a vision for a “New Nationalism” in a Kansas town called Osawatomie, President Obama visited the same community to talk about what he called a make-or-break moment of the middle class.

  He described how the world has undergone an economic transformation unlike any other in our collective history — and how that change has upended our expectations of social mobility in this country. Where professionals ranging from factory workers to travel agents to accountants once enjoyed the promise of a good job and steady income in exchange for their hard work, today they and a range of people like them must compete with new technology and individuals from around the world.

  The President told the 1,200 people gathered in Osawatomie that there are two ways to respond to these challenges.

  Some in Washington, he said, argue that we should let the markets take care of everything — rolling back regulation and slashing taxes:

  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’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ‘50s and ‘60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade.

  Thankfully, President Obama said, we can choose a different path:

  [T]here’s another view about how we build a strong middle class in this country — a view that’s 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.

  Read the entire speech here.