We’ll post HERE is the video of the president’s speech on extending tax cuts for the middle class as soon as it’s available. In the meantime, Ezra Klein has written a WaPo piece:

With today’s announcement, the administration has made its preference clear: Stand and fight, and hope the economy — and President Obama’s reelection hopes — survive the fallout.

As Ezra tweeted:

Today’s tax cut announcement is actually a very big deal for the 2012 campaign. Obama campaign decided it’s better to fight on fiscal policy than to extend everything to avoid fiscal cliff effects.

A Politico news alert quotes the president, who just finished his speech:

“Pass a bill extending the tax cuts for the middle class, I will sign it tomorrow. Pass it next week, I’ll sign it next week,” Obama said at a White House event.

“Right now our priority needs to be giving middle class Americans and small businesses the security they deserve.”

The president blamed the current tax cuts for causing the deficit, and added that an overall Bush tax cut extension is “least likely to promote growth-we can’t afford to keep that up, not right now. I just believe that anybody making over $250,000 should go back to the income tax rates we were paying under Bill Clinton.”

I live tweeted it, too. I paraphrased and added my own commentary, and I also quoted directly from the speech. My tweets, verbatim:

Pres. Obama: Stalemate on taxes. GOP wants to SPEND trillions on tax cuts. Hear that? SPEND. I CUT MID CLASS taxes EVERY year since I became president. We tried it their way. IT DIDN’T WORK. TRICKLE DOWN doesn’t work! Rich got richer. Slowest job growth in 50 years.

Clinton=surplus. GOP/Bush= deficit. Ahem. Time to let RICH PEOPLE’S TAX CUTS EXPIRE. If we were still in surplus, I might think differently. WE’RE NOT, so I don’t.

Tax cuts for rich= tax cuts LEAST LIKELY to promote growth. Anyone making over $250K/yr should pay CLINTON tax rates. America agrees with me by the way, hear that GOP?

Most Americans agree: No tax raises on middle class. So let’s not do that. Extend cuts on 98% of Americans.

“97% of small biz falls under the $250K threshold.”

“Let’s agree to do what we agree on: extend tax cuts for middle class.”

“Let’s not hold America hostage while debating merits of another tax cut for wealthy.” I’ll sign it tomorrow, next week, whenever. THEN let’s debate cuts for rich. Right now: Priority is middle class security. We can debate tax code next.

Now back to Ezra:

Technically, we won’t hit the fiscal cliff — which is Washington’s preferred term for the near-simultaneous expiration of the Bush tax cuts, the payroll tax cut and the expanded unemployment benefits; the beginning of the sequester’s spending cuts; and the predicted point at which we hit the debt ceiling — until after the election. But the effects could be felt long before. [...]

In theory, the Obama administration could head this off by agreeing with Republicans to extend current policy into 2013. Republicans would have some incentive to play ball…  Mitt Romney, is facing substantial fire over his tax returns [...]

[W]ith its announcement today, the Obama campaign signaled that it wasn’t willing to sign a full extension of the Bush tax cuts, which means there’s no obvious resolution to the fiscal cliff on the horizon. Some economists, however, think the economy can survive the uncertainty — at least through to the election. [...]

The answer from Republicans is that once the middle-class tax cuts expire, they’ll lose their leverage on the upper-income tax cuts.

The White House’s hope is that that answer won’t be very convincing to voters. The GOP’s bet is that it also won’t be very comforting to the markets.

Stay tuned.