Over the last few weeks, I’ve been talking about what we need to do to secure a better bargain for middle-class families in Boston and all across the country — to make sure that anyone who works hard can get ahead in the 21st century economy.

As a nation, we’ve fought our way back from the worst recession of our lifetimes and begun to lay a new foundation for stronger, more durable economic growth. Today, our businesses have created 7.3 million new jobs over the last 41 months. We now sell more products made in America to the rest of the world than ever before. Health care costs are growing at the slowest rate in 50 years, and our deficits are falling at the fastest rate in 60 years.

But as any middle-class family will tell you, we’re not where we need to be yet. Even before the crisis hit, we were living through a decade where a few at the top were doing better and better, while most families were working harder and harder just to get by.

Reversing this trend must be Washington’s highest priority. It’s certainly mine. But too often in the past two years, Washington has taken its eye off the ball, allowing an endless parade of political posturing and phony scandals to distract from growing the economy and the middle class.

That’s why I’m laying out my ideas for how we can build on the cornerstones of what it means to be middle class in America. A good education. A home of your own. Health care when you get sick. A secure retirement even if you’re not rich. And the most important cornerstone of all: a good job in a durable, growing industry.

When it comes to creating more good jobs that pay decent wages, the problem is not a lack of ideas. Independent economists, business owners and people from both parties agree on what we have to do. I proposed many of these ideas two years ago in the American Jobs Act, and put forward even more this week — to create more jobs in manufacturing, in wind, solar, and natural gas, and in an area that offers one of the best ways to put more people back to work right now and grow our economy for the long run: rebuilding America’s infrastructure.

We know that modern roads, bridges, power grids, and schools are a key ingredient to a thriving economy. It’s how the United States became the best place in the world to do business. And typically, investing in our infrastructure is a bipartisan affair. But over the past two years, too many Republicans in Congress have undercut these investments.

My plan would close special interest tax loopholes for companies that move jobs overseas, and use the money we save to put construction workers back on the job making our most urgent infrastructure repairs, like the much-needed repair work on the Western Avenue and River Street bridges and reconstruction of the bridge deck along I-90. These projects would create good middle-class jobs right here in Boston, right now.

So we’re not lacking for ideas. We’re just lacking for action. And that’s why, in addition to proposing ideas that we know will create jobs and grow our economy, I’ve also put forward a strategy for breaking through the Washington logjam — a “grand bargain” for the middle class.

I’m willing to work with Republicans to simplify our tax code for businesses large and small, but only if we use the money from transitioning to a simpler tax system for a significant investment in creating middle-class jobs rebuilding our infrastructure, manufacturing more American-made goods to sell to the rest of the world, and arming our workers with the skills that a global economy demands.

I’ll keep laying out my ideas to give the middle class a better shot in the 21st-century economy, and I’ll keep reaching out to Republicans for theirs. But gutting critical investments in our future, threatening national default on the bills that Congress has already racked up, denying health care to millions or shutting down the government just because I’m for keeping it open — none of that is an economic plan. None of that will take this country where it needs to go.

If we’re willing to take a few bold steps — and if Washington sets aside some of the slash-and-burn partisanship we’ve seen in recent years – we can grow our economy and build a better bargain for the middle class. And together, we can make this century another great American century.

The president and first family are currently vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard.