Obama: Middle Class at “Make or Break Moment”

President Barack Obama is taking aim at the nation's income disparities, declaring that the middle class faces a "make or break moment." He tells a Kansas audience that Republicans embrace a discredited "you're-on-your own" style of economics.

Obama returned to his mother's home state Tuesday to invoke big themes of economic fairness, similar to ones once delivered by President Theodore Roosevelt in this same rural town southwest of Kansas City.

He once again called for extending a payroll tax cut, and for wealthier taxpayers to carry a bigger tax burden.

He said the 2008 financial crisis left a "deficit of trust" toward Wall Street. He prodded the Senate to approve the head of a consumer watchdog agency and said he would call for tougher penalties for financial fraud.

(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)