President Obama: deep in the heart of Texas (plenty of photos)

Now, when we talk about this going back thing, I notice some Republicans say, well, he just wants to bash the previous administration. He’s looking backwards. He’s trying to take the focus off the tough economic situation that a lot of people are feeling. No, no, no.

The reason we’re focused on it is because the other side isn’t offering anything new. I mean it would be one thing if having run the economy into the ground, having taken record surpluses and turned them into record deficits, if having presided over the meltdown of our financial system, that they had gone off into the desert for a while and reflected -- (laughter) -- and said, boy, we really screwed up. What we were selling didn't work. It badly damaged the American economy, and now we’re going to come back with a whole new set of ideas.

But that's not what’s happening. Instead, they are trotting out the exact same ideas that got us into this mess in the first place. Their big economic plan is to renew the tax cuts that helped to turn surpluses into deficits -- tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. And once you get past that, they don't have another new idea. That's it.