Today, President Obama will speak in Cleveland, Ohio about his vision for the future of the American economy and about specific ways to move our economy forward.  Earlier today, Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer previewed the President’s remarks and laid out the three additional steps the President is proposing to help grow the economy and help businesses spur hiring.

You can watch the speech live on WhiteHouse.gov/live.  Immediately following the President’s remarks, Austan Goolsbee of the Council of Economic Advisers will be answering your questions about the economy.  Be sure to tune in and join the discussion on Facebook.

Ed. Note: Watch the President's remarks at 2:10 EDT here at WhiteHouse.gov/live, then stick around right afterwards to watch a live video chat with Austan Goolsbee of the Council of Economic Advisers or join the discussion over at Facebook.

Today, the President will speaking in the Cleveland, Ohio about his vision for the future of the American economy and about specific ways to move our economy forward. 

A few weeks ago, Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner visited Cleveland to offer his party’s answer to our economic challenges. There were no new ideas, just the same philosophy we tried for the last decade and which led to the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression – cut taxes for millionaires, cut rules for corporations, and leave the middle class to fend for itself.

President Obama has a different vision for America – as a place where we don’t just think about today; we think about tomorrow.  Where responsibility is rewarded and those who put our economy at risk are not. Where we lead the world in the goods we make and sell, not just in the things we consume.  And where the benefits of growth are truly shared, from the company CEO to the newest guy on the assembly line.

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While the economy remains the President's central focus, which he will discuss again tomorrow in Cleveland, the First Lady continues to celebrate America's cultural heritage amongst her many other issues, from military families to tackling childhood obesity.  First Lady Michelle Obama kicked off the White House Music Series more than a year ago with The Jazz Studio, describing it as an event that "exemplifies what I think the White House, the People's House, should be about. This is a place to honor America's past, celebrate its present and create its future. And that's why all of you all are here today. It's about you, the future.” Today, Mrs. Obama will welcome dance students and world-renowned dancers for the Administration’s first event celebrating dance. Featuring American dance from ballet to hip hop,

The White House Dance Series: A Tribute to Judith Jamison will honor Jamison for her outstanding career as an American dancer, choreographer, and Artistic Director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater for the past 20 years.

Watch the White House Dance Series at 5:00 p.m. EDT right here on WhiteHouse.gov/Live or watch and discuss it over at Facebook.

In search of novel solutions to the tricky problem of how to keep astronauts fit during prolonged periods of weightlessness, NASA found an unlikely ally in Alex Altshuler.  Altshuler works for a mechanical engineering firm in Foxboro, MA. He had never before responded to a formal government Request for Proposal (RFP), let alone worked with NASA.  Yet, the exercise device he designed in response to a NASA challenge constituted a major breakthrough in mitigating the loss of bone and muscle density in astronauts.  NASA dubbed the results “outstanding.”

Citizen solvers like Altshuler are at the heart of the Obama Administration’s commitment (pdf) to increase the use of prizes and challenges to solve tough problems.  Prizes allow the government to articulate bold goals – such as building a super-fuel-efficient car, developing a low-cost launch technology for small satellites, or solving the risks to human health that come with space flight – without having to predict which team or approach is most likely to succeed.  With a strict focus on results, prizes empower new, untapped talent – like Altshuler – to deliver novel solutions that accelerate innovation.

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Yesterday I had the great honor of joining President Obama in Milwaukee to celebrate Labor Day. And it was a pleasure hearing his historic announcement of $50 billion in job-creating transportation infrastructure investments.

Infrastructure investments in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act have already shown terrific results, and it makes good sense to continue.

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Click here to see the video.

"Got a lot of hardworking people here," the President told the fired up crowd at Laborfest in Milwaukee, urging them to calm down and get comfortable. "You deserve to sit down for a day.  You’ve been on your feet all year working hard."

The President spoke about what the Labor movement has meant for America:

It was working men and women who made the 20th century the American century. It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today.  (Applause.)  The 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans.  The cornerstones of the middle-class security all bear the union label.  (Applause.)

He spoke about his grandfather, part of the Greatest Generation, who helped teach him about what being a hard-working American is all about, and how that has shaped his values as a man and as a publlic servant.  And he spoke about how the struggles his grandfather saw relate to the tough times millions of hard-working Americans are struggling through right now:

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Regular visitors are probably familiar with the Photo of the Day, a special pick selected by Pete Souza and the White House Photo Office daily.  But you may not have realized that each one is loaded up as part of a gallery for that month, and as it turns out, looking back through the photos of the day is a pretty interesting way to recap the month.  The gallery for August is below -- President Obama talks with soliders at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas as the combat mission in Iraq comes to a close; tours a new housing development in New Orleans, Louisiana five years after Hurricane Katrina; signs Elena Kagan's commission in the Oval Office before celebrating her confirmation to the Supreme Court; welcomes recipents of the 2010 Presidential Citizen's Medal to the White House; and takes a dip with Sasha at Alligator Point in Panama City Beach, Florida.

Click here to see the photo gallery.

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The Wall Street Journal ran a graph this weekend claiming, “The private sector is adding jobs … but the recovery is slower than in past cycles.”   In fact, even though it is not fast enough, the rate of job growth is actually faster now than was the case at comparable points of the past two recoveries.   

How did the Wall Street Journal get it wrong?  The problem is that their graph indexes job growth to the start of the recession, not the start of the recovery.  The economy stopped contracting at the end of the second quarter last year and has since expanded for four straight quarters.  So June 2009 is a reasonable date to pick for the start of the recovery, although the “official” date has not yet been set by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).   Private sector job growth started six months after GDP started expanding in the current recovery.  By contrast, in the 2001 recovery private sector job growth did not begin until 22 months after the official NBER end date of the recession, and in the 1991 recovery job growth did not start until 12 months after the official NBER end date of the recession. 

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Lindsay Graham has often shown that he’s fully capable of being reasonable and bipartisan. Which made it particularly disappointing to see his misleading use of numbers yesterday.  

On Meet the Press, the Senator, against a wave of evidence to the contrary, argued that the Recovery Act has been “an absolute disaster” and called for cancelling “a lot” of what’s left in the bill (transcript here). 

His evidence for this claim: “...we’ve lost two-and-a-half million jobs since the stimulus passed.”

Take a look at the figure below and you’ll see why this is so misleading. He’s conflating two periods of very different employment trends. In the first, when his team’s policies dominated, employment hemorrhaged at nightmarish rates. In the second, when the Recovery Act was on the scene, job losses in the private sector began to diminish, and this year, turned positive. 

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The President talks about his fight to make America work for the middle class and make sure hard work is rewarded -- rather than greed and recklessness .

Click here to see the video.