Remarks by President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Prime Minister Kenny of Ireland at St. Patrick's Day Reception

East Room

5:12 P.M. EDT
 
THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Hey, everyone, how are you?  Welcome to the White House.  (Applause.)  And happy St. Patrick’s Day Week. 
 
In 1963, President Kennedy addressed the Irish Parliament and he said, and I quote, “Our two nations, divided by distance, have been united by history.”  And that is obvious to every one of you in this room today.  And nothing exemplifies that bond more than this building.  It was designed by an Irishman named James Hoban -- Hoban.  Any Hobans in the room?  (Laughter.)  I lived across the street from a guy named Johnny Hoban -- anyway, it’s a long story.  (Laughter.)  And it’s been occupied by 19 Presidents of Irish descent -- (applause) -- and the remaining were despondent they could not make that claim.
 
So it’s wonderful to be here today in the White House with all of you.  And I’m reminded of a New Yorker article that Pat Moynihan, God bless him, put on my desk on a St. Patrick’s Day back in the early ’90s.  There was a New Yorker article that had Pat and Mike sitting in a pub in New York, and Pat looks at Mike and says, “Mike, don’t you wish you were in Dublin in a pub wishing you were in New York?”  (Laughter.)  At least the Irish Catholic family I came from, that’s kind of it.  (Applause.)  As I said today, we Irish are the only people I know who are nostalgic about the future.  (Laughter.)  Think about that; you’ll know it’s true.
 
So my mom, who passed away a couple of years ago, Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden -- used to say -- and I mean this sincerely -- her notion was, she said, Joey, to be Irish is about family, it’s about faith, but most of all, it’s about courage, for without courage, you cannot love with abandon.  And I think that’s one of the defining elements of -- that’s the Irish of it, that passion that built both our nations and continues to run through the bloodstream of all Irish Americans. 
 
The history of the journey of this great country, in my view, has always been about promise -- the promise that anything is possible.  It’s about possibilities.  And Barack and I -- the President and I occasionally talk about that.  We’re both here in the White House, coming from where we came from -- the idea that would happen in any other country is unlikely.
 
You know, no one embodies the possibilities and promise of our two nations like the leaders you’re about to hear from.  There’s an old Irish expression:  A good friend is like a four-leaf clover -- hard to find and lucky to have.  Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you four of my good friends -- and I mean that seriously -- the President of the United States and Michelle Obama, and the Taoiseach and Fionnuala Kenny.  (Applause.)
 
PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Hello, everybody.  (Applause.)  We'll, welcome to the White House.  (Applause.)  Once again, today is not technically St. Patrick’s Day.  (Laughter.)  And once again, none of you seem particularly bothered by this.  (Laughter.)  At least you’ll have a weekend to recover.  (Laughter.)
 
I want to start by welcoming Taoiseach Kenny and his lovely wife, Fionnuala, who are not just joining us here today, but more importantly, bringing their children.  And we won’t embarrass them by pointing them out.  (Laughter.)  But we’re thrilled to have them here.  I’m especially grateful that they’re here at a time when the rest of Ireland is focused on the final round of the Six Nations Rugby Tournament.  (Applause.)  And the last match of the legendary Brian O’Driscoll.  (Applause.)  I know everyone wants to talk to the Kennys tonight, but let me make sure they have plenty of voice left to cheer on Ireland tomorrow.
 
Finally, I want to extend a special welcome to Anne Anderson, the newest Ambassador of Ireland to the United States.  (Applause.)  Anne is the first woman to hold this esteemed position -- (applause) -- which means that they might finally get it right.  (Laughter.)  
 
One of Ireland’s greatest poets, Patrick Kavanagh, once wrote, “When I wandered over my own hills and talked again to my own people, I looked into the heart of this life and saw that it was good.”  That’s what St. Patrick’s Day is all about.  It’s about remembering the hills from where so many of us came and the people without whom so many of us would not be here today.  And it is about recognizing how much we owe to the Irish men and women who, to borrow a line from James Joyce, lived and laughed and loved and left.

It’s also about appreciating how much of our American character has Irish roots.  When the first large wave of Irish immigrants set sail for the New World, many of them were already tired, hungry and desperately poor.  And life wasn’t always easier in America.  Many jobs were closed to Irish immigrants -- with signs announcing “No Irish Need Apply” -- and many of the ones that were available involved long and dirty and thankless tasks that made life difficult and often too short.  
 
But the Irish worked hard.  And they persevered.  And they supported each other in tight-knit communities, united by faith, where doors were always open and hands were always extended in hard times.  Or, to adapt a quote from the author Finley Peter Dunne, there wasn’t one struggling family in this world that wasn’t carrying three others on its back.  And together, they were driven by that most American of ideas -- that with enough effort, anybody can build a decent life for their families and leave a better life for their children. 
 
And eventually, that’s exactly what happened.  In Newburyport, Massachusetts in the early 20th century, two-thirds of Irish-Americans were members of the working class, just one third in the middle class.  But if you looked at the third generation alone -- the grandchildren of Irish immigrants -- the numbers were reversed.  A majority had broken into the middle class.
 
So the American Dream has always been the Irish-American Dream.  And that’s why so many of you have been working with us to fix our broken immigration system.  Under today’s laws, many of your parents and grandparents may not have made it here.  And too many men and women who want to contribute to our economy are being denied that chance.  There’s no reason why we can’t do for this generation of immigrants what was done for a previous generation, to give them that chance.  (Applause.)
 
Because like millions of immigrants, the sons and daughters of Erin have always lived by the words of the great Seamus Heaney, who passed away last year: “Believe that further shore is reachable from here.  Believe in miracles.” 
 
And before the G8 summit last June, Michelle and I got a chance to visit Belfast.  We saw firsthand the tremendous progress that’s been made in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement was signed 16 years ago, as well as the long road that still lies ahead. 
 
And before my speech at the Waterfront, Michelle was introduced by a 16-year-old girl named Hannah Nelson.  (Applause.)  And Hannah is here -- there she is, right there. Hey, Hannah.  Hannah is a member of the first generation of Northern Irish to grow up knowing the possibilities of peace.  (Applause.)  And in her introduction she said, “Often in Northern Ireland we hear about our past…But truthfully, we should not let the past pull us apart and stop us moving forward…We need to listen to each other and we need to compromise.  Most importantly, we need to clearly value each other.” 
 
And so if Hannah and that generation reflects such wisdom, I think their elders, all of us, need to pay attention, follow their advice.  Young people like Hannah give us hope for the future because they’re driven by the same optimism, the same belief in miracles that drove their ancestors.  But they also benefit from something that didn’t exist for members of the previous generation -- and that’s a hard-won peace that is theirs to nurture and advance.  They have an example of what’s possible.
 
So, to the people of Ireland and Northern Ireland, I’ll close by paraphrasing Seamus Heaney again.  The Ireland you now inhabit is one that your contemporaries have helped imagine.  But the Ireland that you will inhabit is one your children are helping to build -- one that’s more just, and more peaceful, and more tolerant, and more fair.
 
And with that, I want to propose a toast.  And I’m going to -- this is the best that I can do -- water.  (Laughter.)  Clearly, they had the wrong day.  (Laughter.)  May our children continue to enjoy the bonds we share tonight -- of family, faith, friendship, and hope for the future.  “So fill to me the parting glass; Good night and joy be with you all.”
 
And now it is my pleasure to introduce my good friend, Taoiseach Kenny.  (Applause.)
 
PRIME MINISTER KENNY: (Speaks in Gaelic.)  Welcome, everybody, here to the White House.  Mr. President and First Lady Michelle, Mr. Vice President, Dr. Biden, ladies and gentlemen:  Fionnuala and I are delighted to be with you here at the White House to celebrate the Feast of St. Patrick.  Thank you for your warm hospitality in honor of Ireland and of the Irish people. 
 
Thank you for the toast, Mr. President.  I didn’t think that austerity was biting that far into the White House.  (Laughter and applause.)
 
As we make strides in our own economic recovery, it is wonderful to know that our country still occupies such a special place in the heart and the mind of the United States of America. 
 
Mr. President, in June last year, we met at the G8 summit in Fermanagh.  Next day, Dublin came out with a warm summer welcome for Michelle and Malia and Sasha.  And tonight, sir, I just want to make something very clear:  I have heard what I regard the insider speculation surrounding your attributed desire to keep your Vice President off our island has been wholly without foundation.  (Laughter.)  And at the same time, summoning the persuasive spirit of St. Patrick, I did put in a word for Joe this morning -- (laughter.)  His work is invaluable.  His listening ear is critical.  Thank you, Mr. President, for authorizing him to travel to Ireland.  (Applause.)  We have a golf date. 
 
So I look forward to welcoming him home with Jill to the land of our forebears, to the land of his people and of our people, together, as we say, Oileán ár sinsear -- the island of our ancestors -- where five million of us live, and 70 million call home.  And home and our sense of it is what makes us who we are as Irish people.
 
Just as the Forbes Magazine recently was declaring Ireland to be the best country in the world for business, out there in the Atlantic east of here, storms Hercules and Darwin were making a declaration of their own, through the awesome power of nature, gifting us remnants of Neolithic settlements, ghosts of drowned oak forests, 7,000-years-old remnants uncovered on our beaches and land near sea.
 
So, Mr. President, these are excavations not just of our history, but of life on our island, the geology of our heart.  And they signal our tradition and our capacity to endure and to adapt, to survive and to thrive; to know fear, to know loss, and yet to conscript new generations to courage and vision and a brilliant future across the millenia. 
 
That’s why, today, we have the most adaptable workforce in the world and the youngest workforce in the European Union.  That’s why in no other country in the world do U.S. multinationals and U.S. emerging companies have as big a presence as they have in our country. 
 
And according to the received wisdom of it’s not being enough to do well but to do good, so I’m proud to say that despite our difficulties, we are the most generous people in Europe in our giving to those in need, and every day since the United Nations was founded, the Irish are somewhere on the globe involved in peacekeeping or humanitarian duties.  And as we are, Mr. President, we are ever mindful of the kindness that America, in turn, has shown to us and to our people.
 
This evening, as we celebrate St. Patrick, who was himself an immigrant, Mr. President, I am heartened by your words, and I thank you for all you are doing and others in this great country are doing to help our men and women living here undocumented.  We know America will sort this out.  (Applause.) 
 
I’m thrilled you mentioned young Hannah.  I saw her deliver her words last year on television -- congratulations.  And from you to Mark Pollack, whom I see here in front of me, without sight, without the capability of walking, yet he has done extraordinary things in a sense of his vision and his courage of what we can do with our shared humanity.  (Applause.)
 
So, sir, as we take our leave here this evening, we do remember absent friends whom you’ve mentioned -- in particular, he who documented the dream -- the farmer’s son, the known blood relative of the gods, Seamus Heaney.  And in his memory, and in honor of St. Patrick, let us do as he asks when he said, go beyond what’s reliable and recollect how bold you were when I visited you first, with departures you cannot go back on.
 
So, Mr. President, First Lady, Ireland has made its departure.  There is no going back.  Tonight, then, let our two nations, our two countries, Ireland and the United States, heed and live the last words of Seamus Heaney texted to his wife before he left, “Noli timere,” “Do not be afraid.” 
 
Thank you.  (Applause.) 
 
END
5:29 P.M. EDT

Remarks by the First Lady at The Partnership for a Healthier America’s Building a Healthier Future Summit

Hilton Hotel
Washington, D.C.

1:41 P.M. EDT

MRS. OBAMA:  Yay to everyone!  (Applause.)  Thank you so much.  You all, rest yourselves.  It is a pleasure to be here with all of you today. 

Let me start by thanking Larry, not just for his very kind introduction but for his outstanding leadership at PHA, as well as the entire staff of PHA, the board, Jim Gavin -- all of you deserve a huge round of applause for your outstanding work.  I’m so proud of you all.  Thank you so much.  (Applause.)  PHA is doing critically important work to engage partners across the private sector, and over the past two days we’ve seen the fruits of their efforts.

And I am thrilled about the extraordinary commitments that have been announced at this summit, so I want to take a moment to recognize Dannon, Del Monte, Knowledge Universe, Kwik Trip, Nutri Ventures, and Sodexo.  So let’s give them another huge round of applause.  (Applause.)  These are major steps to making sure our families can lead healthier lives, and we are extremely grateful.

And of course, I want to thank all of you, the advocates and experts who’ve been working on the issue of childhood obesity long before it came into the national spotlight.  You all are truly our brain trust on this issue.  You know better than anyone where we’ve been and where we need to go.  And that’s really what I want to talk about today.  I want to talk about how much we’ve achieved, but more importantly, how much more we have left to do.

So let’s start with the good news:  Because of what we have all done together, today, 32 million kids are getting healthier school meals.  Tens of thousands of schools are removing junk food ads from their classroom.  Fifteen thousand childcare centers will be providing healthier snacks and getting those cute little kids up and moving.  Food and beverage companies have cut 6.4 trillion calories from their products.  We will soon have better nutrition labels on 700,000 food items.  Hundreds of new or renovated grocery stores are reaching millions of people in underserved communities -- I could go on.  These are just a few of the highlights.  Absolutely amazing.  (Applause.) 

And today, slowly but surely, healthy habits are becoming the new norm in this country.  Today, according to a recent CDC report that I know you have all discussed, obesity rates have fallen by 43 percent among children ages two to five years old.  And I think we should all be very proud of what we are achieving together, because in a fight this hard, we should celebrate every small victory we can get. 

But that’s really what the CDC report represents.  Yes, it is an important achievement, but in light of the magnitude of this challenge, it is a small achievement.  It’s just a hint of the progress that’s possible on this issue.  So it is a very good thing that we have got so much momentum right now, because we still have a long way to go to solve this problem, particularly among our older children.

So now is not the time to take our foot off the gas and congratulate ourselves on a job well done -- just the opposite.  Now is the time to fight even harder, because we now know it is possible to make a difference on this issue.  We know that our strategies are beginning to work. 

So through Let’s Move, we plan to keep attacking this problem from every angle, because we know there is no one magic bullet.  So we plan to keep building healthier schools.  We plan to keep bringing fresh food into our communities.  We plan to keep urging businesses to provide healthy products and market them responsibly to our kids.  But we also need to keep innovating.  We need to keep pushing the envelope.  We need to find new ideas from every sector to help families make manageable, affordable changes that can transform our children’s health. 

And today, I just want to talk briefly to give an example of one of those changes.  It’s a simple idea which will be a key focus of Let’s Move over the next year, but it is an idea that can help families create healthier new habits.  And the idea is to help families start cooking again.

Now, I know this might not seem like an earth-shattering notion -- though neither was planting a garden in the White House, I will remind you.  (Laughter.)  But research clearly shows that home-cooking is one of the single most impactful ways for families to improve their health. 

One study shows that home-cooking is actually a better predictor of how well families eat than their income.  And that’s not surprising, because food prepared at home is lower in saturated fat, sodium, cholesterol and calories than food prepared away from home.  Because when you cook at home, you’re in control of your nutrition.  You decide the ingredients to use.  You decide the portion sizes.  You decide whether there’s a vegetable on the plate or not.  

But unfortunately, for many families, home-cooking has fallen by the wayside.  And many folks feel like they just don’t have the time to cook, or they don’t know how.  Some think it’s more expensive to prepare balanced home-cooked meals, so they don’t do it.  But it hasn’t always been that way. 

See, back in the day -- for you young people, the day is, like, when I was young -- (laughter) -- folks used to cook all the time.  That was certainly true in my family growing up.  My mother had a strict food budget, and every Saturday she wrote out her list for the week, headed to the grocery down the street.  And she had every meal planned out for the week -– that roast beef for Sunday dinner would be sandwiches for Monday and Tuesday lunches.  Wednesday night was liver night -- it was a very sad night in our household, by the way.  (Laughter.)  Thursday might be spaghetti; Friday, fish.   And once in great a while, we’d order a pizza or pick up a burger at the drive-through, but we usually couldn’t afford to eat out so those were exceptions.

My grandmother had done the same thing for her family, and she worked full-time for most of her life.  See, back then, unless you were rich, cooking was a matter of survival.  It was a way of life.  But like a lot of folks in my generation, I found that by the time I grew up and went off to school and started my career, things had changed. 

I remember one Saturday afternoon as a young lawyer working crazy hours, I was talking to my grandmother over the phone, and the first thing she asked me, she said, “what are you cooking?”  I was like, “Grandma, really?  I am a lawyer.  I do not cook.”  (Laughter.) 

You see, my parents urged me to focus on my studies and career above all else.  They had worked hard to support my dreams, so they didn’t want me to worry about traditional things like cooking.  They felt like I could always learn to cook later.  And that was all well and good for a while, until I had a family of my own.

And I was fine when my kids were little, because we went from breastfeeding straight to what Barack and I called the “jar stage” -- when an entire meal for a baby came in a single jar.  Barack and I, we loved the “jar stage.”  (Laughter.)  We were masters of the “jar stage.”  Providing a balanced meal was so easy -- chicken and rice?  In a jar.  Peas and spinach?  Jar.  Peaches, bananas?  Jar -- big jar.  No need to cook, boil, bake, it was all there for us in those marvelous little baby food jars.  It was heaven. 

But then our babies outgrew the “jar stage,” and suddenly we were faced with the reality that we might actually have to use the appliances in our kitchen to feed our children.  And we slowly figured it out.  We started with the basics like broiled chicken and rice, and steamed broccoli, scrambled eggs -- that’s really all Barack would do, the eggs.  (Laughter.)  And we did our best to cook regularly at home.  But like so many working parents, we both had demanding jobs, we were always exhausted.  And over time, we started giving in and popping things into the microwave, or spending way too much of our monthly budget ordering takeout, which, in turn, resulted in less than optimal health outcomes for our kids.

So as my story hopefully illustrates, while we often frame this cooking problem as a time problem or a budget problem, for many folks it’s actually a skills problem.  Because when you don’t have those basic cooking and budgeting skills that my mother and grandmother had, everything takes longer and costs much more. 

You don’t know how to plan a full week of meals, so you go back and forth to the grocery store.  You don’t know how to cut a whole chicken yourself, so you pay more for the pre-cut parts.  You’ve never learned the basics of cooking, so even simple dishes take longer to prepare.  And today, a lot of folks think it’s quicker and cheaper to just grab some fast food. 

But the fact is that with the right recipes and a few basic skills, there are countless recipes that families can prepare in less than 30 minutes –- meals that actually cost less than going to the drive-through.  For example, a fast food meal for a family of four could cost as much as $20, $25 or more.  But for less than $15, a family can cook a full chicken dinner complete with sides. 

And cooking isn’t just good for our budgets or our physical health, it’s also good for our kids’ emotional health.  Research shows that when families share meals together, kids actually perform better in school, and they get along better with their peers.  And let’s not forget that cooking together can actually be fun.  

So the benefits of cooking couldn’t be more clear.  The question is how do we help families start cooking again, even if it’s just one or two meals a week?  Can we work with supermarkets to do more to distribute recipes on how to cook, and do demonstrations?  Can we develop the home-ec class of the future that will give kids -- both girls and boys –- the basic skills they need to feed themselves on a budget?  Can we inspire chefs to offer affordable cooking classes in their restaurants?

I mean, the possibilities here are endless.  And in the coming months, as we continue our existing efforts, we will be announcing some new initiatives along these lines. 

But really, this is just one example of a very simple, creative approach that doesn’t require new legislation but can fundamentally change the way families take control of their own health.  And I know, looking around this room, that all of you have some great ideas of your own; many innovative, creative things to keep moving this issue forward.

And that’s why today, more than ever before, we need you all with us in this effort.  We need everyone in this room to keep tackling this problem from every angle, because we are just beginning to get traction on this issue.  After decades of struggle, we are just beginning to make some progress.  And I am proud of what we’ve achieved together.

But when one in three children in this country are still overweight or obese, when millions of kids are still on track to develop devastating illnesses like diabetes and heart disease, then we still have to do a gut check.  We need to ask ourselves, have we really done all that we can for our children?  Have we given them our very best?

And of course, the answer is, not really.  The truth is that right now, the biggest risk to our success is our own impatience, our desire to want big changes overnight.  Just think back to our first PHA Summit four years ago -- I don’t know how many of you were there -- I was there.  (Laughter.)  And I still remember all the excitement and determination we were feeling that day.  We didn’t listen to the skeptics who said we could never solve a problem this big and entrenched.  Instead, we all committed ourselves to one clear goal, and that was to solve the problem of childhood obesity within a generation so that kids born today will grow up healthy. 

Now, this wasn’t a five-year goal or a ten-year goal.  It was a generational goal, because it took decades for this childhood-obesity crisis to develop and we knew it would take decades to fix it.  And today, just four years later, studies are beginning to show that our youngest kids –- kids born two to five years ago -- are growing up healthier.

So we’re on track to achieve our goal, we are.  (Applause.)  We are on track.  But if we back down now, if we don’t keep innovating and pushing forward, I guarantee you that we will go right back to where we started.  And that’s not who we are.  That’s not what we do in this country. 

We don’t just walk away when things get hard, especially when it comes to our children’s future.  And we cannot walk away from this issue until obesity rates drop for children of every age and every background.  We cannot walk away until every child in this country has a shot at a healthy life.  And that’s why I’m in this for the long haul -- and I mean long after I leave the White House.  Because I believe in finishing what I start, and I know that you all do too.  (Applause.) 

So now is the time for all of us to truly double down.  Now is the time to commit more effort, more innovation, more energy, more dollars, and more leadership to solving this problem.  That’s what I plan on doing, and if you continue to join me in this effort, if you keep on digging deep and pushing forward, then I know we can raise healthier kids who will become healthier adults, who will raise healthier families of their own.

And that’s how we make real and lasting change in this country.  That’s how we create a better future for generations to come.  So I look forward to working with all of you to create that future that we know we can achieve in the months and years ahead. 

So thank you all.  Thank you for everything you’ve done.  Thank you for everything you continue to do.  I am so proud of you all.  God bless.  (Applause.)

END
1:58 P.M. EDT