Update with full video of President Obama

From the NYT:

With a torpid job market and a fragile economy threatening his re-election chances, President Obama is changing the subject to tax fairness, calling for a one-year extension of the Bush-era tax cutsfor people making less than $250,000.

Mr. Obama plans to make his announcement at the White House on Monday, senior administration officials said. The ceremony comes as Congress returns from its Independence Day recess, and as both parties and their presidential candidates head into the rest of the summer trying to seize the upper hand in a campaign that has been closely matched and stubbornly static.

House Republicans plan to vote this month to extend for a year all of the Bush tax cuts, for middle- and upper-income people.

**UPDATES:

Today the President called on Congress toextend the middle class tax cuts for the 98 percent of Americans making less than $250,000 for another year.  If it doesn’t, a typical middle-class family of four will see its taxes go up by $2,200 on January 1st.  It would be a big blow to working families, and it would drag down our entire economy:

• Washington Post: “As Obama calls for middle-class tax cut extension, Romney raises campaign cash in wealthy enclaves”http://wapo.st/OqeBMA
•  Think Progress: “Republicans, of course, will charge that raising taxes on the rich will inevitably harm economic growth and jobcreation. However, history has revealed that that’s simply not the case”  http://bit.ly/PGAywY

From Ben LaBolt, OFA Campaign Spokesman:

“It should be no surprise that Governor Romney has announced his opposition to the President’s plan to extend tax cuts for the middle class – unless we also give millionaires a tax cut they don’t need — because his policies aren’t geared toward bolstering the middle class. He believes that a strong economy is built from the top down, not the middle out, so he’s willing to hold the middle class hostage in order to protect tax cuts for the wealthiest.  His entire economic plan is based on a $5 trillion tax cut weighted toward millionaires and billionaires on top of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest.

He refuses to say how he’d pay for that massive tax cut for the wealthy, which means he’s either exploding the deficit or, according to independent analysts, raising taxes on the middle class by closing tax breaks for mortgages, health care, retirement and other benefits the middle class rely on.

The choice in this election is between the President’s plan to build this economy from the middle class out, promoting job creation and reducing the deficit in a balanced way, or Mitt Romney’s plan to return to the same top-down policies that crashed our economy and decimated the middle class in the first place.  Today, Mitt Romney made that choice even more crystal clear.”

Pressure is mounting on Mitt Romney as more and more people ask: why exactlywon’t he release his tax returns? And why did he invest in foreign tax havens and offshore accounts?

Paul Krugman sums it up nicely: NYT: Mitt’s Gray Areas: http://nyti.ms/NkjQ2w

• “Put it this way: Has there ever before been a major presidential candidate who had a multimillion-dollar Swiss bank account, plus tens of millions invested in the Cayman Islands, famed as a tax haven?”
•  “But we don’t know which if any of those legitimate reasons apply in Mr. Romney’s case — because he has refused to release any details about his finances. This refusal to come clean suggeststhat he and his advisers believe that voters would be less likely to support him if they knew the truth about his investments.”
• “To the extent that Mr. Romney has a coherent policy agenda, it involves cutting tax rates on the very rich — which are already, as I said, down by about half since his father’s time. Surely a man advocating such policies has a special obligation to level with voters about the extent to which he would personally benefit from the policies he advocates.”

Daily Kos:  Romneyland says it’s ‘unseemly and disgusting’ to ask Mitt to disclose his tax and financial records: http://bit.ly/MVngdJ

Maddow Blog: Unanswered questions about Romney’s offshore finances: http://on.msnbc.com/Oqe8Ke

Atlantic Wire: Romney Campaign Shocked Democrats Would Question Offshore Accounts: http://bit.ly/NkjyJb

AmericaBlog: Mitt Romney needs to answer basic questions about his offshore millions: http://bit.ly/L42rYf

What is Mitt Romney HIDING?