As President Barack Obama proposes a spending freeze on the federal budget, he is also laying out plans he says will help America's middle class.

"The middle class has been under assault for a long time," Obama said. "Too many Americans have known their own painful recessions long before any economists declared that there was a recession."

The White House defines "middle class" as families making below $85,000 a year.

Some of the Obama administration's proposals for those families include:

• Almost doubling the childcare tax credit.

• Capping federal student loan payments at 10 percent of a borrowers income.

• Requiring employers to set up automatic IRAs to make it easier for workers to save for retirement.

While the plan won't generate jobs the president said it could "re-establish some of the security that's slipped away."