After making his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Barack Obama was already out promoting his agneda in the Midwest on Wednesday.

Obama spoke to renewable energy firm Orion Energy Systems in Wisconsin, where he pushed his message of innovation and job creation, Reuters reported. He told workers that the United States must invest in high technology to compete with rising powers such as China and India.

“China’s making these investments and they have already captured a big chunk of the solar market, partly because we fell down on the job,” Obama said. “We weren’t moving as fast as we should have. Those are jobs that could be created right here that are getting shipped overseas.”

A day after the Congressional Budget Office forecast that the U.S. deficit would hit $1.48 trillion in 2011, Obama again alluded to the need to cut spending, saying the government needs to be “taking responsibility for our deficits by cutting wasteful, excessive spending wherever we find it.”

In Tuesday’s speech, Obama called for a corporate tax cut, closing existing loopholes and reforming the tax code.

Obama also proposed a five-year freeze on some domestic spending, estimated to cut $400 billion from budget deficits over the next decade.