The New York Times has the full text of President Obama's speech on reducing the budget. It's probably the first real speech of the 2012 campaign, and it's a crucial one—Obama's trying to paint himself as America's responsible dad, without sounding like a Jimmy Carter-style killjoy. He called the recently unveiled Republican budget plan "less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America." Here's the pivot point:

So here's the truth. Around two-thirds of our budget is spent on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and national security. Programs like unemployment insurance, student loans, veterans' benefits, and tax credits for working families take up another 20%. What's left, after interest on the debt, is just 12 percent for everything else. That's 12 percent for all of our other national priorities like education and clean energy; medical research and transportation; food safety and keeping our air and water clean.

Up until now, the cuts proposed by a lot of folks in Washington have focused almost exclusively on that 12%. But cuts to that 12% alone won't solve the problem. So any serious plan to tackle our deficit will require us to put everything on the table, and take on excess spending wherever it exists in the budget. A serious plan doesn't require us to balance our budget overnight — in fact, economists think that with the economy just starting to grow again, we will need a phased-in approach — but it does require tough decisions and support from leaders in both parties. And above all, it will require us to choose a vision of the America we want to see five and ten and twenty years down the road.

His plan calls for a $4 trillion reduction of the deficit over the next 12 years, raising taxes on the wealthy by allowing the Bush tax cuts to lapse, and...doing something vague to Social Security and Medicare. Find more information about it here and here.