The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release
April 28, 2011

Remarks by the President at a DNC Event, New York

9:08 P.M. EDT
 
     THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, hello, hello!  (Applause.)  Thank you.  Thank you, everybody.  (Applause.)  Everybody, have a seat. Thank you.  Thank you.  My name is Barack Obama.  I was born in Hawaii.  (Laughter and applause.)  I'm President of the United States.  (Applause.)  And I'm running for reelection.  (Applause.)
 
     Nobody checked my ID on the way in.  (Laughter.)  But just in case -- (laughter.)
 
     We've got some wonderful guests here today -- first of all, two of the finest senators that you could ever hope to have, the senior Senator from the great state of New York, Chuck Schumer is in the house!  (Applause.)  And the far more attractive -- (laughter) -- junior Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand is here.  (Applause.)  One of my great friends, somebody who I always enjoyed being with when I was in the United States Senate, from the great state of New Jersey, Frank Lautenberg is in the house. (Applause.)
 
     To all the members of Congress who are here; to all the New York State and New York City elected officials who are here -- thank you for the extraordinary work that you do each and every day.  We're very proud of you.  (Applause.)
 
     To the Knicks, Jets, Giants, Rangers -- (applause) -- thank you for bringing hope back to New York City.  (Applause.)  My Bulls are doing pretty good, though.  (Laughter.)  I'm just saying.  (Laughter.)  Did I hear a boo there?  Come on.  (Laughter.)   
 
     So, look, I do not have prepared remarks partly because I’m among friends.  And what I do want to talk to you a little bit about is not just the campaign that's coming up, but where we’ve been over the last two and a half years, and where we need to go over the next 20.
 
     When we ran in 2008, I think all of us had a sense that America was at a crossroads, that for the previous decade what had happened to families all across America was they were working just as hard as they’d ever worked; they were fulfilling their responsibilities to their family, to the communities; volunteering in their synagogues, churches, places of worship; they remained committed to achieving the American Dream through hard work, and yet somehow it felt like that dream was slipping away.
 
     During those 10 years, the income and wages of the average American actually went down when you factored in inflation.  The economy was growing.  A lot of us in this room were doing very well, but for a lot of folks, their life chances felt diminished. And when they looked out on the horizon, it looked like things weren’t going to get better, they were going to get tougher.
 
     And that was all before the worst recession since the Great Depression.  By the time I was sworn in, we had already lost 4 million jobs in the previous six months.  In the next six months, before our economic policies had a chance to take effect, we lost another 4 million.  The financial system was on the brink of collapse.  We were about to see the liquidation of the U.S. auto industry.
 
     And yet because of the work, in part, of people like Chuck and Kirsten and Carolyn and others who worked so hard in Congress, what we were able to do is right the ship.  We had to take some unpopular decisions.  We had to do some things that people weren’t sure were going to work.  But we made those tough decisions.  And as a consequence, an economy that was shrinking is now growing.  An economy that was shedding jobs over the last 13 months, we’ve created 2 million jobs in the private sector.  (Applause.)  The stock market is almost fully recovered.  The financial system has stabilized.  And people have a sense that this recovery may finally start building some steam.
 
And along the way, we did a few other things, like make sure that families in this country who get sick don’t get bankrupt or lose their homes because of it -- because we passed health care reform.  (Applause.)  
 
     We passed laws to make sure that equal pay for equal work was a reality here in the United States of America, and my daughters don’t have to settle for less.  (Applause.)  We put a couple more women on the Supreme Court -- lord knows we need them -- including the first Latina on the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor.  (Applause.)
 
     We changed the financial aid system, the student loan system.  We were giving subsidies to banks unnecessarily and restricting the amount of help that young people who wanted to go to college could get.  And because of changes that we made you got millions of young people all across the country who are now able to go to college and take on less debt and achieve their dreams.
 
     We brought home 100,000 troops from Iraq, like we promised, and the rest of them are going to be home by the end of this year.  (Applause.)  We signed a peace -- a nuclear reduction treaty with the Russians.  We made sure that anybody who wants to serve in our military can serve regardless of sexual orientation. (Applause.)
 
     So we got a lot of work done.  That’s just a partial list.  But what I want to talk to you about today is the fact that what we’ve done isn’t enough.  We’ve got more work to do.  I get letters from about 40,000 people every day -- letters or e-mails. And my staff responds to all of them, but I get a chance to read about 10 of them each night.  And these letters are inspiring, but they can also be heartbreaking -- because you will hear from a father who writes about what it’s like to send 16 resumes out, 20 resumes out, 30 resumes out, and not get a response -- trying to figure out how he explains to his children why they’re having to cut back.
 
Or you get a letter from a child who says, my parents tell me we may have to sell our home and, Mr. President, is there something that you can do?  I’ll get letters from the families of service members who have been killed in action in Afghanistan.  And I’ll get letters from young people who are hoping to go to college but aren’t sure whether they’re going to be able to afford it.
 
And when I read these letters I’m reminded of why we started on this journey together, three, four years ago.  I’m reminded that the only reason for public service is not for the perks of office, it’s not the title.  It’s to be an advocate for all those families, to make sure that America is as good to the next generation as it’s been to us.
 
     Now, I look around this room and a sizable percentage of all of you, your parents might have been immigrants.  Your parents might not have had a lot, but they had hopes and dreams for you. They understood that if they worked hard, if they were willing to sacrifice, if they were willing to pour all that blood, sweat, and tears into you, that you might be able to achieve something they couldn’t imagine achieving.
 
     And the reason I ran for President is because I want to make sure that’s true for the next generation.  I want to make sure that every family out there feels that way; that if they do the right thing, if they’re working hard, that they can achieve.  And we know how to do it.  We know how to do it.
 
     We believe in free enterprise.  We believe in entrepreneurship.  We believe in individual liberties.  We believe in self-help.  But we also believe in community.  We also believe in looking out for one another.  We also believe in the American family.  We also believe that America at its best is one that invests in education for everybody, and invests in science and technology for the future, and invests in infrastructure so we can move people and services and products all around the world, and invests in our seniors to make sure that they can retire with dignity and respect, and looks after the most vulnerable, looks after that child with autism or that child with a severe disability.  That's who we are.  That's what we believe. And that's the America I want to leave to Malia and Sasha.  That's the America that you want to leave to your kids.
 
     And we can achieve it.  We’re part of the way there, but we’re not all the way there.  We’ve still got a lot of work to do.  We still have a lot of work to do.  And that's what this budget debate that has dominated Washington over the last several months and will dominate Washington over the next year, year and a half, is all about.
 
     It’s not about numbers.  We all agree that we have to reduce our deficit and get a hold of our debt.  We even agree on roughly the amounts by which the deficit and the debt have to be reduced. This argument is not about numbers; it is about values.  Because on one side you have folks who believe that we can slash education funding by 25 percent, or transportation funding by 30 percent, or investments in clean energy by 70 percent, and we can turn the Medicare system into a voucher program so that we’re shifting costs onto seniors.  It’s a vision of a small America, of a shrunken America, where those of us who are lucky do great and don’t have to give anything back, and we can pull up the ladder behind us.
 
     And then there’s another vision that says we can live within our means as a government, we can act responsibly in terms of our budget, but we can make sure that the burden is shared, that the sacrifices are spread around.
 
And the reason we believe that is not out of charity.  The reason we believe that is we think that our lives are better if when we’re driving down the street and we see those kids in a well-funded, well-run school that’s teaching them something, we know that New York City and New York state and the United States of America are going to be better places for us.  They’re going to be more safe and more secure.
 
     We do it not just out of charity but because it makes our lives better.  We know that when we see that elderly couple strolling through Central Park, holding hands, and they know that they’ve got the security of Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, that that makes us better, because we think, you know, someday I want to be Michelle -- I want it to be me and Michelle strolling down Central Park.  There’s going to be a time where I can go walking again.  And I would want to make sure that I’ve got some security in those golden years.  (Applause.)
 
     We imagine a big America where we’re investing in the same kind of science that invented the Internet.  We want to invent the next big energy breakthrough that is going to make sure that we’re no longer dependent on foreign oil, and we can start finally doing something about climate change, and we’re not vulnerable to huge spikes in gasoline prices.  We want that transformation starting here in the United States of America.
 
And we want the best roads and the best airports because we’ve always had the best stuff.  We want the fastest broadband lines.  And we want the highest graduation rates from college.  That's who we are.  That's the country we want to pass on to the next generation, and that's what this budget debate is all about.
     Don't let folks fool you, saying this is somehow about some dry number somewhere.  This is about our values, the kind of country we want to pass on to the next generation.  And I’m confident that vision of a big, generous, compassionate America, that's the vision that most Americans share.
 
     So we’re going to have some work to do.  This is not going to be easy.  In 2008, I didn't have all this grey hair.  (Laughter.)  I was kind of fresh and new.  I was like the hip thing.  (Laughter.)  Everybody had the nice posters.  (Laughter.) You know, so it was cool to back Obama.  (Laughter.)  And now I’m older -- (applause.)  Let’s face it.  Let’s face it.  I’m a little older.
 
     AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Distinguished!
 
     THE PRESIDENT:  Distinguished.  That's the word I’m looking for.  (Laughter.)  Distinguished.  And we’ve had some setbacks, and some things haven’t happened as fast as people wanted them to happen.  I know.  I know the conversations you guys have.  (Laughter.)  Oh, you didn’t get the public option and -- (laughter) -- gosh, I wish that energy bill had passed.  I understand the frustrations.  I feel them, too.
 
     But here’s what I know.  When I stood in Grant Park that night, I told all of you this is not going to be easy.  I didn’t say, “change you could have tomorrow.”  (Laughter.)  I said, “change we can believe in.”  (Applause.)  But it requires faith. It requires us working hard.  It requires staying with it.  It requires persistence.
 
That’s why I’m going to need you, every single one of you.
And if you join with me in 2012, I guarantee you we’re going to get the job done.
 
Thank you, everybody.  God bless you.  God bless the United States of America.  (Applause.)

END
9:27 P.M. EDT

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release
April 28, 2011

Remarks by the President at a DNC Event

Private Residence New York, New York

6:05 P.M. EDT
 
     THE PRESIDENT:  I'm going to use a mic just because we've got two rooms.  Everybody please have a seat.  Sit down, sit down.
 
     I'm among a lot of friends and I, first of all, obviously want to thank Jon and Sharon for hosting us in this extraordinary venue.  These guys have been just great friends from the start. Some of you know that Jon was a big supporter of mine in my first U.S. Senate race when nobody could pronounce my name.  (Laughter.)  And I had a chance to meet Sharon then and could already see that -- where that was going.  (Laughter.)  So it is wonderful to see them together as newly-weds and we are just thrilled to be with them.
 
     I also want to thank Orin and Michael for the extraordinary work that you guys did.  I know that you guys worked really hard as co-hosts to this event, and I'm very grateful.  They have both been long-time supporters and long-time friends and I really appreciate them.  So give them a big round of applause.  (Applause.)
 
     So today was a fun day.  (Laughter.)  I wasn’t -- nobody checked my ID at the door.  (Laughter.)  But it was also a serious day because part of what happened this morning was me trying to remind the press and trying to remind both parties that what we do in politics is not a reality show.  It’s serious.
 
     I get, as many of you know, 10 letters a night from citizens all across the country, and the letters you get, some of them are heartbreaking; almost all of them are inspiring.  And the story these letters tell are of people who have done everything right, are looking after their families, are looking after their communities, are participating in Little League, are members of their church or their synagogues and active participants, volunteer, and yet are worried.  They’re worried about the direction of our country.  They’re worried about their specific circumstances.
 
     Sometimes I get letters from children who are worried about their parents losing a job.  And I get letters from parents describing what it’s like to send 16 resumes out and not get a response.  I hear from families who are worried about losing their homes.  I worry about small businesses who have put their heart and soul and everything they own into something that was working and now suddenly credit has been pulled back and they're not sure if they're going to make it.
 
     And most of all, I think what you find are people who are worried about the future of the American Dream.  Now, everybody here, almost by definition, has lived out that American Dream.  We have been extraordinarily blessed by a country that historically has provided more opportunity to more people than any other in history.  Many of us are children of immigrants.  Sharon was just describing what it was like for her parents to come here from other countries -- in some cases, fleeing the Holocaust -- and somehow being able to make a life for their families and then ultimately see their children and their grandchildren succeed in ways that they never dreamed before.  And that's the story for most of us.
 
     And the question is, will that same story be told by our children and our grandchildren and our great grandchildren?  And more importantly, will it be told by the folks who do all the work here in New York City and all across the country, washing dishes and maintaining lawns and working at factories?  Are they going to be able to tell that same story?
 
     That's what prompted me to run for the United States Senate when Jon first supported me; that's what prompted me to run for President.  I wanted to be the advocate for an America that continues to offer opportunity to everybody, regardless of race and creed and color.
 
And I didn't expect that not only I would have the extraordinary honor of taking this highest office, but also doing so at a time when we were facing the worst crisis since the Great Depression.  Now, we’ve spent two years cleaning up after a big mess.  And not all the decisions that we made were popular.  I think most of the decisions we made were right.  Because of the actions that we took swiftly upon coming into office, the financial system stabilized, and I think that if you asked anybody back in March of 2009 whether we were going to see almost all of the losses on Wall Street recover, the financial system working again at relatively modest costs to taxpayers, I think most of us would have taken that scenario.
 
     We have a auto industry that for the first time in a very long time is turning a profit, and has hired back workers instead of laying them off.  We have been able to take an economy that was shrinking at about 6 percent per quarter and is now growing. And we’ve added 2 million jobs over the last 13 months in the private sector alone.
 
     So we’ve made extraordinary process.  And along the way we’ve done a few other things, like make sure that families aren’t going bankrupt because they get sick; and making sure that equal pay for equal work is a reality; and appointing a couple of women to the Supreme Court -- because Lord knows we need more women on that court -- (applause) -- and ending policies like “don’t ask, don’t tell,” that were prohibiting people who loved each other from being able to serve.  (Applause.)
 
     So we’ve made enormous progress, but those letters tell me that we haven’t made enough.  We’ve still got a lot of work to do.  We’ve got a lot of work to do to continue to lower the unemployment rate and grow the economy.  We’ve got a lot of work to do to make sure that we get control over a deficit and debt that is a serious threat to our long-term future.  And we’ve got to do it in a way that ensures that we’re making the investments that allow us to be competitive in the 21st century -- investments in education, investments in infrastructure, investments in basic research and science, which have always been the hallmark of a dynamic American economy.
 
     We’ve got a lot more work to do to fix an immigration system that’s broken.  And we have a lot more work to do to make sure that we’ve got an energy policy that works.  So I am not satisfied with the progress we’ve made, but we’re on the right track.
 
One other area that I’m not satisfied about is the fact that we haven’t been able to create the kind of politics that I think we’re going to need to meet all these challenges.  Partly because of the stresses of the recession over the last couple of years, politics is as polarized as ever.  And I think the hope that I have that we would start coming together in a serious way and have a serious debate about how we move the country forward has been resisted.  I won’t say that the Democrats have never been at fault in that, but I will say that my administration and I think Democrats in Congress are serious about trying to solve these problems and not simply to score political points.  And I think it can be done.
 
But part of what’s going to have to happen is that serious politics will need to be rewarded.  We’re going to have, between now and 2012, a serious debate about the kind of America we believe in.  And it is my intention to make sure that as hopeful as 2008 was, I want 2012 to be an election in which we’re not just talking slogans, we don’t just have pretty posters, but we are looking soberly at the choices we face.  Because, ultimately, I think if we had a serious debate, not only will Democrats win, not only will I win, but I think America will win.
 
     I think the American people have good instincts.  They’re busy, they are preoccupied with family and work, and so sometimes they’re not always paying close attention to these debates.  But there is a clarifying moment that is occurring now symbolized by the debate between the House Republican budget and the budget that I presented in terms of how we deal with deficit and debt that I think will focus people’s attention.
 
     And we’ve got the potential, I think, to make some decisions that are going to have ramifications for the next 50 years.  I’m optimistic we’ll make the right decisions.  And I’m optimistic that for the next five-and-a-half years I’m going to be able to do my part in leading the country in a good direction.
 
     But I’m not going to be able to do it alone.  I’m going to have to have the help of all of you.  And, as I said, in 2008, it was -- I had a lot less gray hair -- (laughter) -- and it was exciting, partly because it was so unlikely that I could be elected.  And now I’m the incumbent and folks have various disappointments and, well, he hasn’t gotten this done fast enough and we’re still waiting for that to happen.
 
And that’s understandable.  We’re not going to have the same kind of campaign entirely that we had in 2008.  But the animated spirit behind it, the desire to make sure that that American Dream is available for everybody and that we have -- when we have tough decisions to make, we have shared sacrifice, no single group or person is bearing that burden, and that we’re also making sure that we’ve got shared opportunity and access -- that animating spirit at the core of my campaign, the belief that there’s a lot more that we have in common than what drives us apart, that hasn’t changed.  And my enthusiasm for this job and my optimism about America is not diminished.
 
So I hope that all of you guys understand that this is going to be a long, hard road.  In some ways, it’s going to be a little bit harder than the first time around.  But I’m confident we’re going to succeed.  And I’m confident America is going to succeed. And, in part, all of you make me confident about that.
 
So thank you very much, everybody.  (Applause.)

END
6:18 P.M. EDT

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release
April 27, 2011

Remarks by the President

James S. Brady Press Briefing Room

9:48 A.M. PDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, everybody.  Now, let me just comment, first of all, on the fact that I can't get the networks to break in on all kinds of other discussions -- (laughter.)  I was just back there listening to Chuck -- he was saying, it’s amazing that he’s not going to be talking about national security.  I would not have the networks breaking in if I was talking about that, Chuck, and you know it.

Q Wrong channel.  (Laughter.) 

THE PRESIDENT:  As many of you have been briefed, we provided additional information today about the site of my birth. Now, this issue has been going on for two, two and a half years now.  I think it started during the campaign.  And I have to say that over the last two and a half years I have watched with bemusement, I've been puzzled at the degree to which this thing just kept on going.  We've had every official in Hawaii, Democrat and Republican, every news outlet that has investigated this, confirm that, yes, in fact, I was born in Hawaii, August 4, 1961, in Kapiolani Hospital.

We've posted the certification that is given by the state of Hawaii on the Internet for everybody to see.  People have provided affidavits that they, in fact, have seen this birth certificate.  And yet this thing just keeps on going. 

Now, normally I would not comment on something like this, because obviously there’s a lot of stuff swirling in the press on at any given day and I've got other things to do.  But two weeks ago, when the Republican House had put forward a budget that will have huge consequences potentially to the country, and when I gave a speech about my budget and how I felt that we needed to invest in education and infrastructure and making sure that we had a strong safety net for our seniors even as we were closing the deficit, during that entire week the dominant news story wasn’t about these huge, monumental choices that we're going to have to make as a nation.  It was about my birth certificate.  And that was true on most of the news outlets that were represented here.

And so I just want to make a larger point here.  We've got some enormous challenges out there.  There are a lot of folks out there who are still looking for work.  Everybody is still suffering under high gas prices.  We're going to have to make a series of very difficult decisions about how we invest in our future but also get a hold of our deficit and our debt -- how do we do that in a balanced way.

And this is going to generate huge and serious debates, important debates.  And there are going to be some fierce disagreements -- and that’s good.  That’s how democracy is supposed to work.  And I am confident that the American people and America’s political leaders can come together in a bipartisan way and solve these problems.  We always have. 

But we’re not going to be able to do it if we are distracted.  We’re not going to be able to do it if we spend time vilifying each other.  We’re not going to be able to do it if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts.  We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers.

We live in a serious time right now and we have the potential to deal with the issues that we confront in a way that will make our kids and our grandkids and our great grandkids proud.  And I have every confidence that America in the 21st century is going to be able to come out on top just like we always have.  But we’re going to have to get serious to do it. 

I know that there’s going to be a segment of people for which, no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest.  But I’m speaking to the vast majority of the American people, as well as to the press.  We do not have time for this kind of silliness.  We’ve got better stuff to do.  I’ve got better stuff to do.  We’ve got big problems to solve.  And I’m confident we can solve them, but we’re going to have to focus on them -- not on this.

Thanks very much, everybody.

END
9:54 A.M. EDT

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release
April 25, 2011

Remarks by the President and First Lady at the 2011 Easter Egg Roll

South Lawn

10:30 A.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, everybody.  (Applause.)  I hope all of you had a wonderful Easter.  I hope everybody is having a great time here.  Welcome to the White House.  (Applause.)

In addition to our outstanding Easter Bunny, I want to introduce somebody who is doing extraordinary work not only helping military families, not only making sure that everybody is getting up and going, but is also keeping me in line, the First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama.  (Applause.)

MRS. OBAMA:  Is everybody having a good time?

AUDIENCE:  Yes!

MRS. OBAMA:  It is a beautiful day just for you.  Let’s give Colbie Caillat a big round of applause.  She did a great job.  (Applause.)

We are so excited about this year’s Easter Egg Roll.  The theme is “Get up and Go,” because as you know, I’m a big proponent of getting up and going, making sure we’re moving and eating healthy.  And this Easter Egg Roll reflects all of that, so while you’re here in addition to listening to some great music and dancing a little bit, you can roll your eggs.  You can do some yoga.  You can play with some -- do some obstacle course, play basketball and tennis. 

We’ve got wonderful storytellers over at Storytime Stage.  Everyone has just been terrific.  I want to thank all of the talent, all of the people who volunteered here today.  Let’s give our volunteers a big round of applause -- (applause) -- because we couldn’t do this without them.

Today we’re going to have a record number of 30,000 people coming through the South Lawn.  That’s pretty amazing.  So I think now it’s time for us to stop talking and “Get up and Go,” and do some moving.  So with that we’re going to come down and kick off the Easter Egg Roll.

Thank you all.  Have a great a time.  (Applause.)

END
10:33 A.M. EDT 

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release
April 22, 2011

Remarks by the President at a DNC Event

Soundstage 30 at Sony Studios
Culver City, California

April 21, 2011
7:18 P.M. PDT

THE PRESIDENT: Hello, L.A.! Hello, Los Angeles! (Applause.) It is good to be back in L.A. (Applause.)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: We love you!

THE PRESIDENT: Love you back. (Applause.) It’s an honor to be here at Sony Studios Stage 30. (Applause.) For those of you who thought you were being brought in here as extras for the new Spider-Man movie -- (laughter) -- you’re at the wrong soundstage. (Laughter.) I hope you’ll stick around anyway.

We have some wonderful folks here, and I am so grateful for everybody and what they did to participate in this wonderful event. But I just want to acknowledge a few folks. We’ve got a great congressional delegation coming out. Congressman Brad Sherman is here. (Applause.) Congresswoman Laura Richardson is here. (Applause.) Congresswoman Karen Bass is here. (Applause.) Controller John Chiang is here. (Applause.) All the elected officials, the community leaders. There are too many to mention, but I am grateful for all of you.

Now, I’m assuming that Jamie Foxx didn’t say anything too crazy while he was on. Because if he did, I’ll talk to him when I get backstage.

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE PRESIDENT: Well, actually, technically it’s about five and a half. (Applause.) That’s our goal.

Now, it is nice to be out of D.C. The weather in D.C. is okay, but the conversation that you hear in Washington is very different from the conversation that you hear around kitchen tables and around water coolers. And that’s why we recently decided that our reelection campaign will be the first one in modern history to be based outside of Washington, D.C. (Applause.) We’re going back to Chicago. (Applause.) I should add, by the way, that the Bulls just won. (Laughter.) So maybe we’ll see you in the finals. I know the Bulls will be there.
 
But, look, here’s the reason that we’re going to be based outside of Washington. I don’t want our campaign to be hearing only from pundits and powerbrokers and lobbyists. I want our campaign to be hearing from the folks who got me into the Oval Office. (Applause.) I want them hearing from you. I want to make sure we are putting the campaign in your hands -- the hands of the same organizers, the same volunteers, the same neighborhood folks, who proved last time that, together, ordinary people can do extraordinary things. (Applause.) That’s what this campaign is still about. I’m glad you’re in. I hope you’re all in. (Applause.)

Now, a few things have changed since the last time around. I’m grayer. (Laughter.) I’m all right? All right, I’m going to let Michelle know you said it’s okay. (Laughter.) See, folks here in Hollywood, they can go gray and they just say, well, that was just for a part and then they rinse. (Laughter.) I can’t do that. But even though some things have changed, all of us can still remember that night in Grant Park -- (applause) -- the excitement on the streets, the sense of possibility. And I hope you also remember what I said to you that night. I said our work hadn’t ended; we were just beginning. And that --

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I love you, President Obama.

THE PRESIDENT: I love you, too, sweetie. (Laughter.) But what I said was that our climb would be steep. We would have a tough road ahead. I said we might not get there in one year; we might not even get there in one term. But I knew in my heart that together we would get there; that we would bring about the change that we had promised -- promised, by the way, to each other. Because the campaign wasn’t just about me, the campaign was you making commitments to each other about the kind of country that you wanted. (Applause.) You made a commitment to each other about the kind of future that we wanted for our children and our grandchildren.

Now, it turns out -- let’s face it, the climb was a little steeper than we anticipated. (Laughter.) I ended up taking office in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression. Four million people had lost their jobs before I was sworn in; another 4 million lost their jobs in the first few months before our economic plan had a chance to take effect. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs -- millions of people lost their jobs, hundreds of thousands lost their homes.

It was a recession so bad that families all across America are still grappling with it. Some folks in this audience may still be dealing with the after-effects. So we had to make some tough decisions, and we had to make them very quickly. And they weren’t always popular.

But two and a half years later, the economy is growing again. (Applause.) Two and a half years later, we’re creating jobs again. (Applause.) Two and a half years later, the financial system works again. (Applause.) Two and a half years later, small businesses are opening their doors again. (Applause.)

Over the last four months, we’ve seen the largest drop in unemployment since 1984. (Applause.) Over the last 13 months we have created nearly 2 million private sector jobs. (Applause.) Some of the things that weren’t popular that folks said wouldn’t work have worked. We have a Big Three auto industry in Detroit that is back on its feet, making a profit again. (Applause.) GM announced it’s hiring all its workers back. (Applause.)

So we’ve made progress, but our work is not finished. We’re still climbing. We’re still climbing because the summit we want to reach is a summit where every child in America has opportunity. (Applause.) The summit we want to reach is where we’re looking out for each other if we’re disabled or infirm or in our golden years. (Applause.) The summit we want to reach is where America is more competitive than ever before; where our economy is growing and everybody is sharing in the prosperity. That’s the summit we want to reach. (Applause.)

And it’s going to take more than a couple of years. It’s going to take, in fact, more than one term. (Applause.) I am reminded of that almost every night, because every night I get letters from citizens all across the country. And some of these letters are heartbreaking. You read a letter about someone who’s sent out 16 resumes and hasn’t gotten a response back. Or a child writes you a letter and says, you know, my mommy and daddy, they’re losing their home -- is there something that you can do to help us?

And sometimes I’ll stay up late just trying to figure out what is it that we haven’t tried yet; what is it that we need to do to make sure that we’re reaching every single one of those folks who are working so hard, doing the right thing, looking after their families, meeting their responsibilities, and are still -- still struggling out there. That’s the reason that we ran. It wasn’t for the title. It wasn’t for the trappings of office. It was making sure we were delivering for those families all across America.

And our work is not done. But even though those are the Americans that I’m thinking about when I wake up in the morning and those are the Americans I’m thinking about when I go to bed at night, I want everybody to understand that we have made progress. (Applause.) Because of you, we have made progress. (Applause.)

That progress shouldn’t make us complacent, but it should remind us of what is possible and it should inspire us to try to finish what we started in 2008.

Because of you we were able to prevent a second Great Depression. (Applause.) Because of you we know that we’ve got the chance of making sure that the new jobs, the new industries aren’t located somewhere else, but they’re located here in California; they’re located here in the United States of America. (Applause.)

We’ve got to be prepared to win the future. Because of you we’ve made college more affordable for millions of young people all across America. (Applause.) It used to be that the student loan program run through the government would give billions of dollars to banks, unwarranted subsidies for acting as middlemen in the student loan program. We said, well, let’s end that. Let’s give the money directly to students. (Applause.) And as a consequence millions of more students are able to benefit from a better deal.

We’re not done yet, but we’ve started to reform some of the schools that needed reforming all across America. And because of our Race to the Top program, we’re seeing better teachers in our classrooms, and we are seeing more support for our teachers and more resources for our teachers. And we are making sure that we’re reaching into the schools that are underperforming here in Los Angeles and all across the country. Because of you we’ve been able to accomplish that. (Applause.)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: We need your leadership.

THE PRESIDENT: I’m ready to give it, but I’m going to need yours as well. (Applause.) Because of you we made the largest investment in clean energy, in renewable energy in our history. (Applause.) Investments that are already creating new jobs and new businesses.

But at a time of high gas prices -- I know you’ve noticed.

AUDIENCE: Yes!

THE PRESIDENT: It’s rough out there. I admit, Secret Service doesn’t let me fill up the pump anymore. (Laughter.) But it hasn’t been that long since I did. You think about folks -- and certainly here in Los Angeles, everybody understands this experience -- if you’ve got to drive 50 miles for your job, and you can’t afford the new hybrid, so you got that old beater giving you eight miles a gallon -- (laughter) -- and your budget is already strained, I mean, that’s tough. But let me tell you something, we’re already making a difference.

We have increased oil production, but more importantly we’ve also said to ourselves how are we going to find the kinds of alternative energy sources, the new energy sources that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil but also clean up the planet in the process. That’s something we need to invest in. (Applause.)

Because of you we used to only have 2 percent of the world’s advanced battery manufacturing in this country, a whole new industry. These are the batteries that go into these new electric cars. In five years, we’re going to have 40 percent of that market. That’s because of you, because you were able to get us in a position to make those decisions. (Applause.)

Because of you we’ve increased fuel-efficiency standards on cars that will save 1.8 billion barrels of oil. (Applause.) But we’ve got to do more. And to help pay for it, I don’t know about you but I think it’s time we eliminated the $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies that we’re giving to oil companies. (Applause.)

Now, they are making -- keep in mind that the top five oil companies over the last five years, their lowest profits were $75 billion; their highest profits were $125 billion. That’s money coming directly from your pocket into theirs.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: And we feel it.

THE PRESIDENT: And you feel it. Now, companies make big investments. They’re allowed to make a profit. But let me tell you, for them to get a $4 billion tax break at a time when they’re making record profits, and you’re struggling to fill up your tank does not make sense. It has to stop. (Applause.) Let’s stop subsidizing the energy sources of yesterday, and let’s invest in the energy sources of tomorrow. That’s what we’re going to do because of you. (Applause.)

Because of you we’ve put hundreds of thousands of folks back to work rebuilding our roads and our bridges and our infrastructure. Now we’ve got to make sure America is not just rebuilding and repairing the old infrastructure. We’ve got to be building the new infrastructure -- the high-speed rail, the high-speed Internet, the smart grid that could help electricity move around in more efficient ways. (Applause.) That’s part of what America has always been about.

We’ve had -- I mean, I hate to be parochial here, but we’ve had the best stuff. (Laughter.) But you know what, in some areas we don’t. South Korea now has faster high-speed Internet than we do. You go to a Beijing airport or Singapore airport -- I mean, LAX -- (laughter) -- I’m just saying. It does not have to be that way. We can put Americans to work right now doing the work that needs to be done, but I’m going to need your help doing it, because our job is not yet finished. (Applause.)
 
Because of you we did what folks have talked about for 100 years. We said health care should no longer be a privilege in this country. It should be affordable and available to every single American. (Applause.) We said in America you shouldn’t go broke just because you got sick. (Applause.) But we’ve got more work to do. We’re implementing it now, and many of you are already benefiting from the changes we made, but there are some folks who want to dismantle it. We’re going to have to protect it.

Because of you we passed Wall Street reform to make sure that we don’t have the same kinds of bailouts that we had before, to make sure the consumers are protected and not cheated when you take out a mortgage or a credit card. But there are some folks who want to roll that back. We’ve got to protect it.

Because of you we passed a law that says women should get an equal day’s pay for an equal day’s work. (Applause.)

Because of you we overturned “don’t ask, don’t tell,” so everybody could serve their country. (Applause.)

Because of you we got two more women on the Supreme Court, one of them the first Latina. (Applause.)

And because of you we removed 100,000 troops from Iraq and we have ended combat missions there just like I promised. That happened because of you. (Applause.)

But now we’ve got to protect the changes that we’ve made. We’ve got to -- we got some more changes we’ve got to make. We still got to pass comprehensive immigration reform -- (applause) -- so that we are a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. We still got to have a more comprehensive energy policy. We’ve got to keep moving forward. We have to keep working for the America that we believe in -- the America we want to leave to our children.

And that is the debate that we’re having in Washington right now. That’s what this budget debate is all about. You hear people talking about debt and deficits and spending and budgets. And, yes, this is about numbers, but this debate is really about the kind of future that we want. It’s about what kind of country we believe in. I believe in a country where the government lives within its means. We’ve got to cut spending in Washington. (Applause.) We’ve got to cut domestic spending. We’ve got to cut defense spending. (Applause.) We’ve got to cut health care inflation. We got to cut spending in our tax code -- because we spend a lot through our tax code with loopholes and tricks. We’ve got to eliminate every dime of waste. And if we want to take responsibility for the debt that we owe then we’re going to have to make some tough decisions.

We’ve got to decide what we can do without to make sure we maintain those things that we care deeply about. And that requires shared sacrifice.

But let me tell you what I won’t do. I will not reduce our deficit by sacrificing the things that have always made America great. (Applause.) The things that have made Americans prosper. I will not sacrifice our investment in education. (Applause.) I won’t sacrifice scholarships for our students or medical research for our scientists. (Applause.) I won’t sacrifice the safety of our highways or our airports. I will not sacrifice our investment in clean energy at a time when our dependence on foreign oil is causing Americans so much pain at the pump. I won’t sacrifice clean air and clean water. I will not sacrifice America’s future. (Applause.)

We need shared sacrifice, and that means as part of our overall approach, ending tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans in this country. (Applause.) Let me tell you something. This is important. You know, look, a lot of folks right now, somehow they’ve gotten the idea that we’ve raised taxes. I have lowered everybody’s taxes since I came into office. That’s part of what the Recovery Act was all about -- 30 percent of it were tax cuts. Folks might not have noticed it. (Laughter.) It got spread out over all your paychecks. But those were tax cuts. And then this December we cut some taxes. Your payroll tax got cut because we wanted to make sure that we kept on going with the recovery.

So nobody here is just loving taxes. I just paid my taxes. (Laughter.) And it was a pretty big tax bill. (Laughter.) But I want everybody to understand it’s not that I want to punish success. I want everybody here to be rich. I think somebody may have fainted here. This happens. They’ll be fine. Give them some room. If we can get some medics in the front. Probably what they need is just a little bit of air, maybe a little bit of juice. They’ll be okay. We’ll get the medics up here in a second.

But in the meantime, look, I want all of you to be rich. (Applause.) Now, I don’t mean just going out and buying lottery tickets. (Laughter.) I want your small business to be successful. I want you to succeed in your careers. I want everybody to be successful. We don’t want to punish success. But what we do want is a society where if we’re going to ask everybody to sacrifice a little bit, we don’t just tell millionaires and billionaires, oh, you don’t have to do anything. You go ahead and just relax, count your money. (Laughter.)

Look, I don’t want a $200,000 tax cut for me that’s paid for by asking 33 seniors each to pay more than $6,000 in extra Medicare costs. (Applause.) I don’t want my tax cut paid for by cutting children from Head Start, or doing away with health insurance for millions of people on Medicaid, for seniors in nursing homes, or poor children, or families that have a disabled child. (Applause.) I don’t want to make that trade-off. (Applause.)

And that’s not a trade-off that I think most Americans want to see, no matter what party you belong to, because that’s not who we are as a country. We’re better than that. (Applause.)

The America we know is great not just because of the height of our skyscrapers, not just because of the size of our GDP. It comes because we’ve been able to keep two ideas together at the same time. The first is, is that we’re all individuals endowed with certain inalienable rights and freedoms. We are self-reliant. We don’t expect others to do for us what we can do for ourselves, and we don’t like other people telling us what to do. That’s part of what it’s like to be an American. (Applause.)

But the second idea is that we’re all in this together, that we look out for one another, that I am my brother’s keeper, that I am my sister’s keeper, that I want that child born in a tough neighborhood to have the same opportunities that I had so that someday they may be standing here instead of me. (Applause.)

And so, given the blessings that I’ve received, I want to look out for them, not out of charity but it’s because my life benefits from knowing when I’m driving down the street, look at that school that’s well funded and those kids that are learning. (Applause.) And I see an elderly couple strolling down the street and I say to myself, look at those folks, they’re secure and they’re comfortable in their retirement. (Applause.) And I see that person in a wheelchair going to work because somebody gave them opportunity, and I say, that’s how we make sure that everybody can use their talents. (Applause.)

That makes my life better. That makes my life richer -- knowing that everybody has a measure of dignity and respect, and a shot at the American Dream. (Applause.) I don’t do that for somebody else. I do it because it improves my life and it’s going to improve Malia’s life and Sasha’s life. (Applause.)

That’s our vision for America. It’s not a vision of a small America; it’s a vision of a big America. We do big things. A vision of a compassionate America and a caring America. An ambitious America. When I look at some of the debate in Washington and what some folks are saying, I say, they have a pessimistic view of who we are. Their basic attitude is we can’t afford to look out for kids in poor neighborhoods. We can’t afford to invest in our infrastructure. Yes, we’re going to be driving around potholes and our airports are going to be mangy and -- (laughter). There’s nothing we can do about it. We can’t afford to make sure all of our seniors have the health care that they need.

That’s not my vision for America. That’s not your vision for America. (Applause.) My vision is for one where we’re living within our means but we’re still investing in our future, and everybody is making sacrifices and nobody bears all the burden, and we live up to the idea that no matter what you look like or where you come from, whether you landed here -- your ancestors landed here on Ellis Island or they came here on a slave ship, or they just came over the Rio Grande, that we are all connected to one another and we all rise and fall together. (Applause.)

Los Angeles, that’s the idea at the heart of America. That’s the idea at the heart of our last campaign. That’s the idea at the heart of this campaign. And that’s why I’m going to need your help now more than ever. (Applause.) This campaign is at its early stages, but now is the time you can step up and help shape it, and make sure we’re out of the gate strong. And I know there are times where some of you felt frustrated because we haven’t gotten everything we wanted to get done right away. I know who you all are. (Laughter.) I know the conversations you’ve been having. Oh, I don’t know, I don’t like that compromise with the Republicans. I don’t know, that health care thing, why did it take so long? I don’t know -- Obama, he’s older now. (Laughter.) He used to look so fresh and exciting and -- I still got that poster, but I don’t know.

Look, there are times where I’ve been frustrated, just like you have been. But we knew this wasn’t going to be easy. What also amuses me is when I hear people say, oh, well, the campaign was so smooth -- why is governing so tough? (Laughter.) And I try to remind them -- what campaign were you on? (Laughter.) What campaign were you on? It felt awful hard to me. (Laughter.) I thought we made all kinds of mistakes.

We knew that on a journey like this there were going to be setbacks, there were going to be detours. There were going to be times where we stumbled and we had to get up and dust ourselves off and then keep going. Because we knew that at each and every juncture in our history, when the future was on the line, when we were at the crossroads like we are right now, the country somehow came together. The country somehow found a way to make ourselves more prosperous and deal with the transition from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy, and then to an information economy.

And we figured out how to absorb new immigrants and finally deal with the stain of slavery; make sure that women were full participants in our democracy. (Applause.)

At every juncture, we’ve been able to make the changes that we needed. So when you hear people say our problems are too big or we can’t bring about the changes we seek, I want you to think about all the progress we’ve already made, and I want you to think about all the unfinished business that lies ahead. I want you to be excited about the next 18 months, and then the next four years after that. (Applause.) And I want you to remind everybody else those simple words that summed up our campaign in 2008 and still sum up our spirit: Yes, we can!

Thank you, everybody. God bless you. (Applause.)

END
7:51 P.M. EDT

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release
April 22, 2011

Remarks by the President at a DNC Event

Tavern Restaurant
Los Angeles, California

April 21, 2011
8:22 P.M. PDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, Jeffrey.  Technically it’s actually five and a half more years.  (Laughter.)  Everybody have a seat, everybody have a seat.

I’m going to be very brief.  First of all, I just want to thank Jeffrey and Marilyn and all of you who were involved in helping put this together.  Jeffrey has been an extraordinary friend from the start, and a lot of you got involved at a time when the prospect of electing a Barack Hussein Obama to the Oval Office was slim.  (Laughter.)  None of you asked for my birth certificate.  (Laughter.)  It was a complete leap of faith.  (Laughter.) 

And so I don’t want to spend a lot of time giving a speech.  I want to just spend time with all of you at these tables.

A couple of people I just want to mention who are here.  The governor of the great state of California, Jerry Brown is in the house.  (Applause.)  And our ambassador to the Bahamas -- (laughter) -- Nicole Avant is in the house.  (Applause.)  It’s a nice gig, isn’t it?  (Laughter.) 

Anyway, as Jeffrey said, when we started this journey -- and we actually started probably about four years ago -- I think we understood that the country was at a crossroads and we were going to have to make some fundamental decisions so that we could make sure our kids, our grandkids, the next generation inherited the same kind of big-spirited America that we had inherited from our parents and our grandparents. 

We didn’t even know how steep the climb was going to be to get to where we needed to go, but we understood it was not going to be easy.  The campaign wasn’t easy.  There’s a lot of revisionist history going on now that, boy, his campaign was so smooth.  It didn’t feel that way at the time.  (Laughter.)  I mean, it was hard.  But we kept at it because we understood that a country that is generous and compassionate, that is looking after our children and making sure they’ve got a shot at the American Dream, that is making sure our seniors have dignity and security in their old age, that looks after families who’ve got a disabled child, that is investing in our infrastructure so that we can move products and services and people and information around rapidly, that is a benevolent influence around the world and is respected around the world -- we understood that getting to where we needed to go wasn’t going to be easy, and it hasn’t been.

But we have made extraordinary progress over the last two and a half years.  We’ve pulled this economy out of a recession.  We’ve stabilized the financial system.  We’ve passed historic health care legislation to make sure 30 million people aren’t going to go without coverage.  (Applause.)  We have repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell.”  We have put two women on the Supreme Court, including the first Latina.  (Applause.)  We’ve passed equal pay for equal work. 

We can go down the list.  But we also know we’ve still got a lot more work to do.  We’ve just started, and we’ve got a lot more work to do.

And there have been times I’m sure during the past two and a half years where you’re reading the papers or you’re watching TV and you’re saying, oh, Obama -- why is he compromising the Republicans?  Or, oh, why did health care take so long?  And I want a single-payer plan anyway.  (Laughter.)  And golly, if he was just as good a communicator as George Clooney -- (laughter) -- then I’m sure the American people would understand exactly what needs to be done.  (Laughter.)  Gosh.  (Laughter.) 

That’s understandable because there have been times where I’ve been frustrated.  But I don’t want you to lose sight of how much we’ve gotten done.  What we’ve done here has been historic, and we’re only a quarter of the way through.  And we’ve got a lot more work to do.  And these budget debates that we’re having now crystallize the debate that we’re going to be having in this country over the next 18 months about who we are, what we care about, what our values are, what our commitments are to each other. 

And I’m confident -- because I travel around the country, and my poll numbers go up and down depending on the latest crisis, and right now gas prices are weighing heavily on people.  But when I talk to ordinary folks, they are not always paying attention.  If you ask them what the makeup of the budget is, they’ll say 25 percent of it goes to foreign aid.  If you ask them about Medicare, they’ll say, I love that program but I wish government wouldn’t get involved in it.  (Laughter.)  Just because they’re busy and they’re tired and they’re working hard.  They’re looking after their families, they’re looking after their kids.

Look, if I wasn’t professionally in this, I wouldn’t be following all these debates in Washington.  But when you talk to them about their values, what they care about, then they say of course we should make sure every child has a good education and gets opportunity, and absolutely we’ve got to make sure that our commitments to seniors are met, and of course we want a family whose child has a disability to make sure that child is getting everything possible to allow them to succeed.  And yes, internationally, we want to stand on the side of human rights and democracy.  And we understand the world is complicated.  But we have a vision about what America should be in the world and we want to live up to that.  And yes, government should live within its means, but we think we can live within its means and still ensure that we’re delivering for the next generation. 

I have faith in them.  And I have faith in you.  And so my closing comment, and then I’ll come around and talk to all of you, is just remember the campaign in 2008.  It wasn’t about big crowds and nice posters.  And it wasn’t even about me.  It was about commitments we made to each other as Americans, about who we are and what we care about.  And those commitments have not ended.  They didn’t end on Election Day.  They don’t end when I take office.  Those are commitments that we have to fight for and work for and be true to each and every day.  And that’s what this next 18 months are going to be about.

All right?  Thank you, guys.  Appreciate it.  (Applause.)

END
8:29 P.M. PDT

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release
April 21, 2011

Remarks by the President at a DNC Event in Los Angeles, California

The Commissary at Sony Picture Studios
Los Angeles, California

5:39 P.M. PDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  Thank you so much.  Thank you.  Thank you, everybody.  Have a seat, have a seat.
 
First of all, I just want to say how grateful I am to Ken and John for agreeing to take on the tough task of co-chairing our finance committee here in southern California.  They have been great friends and great supporters from the get-go.  And I have to say, I did not realize John was that good on the introductions.  (Laughter.)  I might have to take him on the road.  (Laughter.)
 
I also want to thank Michael and Amy who, you know, this is their shop, letting us crash their space, when I know they’re incredibly busy.  I was just hearing about Spiderman 4 -- (laughter) -- so I’m all psyched up about that.
 
AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Will you play a part?
 
THE PRESIDENT:  Seriously, I was -- (laughter) -- I’m very big on Spiderman.  I also want to acknowledge a wonderful public servant, one of the finest mayors in the country -- Antonio Villaraigosa is here.  (Applause.) 
 
We set this up so that I am just going to go from table to table and you guys can poke me and prod me -- (laughter) -- you know, lift the hood and kick the tires -- (laughter) -- and give me what I’m sure will be wonderful advice.  (Laughter.)  Looking around this room, this is not a shy group.  (Laughter.)
 
But what I want to say before I visit with all of you is how grateful I am.  You know, many of you were involved in the 2008 campaign and, let’s face it, it was not likely that I was going to end up in the Oval Office.  It was possible, but not likely.  And so many of you took this incredible leap of faith, in part because the campaign wasn’t just about me.  It was about how we could move the country in a new direction and how could we recapture that sense of community that I think had frayed for too long and it prevented us from dealing with so many challenges that we face.
 
As John said, we’ve made incredible progress over the last two and a half years, but we’ve got so much more work to do.  There are still a lot of folks hurting out there.  We’ve got to put people back to work.  We’ve got to grow the economy.  We’ve got to reduce the deficit.  We’ve got to pass immigration reform.  We’ve got to have an energy plan that works for all Americans.  And that’s before I start talking about international affairs.  (Laughter.) 
 
So my inbox keeps on filling up, but I welcome the challenge because I know that I have all of you behind me.  I just want to remind you as we’re going around to the tables that this is going to be just as hard, if not harder, than 2008 and I’m going to need all of you just as engaged, just as motivated, and taking as much ownership over the campaign as you did then. 
 
That’s part of what made 2008 special was you owned it.  It wasn’t just top-down.  That’s part of the reason why our campaign office is going to be in Chicago -- first time in modern history that a President hasn’t had his campaign office run out of Washington.  Because I never want to lose touch, I never want to lose that sense that what this is about is not simply maintaining a status quo but it’s about how do we bring about the changes that are going to make a difference in people’s lives.
 
So, thank you, all of you, for being here.  Thanks in advance for the extraordinary work that you’re going to do over the next 18 months to make sure that we can finish the job that we started.  And with that, let me join you all at the tables.  Thank you.  (Applause.) 
 
END
5:43 P.M. PDT

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release
April 21, 2011

Remarks by the President in a Town Hall in Reno, Nevada

ElectraTherm, Inc.

Reno, Nevada

11:50 A.M. PDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  Hello, Reno!  Thank you.  Thank you so much.  Please, everybody have a seat.

It is great to be back here in Reno, great to be back in Nevada.  I am thrilled that all of you are here.  We’ve got some special, special people that I want to acknowledge.  First of all, I want to thank Electra Therm for hosting us, and John Fox, the CEO of Electra Therm, is here.  (Applause.)  Stephen Olson, the president and CFO of Electra Therm.  Thank you very much.  (Applause.)  They just had a chance to meet me backstage and they were describing all the great work that they are doing.  I am told the contraption behind me here is known as the Green Machine.  Produces renewable energy from low-temperature heat waste.  And John and Stephen were explaining to me how it works, and I was nodding, pretending like I understood what they were saying.  (Laughter.)  Actually, I have no idea how it works, but I’m glad it does work.  (Laughter.)

And I want to congratulate Electra Therm for being a fine example of a clean energy company that’s been growing by leaps and bounds over the last few years.  Give yourselves a big round of applause.  (Applause.)

In addition, we’ve got some people who are here.  Somebody who’s working hard for you, Congresswoman Shelley Berkley is here.  (Applause.)  Mayor Bob Cashell is here.  (Applause.)  Lieutenant Governor Brian Krolicki is here.  (Applause.)  State Controller Kim Wallin is in the house.  (Applause.)  State Treasurer Kate Marshall is here.  (Applause.)  Secretary of State Ross Miller is here.  (Applause.)  Catherine Cortez Masto, Attorney General, is here.  (Applause.)  Steven Horsford, Senate Majority Leader, is in the house.  (Applause.)  And John Oceguera, Speaker of the House, is here as well.  (Applause.)

Thank you all for your attendance.  Last week, I laid out a plan on one of the biggest issues that we’re going to be facing this year, and that is how to get America’s finances in order -- a plan for shared prosperity through shared responsibility.  And before I take some of your questions today, I’d like to discuss the plan briefly because it goes to the heart of what’s happening at this company and businesses all across America.  It’s a plan that does two big things.  First, it cuts spending and brings down the deficit.  It cuts spending and brings down the deficit.  And we know how important that is.  Just like any family on a tight budget, America has to start living within its means.  And for a long time, Washington acted like that rule didn’t apply to the federal government.  A lot of folks promised us a free lunch.  We had a surplus in 2000 -- we had a surplus a decade ago.  But we cut taxes -- including for millionaires and billionaires; we fought two wars; we created a new prescription drug plan -- and we didn’t pay for any of it.  Didn’t pay for any of it, just put it on the credit card.

Well, as the saying goes, it turns out there is no such thing as a free lunch.  So we were left with a big deficit when I walked into office, and a lot of accumulated debt, and interest on that debt.  

And then it was made worse by the worst recession that we’ve had since the Great Depression.  And as many of you know, when you have a huge recession like that, two things happen:  On the one hand, revenues go down because companies and individuals aren’t doing as well so you’re not taking in as many taxes.  On the other hand, the demands on government are even greater, whether it’s unemployment benefits, or trying to help states and local governments deal with their shortfalls.  And so that added to the deficit as well.

Now, the bottom line is this:  If we don’t close our deficit, if we don’t start reducing our debt, if we don’t get our finances, medium and long term, under control, if we keep on spending more than we take in, it’s going to cause serious damage to our economy.  Companies might be less likely to set up shop and hire folks here in Nevada and here in the United States.  It could cost us more to take out loans for homes or buying a new car or starting a business.  And we won’t be able to invest in those critical investments we need to win the future.  Those are the kinds of investments that make a company like Electra Therm possible.    

So we have to tackle this challenge.  And I believe the right way to tackle it is to live up to another old-fashioned principle, which is shared responsibility.  That means everybody has to do their part.

First thing we’ve got to do is to comb through the budget and find every dime of savings that we can, wherever we can find it.  And we’ve made a good start a few weeks ago, when both parties came together -- Republicans and Democrats -- around a compromise on spending that reduced it and kept the government open at the same time.  So we need to build on those savings, and I’m not going to quit until we’ve found every dime that we can.  We’ll check under the cushions.  But we’re going to find -- any program that’s not working, we need to eliminate it.  Anything that can be done more efficiently, we want to do it.

But finding savings in our domestic spending by itself won’t be enough; it only gets you so far.  So we’ve also got to find savings in places like the defense budget.  I have no greater honor than being the Commander-in-Chief.  And when I watch what our young mean and women are doing overseas, it’s incredible.  So I can promise you I will not cut a penny if it undermines our national security.  But over the last two years, the Secretary of Defense has taken on wasteful spending that does little to protect our troops or protect our nation -- like old weapons systems that the Pentagon doesn’t want, it says we don’t need them, but somehow still gets into the budget thanks to well-connected special interests.  Secretary Gates has already found $400 billion worth of waste in the Pentagon budget.  I think we can find those same kinds of savings again.

Next, we’re going to need to reduce health care spending, and strengthen Medicare and Medicaid through some common-sense reforms that build on what we already have done with the health care reform bill -- eliminates wasteful subsidies to insurance companies, for example; actually improves care by making it easier for folks to buy generic drugs; helps providers manage care for the chronically ill.  And we need to reform the tax code so that it’s fair and simpler.  I know that’s on people’s minds.  Some of you just had to file, and I know I looked at my bill -- and I have actually done my taxes quite a few times.  I admit I don’t do them now.  (Laughter.)  But all of us have gone through the experience of saying this is just too complicated.  It doesn’t make sense.  The amount of taxes you pay shouldn’t depend on a high-priced accountant or lawyer that you can hire.  It should be fair and simple.

And part of what we have to do with our tax code is also
end some of the tax cuts that were instituted for the wealthiest Americans.  (Applause.)  Now, I say that not because I want to punish success.  I’m rooting for everybody to get rich.  But I believe that we can’t ask everybody to sacrifice and then tell the wealthiest among us, well, you can just relax and go count your money and don’t worry about it; we’re not going to ask anything of you.

I’ve been incredibly blessed by this country -- son of a single mom, went on scholarships to get through school.  And so the fact that I’m now well off, I want to be able to give a little bit something back so that the next generation can achieve that same success.  I don’t need additional tax cuts, especially when I know that extending those tax cuts may end up meaning that some senior citizens are getting less health care; or thousands of kids on Head Start might not have that opportunity available to them; or people who are on Medicaid, seniors who are in nursing homes, or families who have got a child who’s autistic or disabled, that somehow they’re left to fend for themselves.  That’s not a good option, from my perspective.  That’s not a trade-off I’m willing to make.

And I don’t believe it’s a trade-off that most Americans are willing to make -- no matter what party you belong to.  That’s not who we are as a country.  We are better than that.  We don’t allow people who are vulnerable just to sink further and further without giving them a little bit of a hand up.  It’s part of what has made this country great.

So that’s the first part of our plan.  We’re going to cut spending in a way that’s fair and asks everybody to share responsibility.  We’re going to reform our tax code.  But here’s what else we need to do, we’ve got to make sure that even as we’re living within our means, even as government is not spending more than it’s taking in, that we’re still investing in the future; we’re still strengthening the middle class; we’re still growing the economy and putting people back to work.  (Applause.)

So we’re going to make some cuts in some programs, including some that I like and if we were in better fiscal shape we’d keep on funding, but I’m telling you what we’re not going to do.  We’re not going to reduce our deficit by gutting our investment in clean energy and medical research and basic science.  I refuse to make that choice.  (Applause.)

America has always been the world’s engine for innovation, the leader in discovery.  That’s who we are.  That’s how we’ve prospered.  I don’t want other countries to get the lead in the industries of tomorrow; I want America to lead in these industries.  I want new technologies invented here.  I want companies like Electra Therm to set up shop here in America and to hire American workers and build American products.  That’s the future that we deserve.  (Applause.)

Let’s just take the example of energy.  Think about it, everybody right now is dealing with $4 a gallon at the pump.  Now, I admit Secret Service doesn’t let me fill up my own tank now.  (Laughter.)  But I remember before I was President the last time gas prices went up this high -- it’s tough.

And if you’re somebody who’s got to drive 20 miles, 30 miles to a job, and maybe you don’t have the money to buy a new car that gets better gas mileage, so you got that old beater.  It’s eight miles a gallon, and -- you know?  (Laughter.)  I’ve been there.  (Laughter.)

It hurts because you know every time you go to work a big chunk of your paycheck is being eaten up.  And you might already be having trouble making ends meet at the end of the month.  So this gas issue is serious.  But here’s the problem -- every time it happens, every time gas prices go up like this, like clockwork, suddenly politicians look around and they discover high gas prices.  And they’re shocked, and they get in front of TV and they say, we’ve got a three-point plan to bring gas down to two bucks a gallon.  And then when gas prices go down, nothing ever happens, and we’re back into the same old patterns, and we don’t have a comprehensive energy strategy for the future.

Now, there are some things that we can do right now.  Last month I asked my Attorney General to look into any cases of price gouging so we can make sure nobody is being taken advantage of at the pump.  Today, I’m going to go a step further.  The Attorney General is putting together a team whose job it is to root out any cases of fraud or manipulation in the oil markets that might affect gas prices, and that includes the role of traders and speculators.  We’re going to make sure that nobody is taking advantage of American consumers for their own short-term gain.  (Applause.)

And while we’re at it, if we’re looking for places to save money that we can then use to invest in clean energy projects like Electra Therm, let’s start with the $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies that right now are going to big oil companies even though they are making billions of dollars a year as it is because of these high oil prices.  (Applause.)  Four billion dollars a year are going to companies that are making record profits -- even during the recession they were making big profits.

The big five oil companies over the last five years, the least they’ve made in profits is $75 billion.  The most they’ve made is $125 billion.  They are doing fine.  And we are encouraging production.  We are working to make sure that there are safe and secure ways for us to drill for more oil, develop more natural gas.  We are all for production in a safe way.  But these folks don’t need further incentives by getting a better deal than the mom-and-pop shop down the street are getting when it comes to their taxes.  They shouldn’t get special tax breaks worth $4 billion that we could invest someplace else.  That doesn’t make sense.  It’s got to stop.  

Instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy sources, let’s invest in tomorrow’s.  (Applause.)  Some in Congress have proposed slashing by 70 percent our investment in clean energy.  I’m not going to do that.  I was talking to John about the fact that the investment made by the Department of Energy helped Electra Therm do what it’s doing -- helped it expand, helped it hire more workers.  Why are we going to stop making investments in companies like this?

We’re also not going to reduce our deficit by sacrificing investments in infrastructure.  You know, America used to have the best roads, the best bridges, the best trains, the best airports, the best ports.  That’s part of what made us great.  That’s part of why businesses wanted to locate here -- they could move businesses -- or they could move products, services, information.  We don’t have the best infrastructure anymore.  Our roads and bridges are deteriorating.

Remember what happened in Minnesota when that bridge just collapsed?  There are bridges like that all across the country.  Our sewer systems, our water systems are not where they need to be.  And that’s the old infrastructure.  What about the new infrastructure?  You go to Beijing Airport, it is unbelievable.  You go to some of ours, it was built back in the ‘50s.

We don’t have high-speed rail in this country.  Why not?  Every other advanced country has got it.  It works.  We can do this.

If we want businesses to locate here in America and create jobs, we’ve got to make sure that America is built to compete.  We’ve got to have the best roads and the quickest trains and the best broadband networks so we can move information around.  (Applause.)  We don’t want to be dodging potholes for the next 30 years.  Let’s put some people to work doing the work that America needs done.   

And if we’re going to reduce our deficit, we’re not going to do it by cutting education.  (Applause.)  We’re not going to do it by cutting education.  This is another bright idea that some in Congress have.  In a world where our kids are going to be facing tougher competition than ever before, where you’ve got hundreds of millions of Chinese kids and Indian kids and Brazilian kids and Eastern European kids, all who are trying to compete for the jobs of tomorrow, how are we not going to invest in making sure our kids have the best skills possible?

We see why this matters right here.  More than 50,000 college students from Nevada are relying on Pell Grants to help them pay their tuition.  Now, working with folks like Shelley, we were able to eliminate some subsidies that were going to big banks because they were middlemen on student loan programs, and take that money and put more money into Pell Grants so that the grants were higher, so that more kids could get them and they’d have less debt when they graduate.  That was the right thing to do.  (Applause.)  Now you’ve got some folks in Congress who want to roll back some of those changes.  How many of those students do you think can afford to pay $1,000 more to go to school?  I know what it’s like.  I could not have made it through college without scholarships, without loans.

I’m standing here before you because America gave me opportunity.  How am I going to pull up the ladder on the next generation of kids who are just as talented, smarter than I am?  (Applause.)  All they need is a chance.  So I think it would be a mistake to balance the budget on the backs of students by cutting their scholarships by more than $1,000 and forcing a whole lot of students to go without them altogether.

So that’s the bottom line.  We need to cut spending.  We can’t ignore future deficits.  But just as ignoring deficits would mortgage our future, failing to invest in our kids, in our infrastructure, in our basic research and clean energy, that would be mortgaging our future as well.  And I’m not willing to do it.  And that’s at the core of the debate that we’re having right now.

Both Democrats and Republicans agree that we need to cut the deficit.  In fact, there is general agreement on the need to cut about $4 trillion over the medium term to hit our targets.  And when folks in Washington agree on anything that’s quite an accomplishment.  (Laughter.)  So the debate isn’t about whether to cut the deficit, the debate is about how we cut the deficit.  And my view is we can live within our means while still investing in our future.  We can take a balanced approach, cutting where we can while investing in education and innovation and infrastructure, strengthening the safety net of Medicare and Medicaid to make sure that they’re there for future generations.

And I think that Democrats and Republicans can come together to solve this problem.  It has been done before.  (Applause.)  It won’t be easy.  There will be some strong disagreements.  I’m willing to bet that along the way some politics will be played.  (Laughter.)  That’s just a guess.  And there will be some who say, you know what, the country is just too divided, we’re not going to get it done.  But I’m optimistic.  I’m hopeful.  I’m confident that we can come together.

And here’s why this is so important.  Ultimately, this debate is not just about numbers on a page.  It’s about the vision we have for our future -- who we are as a country.  It’s about making sure that the most you can do here is not just live out your own American Dream, but make sure that the people around you are living out their American Dream as well.

We want to make sure this is a country where if you’re willing to try hard you can make it, where everybody has a chance at prosperity.  That’s my focus, that’s my guiding light.  It’s what I think about when I wake up in the morning and go down to the Oval Office.  That’s what I think about when I leave the Oval Office and go to bed at night.  And that’s why I’m going to need the help of all of you.  I don’t want you to be bystanders in this debate.  I want you to hold me accountable.  I want you to hold Washington accountable.  I hope you will hold all of our feet to the fire, because you’ve got a big stake in this fight.  And if your voices are heard, we will meet this challenge.  That’s how we’re going to secure our future; that’s how we’re going to make our country everything that it can be.

Thank you very much, everybody.  (Applause.)

All right, everybody, have a seat.  I’ve got a little time for questions.  I’ll take off my jacket, because I know I’m in the hot seat here.  We’ve got some folks in the audience with microphones, so if you just raise your hand I will call boy, girl, boy, girl -- (laughter) -- make sure it’s fair.  And I’ll try to get through as many questions as I can.

This gentleman right here.  Here, here’s a microphone.  Introduce yourself, if you don’t mind.

Q    Hi, my name is Howard Crabtree (ph).  And I go to the TMCC school right now, just trying to get an education after we lost our -- my wife and I lost our jobs here.

So I entered the renewable energy program, and the more and more I learn about energy and the policies and things, I wonder what -- is the federal government doing anything to encourage the states, because I know the states really control it -- are they doing anything to encourage the states to open the market up so that there are more competitors in the market to bring prices down?  I know that I’ve only ever had NV Energy as a choice.

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I am not fully familiar with what Nevada’s state regulatory structure is, I’ll admit.  But let me make some general points about how we can start creating not only more competition, but also more innovation in the energy sector.

When it comes to electricity, the traditional sources that we get electricity from are coal, natural gas, and some nuclear.  That’s typically the menu from which we get most of our electricity production at most of the big utilities.  And the advantage, particularly of coal, is that it’s been very cheap.  We are the Saudi Arabia of coal.  We’ve got a lot of coal.

But each of these fossil fuels that we use have some problems, particularly with pollution.  And coal, in particular, in some of these old plants create a lot of particulates that go into the atmosphere and create all kinds of problems in terms of asthma, and it’s also having an impact on the climate overall.

Nuclear doesn’t produce greenhouse gases, but we’ve got problems in terms of storing waste.  And obviously we’re heartbroken by what’s happened in Japan, and that’s raising questions about the safety of the existing storage mechanisms.  And I know obviously there’s a big debate here in Nevada about Yucca Mountain.

Natural gas -- we actually have a lot of natural gas available, but getting to it has historically been a little bit difficult, and so now we’re developing new technologies for that.

But when you think about what’s going to be sort of our future electricity sources, I want to make sure that we are also the frontrunners, the leaders, when it comes to solar, when it comes to wind, when it comes to waste heat -- (laughter) -- geothermal, right?  So there are a whole range of additional energy sources that we’re just not tapping into, and that’s what a company like Electra Therm is all about.

Now, the question for Electra Therm is -- or any of these companies that are innovating -- is, is there enough demand out there that they can start building to scale, they can start making the capital investments that allow them to catch up with these older ways of producing electricity that had a 50-year head start?  Right?  I mean, if you built an old coal plant 30, 40 years ago, well, it’s -- whatever money you put into it, that’s already sunk costs, and now you’re producing electricity that may be relatively cheap, but it’s also relatively dirty.  And the question is, how do we make sure that new companies with newer, cleaner technologies are able to catch up?

So one of the things that we’ve proposed is what’s called a clean energy standard.  It’s a very simple concept.  What it says is, the country, state by state, will purchase a certain amount of energy from these alternative sources.  So we’re not saying that immediately you shut down the old plants, because, frankly, we couldn’t.  I mean, the economy needs a certain amount of electricity just to run our businesses and do everything that we do.  But if we set a target and we say here’s the amount of alternative energy that is going to be purchased every year, then suddenly all these companies out here start saying, you know what, I’ve got some certainty.  I know that if I invest in building a new plant that I’m going to be able to sell that electricity.

And that changes the economic incentives, and then the market can sort out which ones are the best -- who’s got the best company, who’s got the best technologies, et cetera.  It’s not the government saying -- picking winners and losers, it’s just saying get a certain amount from this option, this array of options of clean energy.  That can make a huge difference.

Now, in addition to doing that, the other thing that we really have to do is make sure that as an economy, as a society, we just become more energy efficient generally.  And that’s a lot of what Electra Therm is all about.  They’re capturing -- when you’re talking about waste heat, every business, every industry, is generating some sort of energy byproduct, some sort of heat; it’s going up in smoke stacks and nobody is using it.  And the question is, can we capture that energy and use it in a smart way?  That’s what Electra Therm is all about.

But we waste energy everywhere -- schools, hospitals, our homes.  When we don’t insulate our houses, when we don’t have the kinds of windows that are properly insulated, when our air conditioning systems are all old and creaky and make a lot of noise -- energy is being dissipated everywhere.  Now, I think most people understand that, but the problem is that you might not have a couple thousand bucks initially to insulate your home.  You don’t have that kind of spare change lying around.  Even though if you made the investment you’d get the money back in three or four or five years, you may not be able to make that investment on the front end.

So one of the things that we’re doing, both for homeowners, but also increasingly for commercial buildings, we want to give you some incentives where we say, you know what, you buy that insulation, you make your home more energy efficient, we’ll give you a tax break.  Or we say to companies, you’re going to make your building more energy efficient, we will give you some money on the front end and then you can pay it back by the savings that you get on your electricity bill every month.  So a combination of creating a market for clean and alternative energy, and also providing incentives to consumers to be more energy efficient -- you combine those two things, there’s no reason why we can’t have a brighter energy future.  But it does require some investment from the federal government.  That’s why I’m not willing to see our investment in clean energy slashed by 70 percent, and that’s part of the debate that we’re having in Washington right now.  All right?  (Applause.)

Okay, this young lady right there.  Go ahead.  You got the microphone right here.

Q    Jill Derby (ph).  I’m an educator who’s fighting educational cuts in Nevada that will slash our education budget.  (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT:  Okay, Jill.

Q    But my question is about health care reform.  I would say all of us in this room understand that the health care reform act that you championed and was passed is critical for the whole country, but somehow the opposition got the message ahead of us and now there isn’t widespread support.  I want to know what you and others are doing to turn that around to help people realize how important that reform act is.  (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, first of all, I appreciate the support and I appreciate the work you’re doing on education.  It turns out that when Social Security was passed, initially it was really unpopular, and all kinds of lawsuits were brought against Social Security.  And people said we were going socialist.  Sound familiar?  (Laughter.)  And now everybody loves Social Security, because once the program got up and running, people understood, you know what, this provides a basic floor, a baseline, so if something goes wrong in my life, even though I’m doing all the responsible things, even though I’m saving, I’m working hard every day, I’m looking out for my family, I’m doing what I’m supposed to do -- if at the end, somehow, things didn’t work out the way I planned, I’ve still got this baseline of savings.

Then, when Medicare was passed in the middle ‘60s, low and behold, it turns out it was very controversial.  And everybody said this is socialized medicine, and there were efforts to repeal it.  And then once it got up and running, lo and behold, people said, you know what, it’s a good thing that our senior citizens now, if they don’t have the health care that they need, they don’t have money, they have something to count on so that if they get sick they’ve got some support.

And I make that point just to say that every time we make a change like this, there are some folks who say no.  And ordinary folks who aren’t following the debate, all they hear is a lot of arguing; it makes folks uncertain about, well, is this thing actually going to work or not.

The big thing that we need is the three years that we designed to implement the plan.  Now, we’re already making progress.  There are already changes that are benefiting you right now.  Everybody who’s sitting here right now, whether you know it or not, you’re being benefited by the health care reform that we passed.  If you’ve got a child who graduated from college, doesn’t yet have a job that provides health insurance, you can keep that child on your health insurance until they’re 26 years old.  (Applause.)  If you’re a parent whose child has a preexisting condition, you now have to be able to get health insurance.  An insurance company cannot turn you down from getting health insurance for that child.  (Applause.)

Right now, insurance companies can’t drop you when you get sick.  They can’t impose arbitrary lifetime limits so that if you really get sick and you really need it, you don’t find out right in the middle of treatment it turns out that you’ve already hit your limit and there’s no more money left and you’re on your own.

So we’ve already implemented a wide range of reform.  Small businesses are eligible right now for huge tax breaks about a third of what small businesses pay for their employees to provide them health care, now they can deduct from their taxes.  And that can save tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands on their health care bills.  That’s already going on right now.

Senior citizens, you’re getting a $250 rebate on your drugs because of the health care bill.  And by the time we’ve fully implemented it, that doughnut hole that used to be there, where if you got sick, you’d pay -- Medicare would pay only up to a certain point, and then suddenly you had to pick it up in your own pocket because of that doughnut hole, that’s going to be fully closed.  So we are making all sorts of reforms right now.

But the big change comes in 2014 when we’re working with states, including Nevada, to set up a system so that you can be part of a big pool if you’re on your own, if your employer doesn’t provide you health insurance.  You can be part of a big pool with all that purchasing power to get the same health care that Shelley Berkley and other members of Congress get for themselves at reduced prices and higher quality.  (Applause.)

The other thing that we did in health care reform bears on what I was talking about earlier, which is our deficit reduction.  We were giving -- we were giving about $180 billion worth of subsidies to insurance companies under the Medicare program.  It wasn’t making seniors healthier, but it was making the profit margins for those insurance companies a lot healthier.

And we said, you know what, you’re doing just fine without those subsidies.  We are saying to providers, let’s make some changes so instead of having multiple tests for one patient, let’s have one test and then email all the tests through electronic medical records to the specialists that need to work with them.  That saves us money.

Twenty percent of the sick account for 80 percent of the costs under Medicare -- typically the chronically ill, folks who have diabetes, for example.  So why not reimburse providers to help manage the illnesses of the chronically ill?  That will save us money.

So part of what we’re doing is providing care for people.  Part of what we’re doing is making sure that you as a consumer of health insurance are getting a fair deal for insurers.  But part of what we’re doing also is making the overall system more efficient.  And that’s how we’ll save money in the long term.

That’s the big debate that we’re having about Medicare as part of this budget.  There has been a proposal -- it passed through Congress -- that would essentially make Medicare a voucher system.  Essentially what Medicare would become is you’d get a certain amount of money and then you could use that money to buy health insurance on the private marketplace.  But guess what.  If health inflation keeps on going up, you’re out of luck.  If the insurance that you buy isn’t good enough to cover you, too bad.

So what we’ve said is, no, we’re not going to change Medicare as we know it.  What we will do is work inside of Medicare to make sure that providers -- the health care system as a whole is more efficient.  We think that’s the better way to go.  (Applause.)  And I think most folks on Medicare do, too.

All right, let’s see.  Gentleman back there -- right there.  Yes.

Q    John Galbraith, Geothermal Resources Council.  Mr. President, we applaud and commend you for supporting clean, green, renewable, 24-hour baseload energy.  Please describe your thoughts going forward.  Can we expect the same?

THE PRESIDENT:  You can expect the same.  We want to keep on giving the same incentives for clean alternative energies.  We want to make sure that, for example, the tax credits that are in place, that we make those permanent so that folks aren’t always in a guessing game each year as to whether or not they’re going to be there for you.

We think that needs to be part of a overall, comprehensive energy package.  And I was talking earlier about electricity generation, but obviously what’s on the minds of a lot of folks right now are gas prices.  Let me just make this point:  One of the key ways we’re going to get gas prices down is just to use less oil.  Right?  If you buy less, prices go down.  (Applause.)

The best way for us to reduce usage is in the transportation sector.  So a couple of things that we’re doing already:  Number one, we increased fuel-efficiency standards on cars last year for the first time in 30 years.  First time in 30 years.  It’s going to save us 1.8 billion barrels of oil.  And by the way, we didn’t do it through legislation.  We got the car companies, autoworkers, environmental groups -- we got everybody to agree that this made sense for America.  So that’s point number one.

Point number two is we want a million electric cars on the road.  (Applause.)  Over the next several years, we want to develop electric cars and make them affordable for everybody.  And Detroit is now making some good electric cars; the problem is they’re still too expensive.  A couple of things are involved in that.  One is the technology for batteries is still not as developed as it needs to be.  But here’s the good news:  We used to have 2 percent of the market for advanced batteries that go into electric cars; we are going to have 40 percent in five years because of the investments we made with the Recovery Act.  We’re going to have -- 40 percent of those batteries are going to be made here in the United States of America.  (Applause.)

There is no reason why we can’t get cars out there that are getting 150 miles per gallon.  We’ve got the technology for it; we’ve just got to keep on investing it and developing it.  And so one example of how we can really make a difference -- it turns out as President I’ve got a lot of cars in my fleet.  (Laughter.)  The federal government has the biggest fleet of automobiles of anybody, any organization.  So what we’ve said is let’s make our fleet 100 percent alternative-fuel cars.  (Applause.)

And what that does, that creates a big market for American-made cars that are efficient.  (Applause.)  It puts people to work, but it also helps us free ourselves from dependence on foreign oil.

And now what we’re doing -- I was just over at a UPS facility in Maryland.  We’ve gotten Federal Express, Verizon, AT&T -- there are a bunch of companies now that are joining together, and they’re doing the same thing with their truck fleets.  So part of what this is all about is just creating a market.

And once you create a market -- let me tell you, I have driven that -- I didn’t -- when I say drove, they let me drive like five feet.  (Laughter.)  They didn’t really let me zip around there.  But I’ve been in one of these Chevy Volts.  That is a nice car.  It drives really well.

And so the question is can we start getting enough demand that prices go down.  And think about it, I mean, it used to be having a flat-screen TV was a big deal, right?  Now, everybody is going into Best Buy -- because it was such big volume that prices started going down.  Same thing with all technology.  It’s no different in the transportation sector.  We can drive prices down, we just have to make sure that there’s enough demand out there for them.

So for all of you out there who are still driving those eight-mile-a-gallon, big SUVs, some of you -- that’s the car you got to drive right now, you can’t afford a new car, but when you do decide to buy a new car, think about the fact that we’re putting a whole bunch of money into the pockets of some folks in some cases who don’t like us at all.

We send billions of dollars to other countries, some of whom do not like us at all.  We’re just giving away our wealth.  That makes no sense, and it’s got to change, and we’re going to change it.  So -- all right.  (Applause.)

It’s a young lady’s turn.  Right here, in the red.  Right in front.  You got a microphone coming.

Q    Mr. President, my name is Courtney Miller (ph).  And I want to thank you for returning science to the national priority.  And I need to ask for some help for my family.  My husband has chronic fatigue syndrome, which is an illness very much like multiple sclerosis.  And we spend billions of dollars in this country on roughly a million patients for disability and Medicare and lost tax revenue and lost productivity, and we spend less than $6 million for NIH research on this illness.  And I’m asking you for my husband and my kids, who want their father to be able to go to their baseball games, if there’s a way to make improvements on that.

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, let me, first of all, say that you are absolutely right that we’ve tried to put science back where it belongs.  (Applause.)  I am a Christian and a person of faith, and I believe that God gave us brains to figure things out -- (applause) -- and that we’ve got to use science to make life better for our families and our communities and this planet.

That’s one of the reasons why part of the Recovery Act was reinvesting in National Institute of Health -- NIH -- which does a huge amount of the basic medical research that ends up then creating so many of the scientific advances that are making our lives longer and making our lives better.

Now, I will confess to you that, although I’ve heard of chronic fatigue syndrome, I don’t have expertise in it.  But based on the story that you told me, what I promise I will do when I get back is I will have the National Institute of Health explain to me what they’re currently doing and start seeing if they can do more on this particular ailment.  Okay?  (Applause.)

Gentleman there, back there with the beard.  That’s you.  Oh, actually, I was calling on this guy with the beard, but I -- (laughter.)  That’s all right, go ahead.

Q    Hi, I’m Will Adler (ph).  I’m a student at UNR.  And currently we are facing millions -- millions in cuts.  And you mentioned higher education earlier.  I think it’s the most important thing for America’s future in general, and I’m just worried, with the rhetoric nowadays, that -- the word “tax” is like the most evil word on Earth now.  So our state in particular cannot raise enough revenues to support our higher education.  I was wondering how we can change that rhetoric and get more funding in the state level and federal to support our education for the future.  (Applause.)  

Thank you very much, Mr. Obama.  I love you, by the way.  I voted for you.

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, first of all, something that a lot of folks may not be aware of, you hear people say, oh, the stimulus didn’t work, the stimulus didn’t work, the recovery didn’t work.  Well, you know what, we had a terrible recession and shed so many jobs so fast that we had lost 4 million jobs before I came into office.  We lost another 4 million probably in the first six months that I was in office, before any of my economic policies took effect.  So we had a big hole we dug.

But when you look at the Recovery Act, about a third of it was direct support to state budgets.  About a third of it was tax cuts -- your taxes all got cut by the Recovery Act.  Nobody knew it, and I don’t blame folks for not knowing it because it was happening paycheck for paycheck so the increments were relatively small each month and a lot of folks -- if you saw your hours cut back or you had lost your job, you might not have felt it.  But we cut taxes.  That was about a third.

About a third of it was infrastructure investment.  And about a third of it was support to states.  And by the way, some of these same governors who go on TV denouncing the Recovery Act, the stimulus, they took that money.  (Laughter and applause.)  And they used it to close their state budget deficits.  I’m just saying.  (Laughter.)  It is funny, sometimes you’re watching TV and you say, hold on a second.  (Laughter.)  That guy right there, he took that check.  (Laughter.)  And he used it to balance his budget, and then he starts getting on TV complaining about how irresponsible we are.  What are you talking about?  It’s not on the level sometimes.

But what happened as a consequence was for two years we were able to prevent some of the worst choices that states might have to make about laying off teachers and police officers and firefighters and so on.

Now the economy is growing again and state revenues are getting a little bit better.  But I understand here in Nevada, the economy has been the slowest to recover because this is also where the housing boom was hottest.  So that’s put bigger strains on the budget here than just about anywhere.

So I recognize that a state like Nevada has to make tough choices.  I just think it is very important in making those choices not to be shortsighted.  If you’re a family and you’ve got to tighten your belt, you might cut out eating out.  You might say, you know what, we can’t afford that vacation this year.  But you’re not going to decide not to replace the boiler if it has to be replaced.  You’re not going to decide not to fix a hole in the roof, because you know if it starts raining it’s going to ruin the house.  You’re not going to say, we’re going to use up all the savings we had for our kids’ college education and still go on vacation.  Right?  You’re going to prioritize.

That’s what we have to do at the federal level, and that’s what we have to do at the state level.  And I don’t think there is a more important priority than education.  (Applause.)

Now, I think it’s important that our education system is efficient like every other system.  So universities -- I’ve said to universities, try to figure out how you can reduce costs for students.  Don’t just ask for more money.  You should also look at your operations to figure out are there ways that you can make it a better bargain for your kids.  Because they’ve got to pay for it, or somebody has got to pay for that tuition.

I mean, look, I’m a big supporter of state colleges and universities having nice facilities, but you go to some of these gyms and some of these athletic facilities -- I’m thinking, this is really nice.  Shoot, I wouldn’t mind being a member of this club.

And I’ve got to tell you, when I was going to college -- I’m showing my age now where you start “when I was back in my day” -- but it’s true, like the cafeteria was horrible.  The food was bad.  You didn’t expect to get good food when you went to college.  You go to the gym, it had some old rusty weights, a medicine ball.  You didn’t have some gleaming state-of-the-art.

I’m just using those as examples.  There are ways that universities have to cut costs as well.  But ultimately we’ve got to make sure that we’re not cutting education unnecessarily.  And you’re right.  In some cases, revenue is going to be necessary.

Now, how many people here know that not only did we cut your taxes when I first came into office, but back in December we just cut your taxes again?  How many folks are aware of that?  (Applause.)  I mean, you wouldn’t know it from watching TV.  You would think I was just out there raising everybody’s taxes.  Just these big-spending Democrats out there -- we haven’t raised your taxes; we’ve lowered your taxes.  Because it was important during the recession to make sure that middle-class families were able to land on their feet.

And that’s actually helping absorb some of the increased costs of gas prices and food prices that are out there right now, and helping to sustain consumer spending to keep the economy growing.

But at a certain point, as the economy begins to grow again, as people are getting back on their feet, we’ve got to go back and say to ourselves, you know what, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.  Taxes are lower now than they have been in a generation.  Taxes are a lot lower now than they were under Ronald Reagan.  They’re lower than they were under Bill Clinton.  They’re lower than they were under George Bush, in many cases.

And what I’ve said is, at minimum, we should say, for those like myself who can afford it, let’s pay a little bit more.  Let’s go -- we can go back -- if we went back to the Clinton rates for the wealthiest 2 percent, going back to the Clinton rates -- you remember back in the ‘90s, the economy was doing really well, and rich people were doing just fine.  And I can afford it.  It’s not that I like paying taxes.  I don’t like paying taxes.  Nobody likes paying taxes.  But if the choice is keeping my tax break, or 33 seniors having to pay an extra 6,000 bucks for their Medicare, why would I want that -- why would I wish that on those 33 seniors?  If the choice is between me keeping my tax cut and a couple hundred kids being to go get their Head Start, why would I want that?

This isn’t a matter of charity; it’s a matter of what we think it is to live in a good society.  And I think it is good for me, it is good for my life if when I’m driving around, I’m saying to myself, you know what, that school is producing all kinds of kids who are smart and are going to help build America’s future.

And I drive around and I see some seniors, and they’re out for a walk.  And I know, you know what, I’m glad that I live in a country where in their retirement years, they’re going to be secure.  That makes me feel good.  That’s the kind of country I want to live in.  (Applause.)  That’s the kind of country you want to live in.  And we’ve got to make sure we’re willing to fight for it.

Everybody, thank you very much.  God bless you.  (Applause.)

END
12:50 P.M. PDT

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release
April 21, 2011

Remarks by the President at a DNC Event

St. Regis Hotel
San Francisco, California

9:28 A.M. PDT

THE PRESIDENT: Everybody please be seated. Thank you. It is wonderful to be here, and I’ll admit I sort of slept in. (Laughter.) That whole three-hour time difference is okay. I did stay up late last night, so I had an excuse.

We’ve got just some great friends in the audience, people who have helped us in so many ways and helped California is so many ways. I just want to acknowledge a few folks to make sure, if they haven’t been already acknowledged. Somebody who I had the pleasure of serving with and is one of the finest senators in the country, Dianne Feinstein is here. (Applause.) Your dynamic lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom is in the house. (Applause.) One of my favorites, somebody who was with me through thick and thin during the course of my campaign, and then hopefully she felt I was there with her during the course of her campaign, Attorney General Kamala Harris is here. (Applause.)

San Francisco mayor Edwin Lee is in the house, doing a great job. (Applause.) Former mayor Willie Brown is here. (Applause.) No matter how hard I try, Willie is still better dressed than me. (Laughter.) Although I’m still getting used to the no mustache thing. I mean, he’s a pretty good-looking guy, but I still remember that.

And what can I say about Nancy Pelosi? She has been -- I think will go down in history as one of the finest Speakers that we have ever had -- (applause) -- and she is going to continue to be in the future one of the great Speakers that we’ve ever had. (Applause.)

So many of you were with us in 2008, and I had great fun last night talking to a big crowd, and you could start feeling people getting back -- Jerry already left, I thought. Jerry was here. (Laughter.) Your governor, Jerry Brown, was in the house. (Laughter and applause.) But it’s always awkward when you introduce someone and they’re not there. (Laughter.) So Jerry had to leave, but -- because he had important business to do on behalf of the state of California.

Last night was a wonderful event, and I had a chance to talk to a lot of our grassroots supporters here in California. And I reminded them that the campaign we ran in 2008 wasn’t about me. It was about a commitment that the American people were making to each other. It was about a vision of what America could be, because what we understood was that we were at a crossroads.

There are moments in history that are inflection points, and I think we understood back in 2008 that we were entering into one of those periods. Domestically, we had gone through a decade in which the economy was growing but it was growing on top of a bubble. And people at the very top were doing very well, but the wages and incomes of ordinary families had flatlined, and we were starting as a government to live beyond our means with tax cuts and two wars that weren’t paid for. And so I think people understood even before the recession hit that somehow the way our economy was operating was not conducive to long-term sustained economic growth or making sure that everybody had a chance at the American Dream.

Internationally, we were seeing changes around the world -- countries like China and India rising; areas like the Middle East becoming less stable; the world shrinking because of technology, much of it invented right here in this region. And so I think we understood that we were going to have to adapt in some fundamental way in order to make sure that our kids and our grandkids ended up inheriting the kind of America that we inherited.

And so as I think about the campaign, what always excited me was not the huge crowds. It wasn’t all the attention that I got. What really excited me was whenever we went into a community and it turned out that people who hadn’t been involved in politics before were suddenly getting involved. And folks who would normally not meet suddenly were meeting and planning and plotting. And entire virtual communities got set up in places like Idaho and northern Nevada. And these folks would set up their own teams, and they were coming up with ideas about how to get folks more engaged and more involved.

There was a sense that from the bottom up, the American people were saying we’re going to reach for a more hopeful future, and we’re going to make our politics work. We’re going to insist on a politics that is responsive to the hopes and dreams of ordinary folks.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Mr. President, we’re going to do a song. Can we stand?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, let me --

(Group begins to sing.)

THE PRESIDENT: That’s very nice.

Nancy, did you plan this? (Laughter.)

All right, how about -- that was a pretty good song. You guys sing better than I do.

(Song continues.)

All right, guys. That was a nice song. You guys have much better voices than I have. Okay, thank you very much, guys.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you for listening.

THE PRESIDENT: Of course. Well, I appreciate that. Now, where was I? (Laughter.) It did break my flow, I’ve got to admit. (Applause.)

Now, there’s an example of creativity that we saw during the campaign. (Laughter.) You know, it wasn’t always convenient but it’s part of what made 2008 special. And what’s happened -- and I think that was indicative of that performance as well -- is, is that over the last two and a half years, change turned out to be tougher than a lot of us expected. Right? I think a lot of folks didn’t recognize that we might end up going through the worst recession since the Great Depression, and that we’d see 8 million jobs lost, devastating entire communities all across the country. I think we didn’t anticipate a housing crisis that kept on worsening, or the potential of a financial meltdown.

And what ordinary folks are going through still, even after the economy has started growing again, is something that keeps me up at night, and it’s something that I think about the first thing when I wake up in the morning.

We knew that we had to make changes in energy, and we’ve made some, but we understood that despite these changes, folks are still out there with $4-a-gallon gas, and that’s tough on ordinary families. They can’t afford to buy a new hybrid car if they’re driving 50 miles a day to go to work.

And so what I think a lot of folks feel over the last two and a half years is we’ve done extraordinary work -- in part, thanks to folks like Nancy and Dianne and people in Congress -- but we understand that we’ve still got more work to do.

I could not be prouder of our track record over the last two and a half years. (Applause.) But yanking this country out of a great depression, passing historic health care laws so that people who are bankrupt -- people who are sick don’t have to go through bankruptcy in order to pay their medical bills -- (applause) -- making sure that "don’t ask, don’t tell" was finally repealed, making sure that we’ve got two women on the Supreme Court -- and one of them is the first Latina on the Supreme Court -- (applause) -- making sure that we made the largest investment in clean energy and education and infrastructure in our history. I could not be prouder of those achievements. But we’ve got so much more work to do.

And we’re not going to be able to make those changes unless that same spirit that drove us in 2008 drives us in 2012.

I think that a lot of folks feel that, well, he’s now President; he’s a little grayer, he’s a little older. It’s not quite as new as it was. And so we can run a different kind of campaign -- more top-down, more Washington.

And I guess part of my message here in California today is that we need you now more than ever. Your engagement, your involvement, your commitments are going to be critically important because the work that we wanted to do, the vision that we had for the country is unfinished; and because we’re facing as stark as a choice -- as stark of a choice as we’ve seen I think in this country philosophically as we’ve seen in a very long time. And we’re seeing that in the budget discussions that we’re having right now.

We’ve got a serious deficit and debt problem. There is no doubt about it. It’s one that we inherited, but it’s real. And we’ve got a responsibility to fix it. The question is how do we fix it. Are we going to fix it by making sure that we eliminate spending that we don’t need, as I’ve proposed, but also making sure that everybody shares the burden, and we’re raising additional revenues by making sure that those of us who have done so well in this society can afford to pay a little bit more? Or do we end up balancing our budget and reducing our deficit by fundamentally reworking our social compact, so that suddenly kids on Head Start don’t have those opportunities anymore; so that we say to our seniors Medicare is no longer a guarantee that you will have health care when you are older -- here’s a voucher; we’re going to shift the costs on to you, and if you can’t get the health care that you need on the open market, then tough luck?

Is it a vision of America that is big and ambitious and generous and says we’re going to invest in clean energy, and we are going to invest in our kids’ college educations, we’re going to invest in math and science education because we know that innovation is going to be the key to the 21st century? And we’re going to invest in our infrastructure because we want to make this a great country to do businesses, and we understand that means moving goods and services and people and information efficiently around the country?

Or do we have a shrunken image of America that says we can’t afford to do those things anymore; that America just doesn’t do big things anymore? That’s the vision that is reflected in the budget that’s already been voted on by the House Republicans, one that says we can’t afford to do big things anymore.

I fundamentally disagree with that vision. That’s not what built California. That’s not what built Silicon Valley. That’s not what made us the greatest country on Earth. So this debate is going to be fierce. It is going to be serious. But it can’t just take place in Washington. It’s going to have to be animated by conversations that you have with your friends and your neighbors and your coworkers. And you’re going to have to be speaking out and pulling together networks, and it’s going to be a conversation that’s taking place at the state and local levels just as much as it is as the national level. It already is.

Here’s the thing -- for all the challenges that we’ve experienced over the last two and a half years, for all the issues international and domestic that we’ve dealt with, despite the occasional setback and the frustrations, what we’ve already gotten accomplished in two and a half years gives me confidence about what we can accomplish in the next six.

We have gone through tougher times before -- both as a country, but also as a movement. And each time, because we’ve come together, we’ve been able to achieve what a lot of folks thought was impossible. People really didn’t think we were going to get health care passed, but Nancy helped prove them wrong. (Applause.)

We didn’t think -- a lot of people -- a lot of people didn’t think that we were going to get "don’t ask, don’t tell" repealed until we got it repealed. (Applause.)

A lot of folks didn’t think that we could elect a guy named Barack Obama to the presidency until we got Barack Obama elected to the presidency. (Applause.) You have proved time and again that when people of goodwill come together, there’s nothing that’s impossible.

And so I just ask all of you to make sure that your participation in this process over the next 18 months isn’t restricted to writing a check, but rather continues to embody the same kinds of imagination and can-do spirit, and I think most importantly that sense of community that was so central to us being successful in 2008.

Thank you very much, everybody. (Applause.) God bless you. And thank you again for the song. (Applause.)

END
9:46 A.M. PDT

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release
April 21, 2011

Remarks by the President at a DNC Event

Nob Hill Masonic Center, San Francisco, California

8:52 P.M. PDT

      THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, San Francisco!  (Applause.)  Thank you!  Thank you.  (Applause.)  Thank you so much.  Thank you, everybody.  Everybody, have a seat.  Thank you so much.  It’s good to be back in San Francisco.  (Applause.)

      Part of the reason is I've got some great friends here.  (Applause.)  And a couple people I want to acknowledge:  Somebody who is one of the greatest Speakers that I know of and is going to be one of the greatest Speakers again -- Nancy Pelosi is in the house.  (Applause.)  The lieutenant governor, former mayor, Gavin Newsom is here.  (Applause.)  An outstanding congressional delegation -- Barbara Lee, Mike Honda -- where’s Mike Honda?  John Garamendi is here.  (Applause.)  Jerry McNerney is here.  (Applause.)  State Comptroller John Chiang is here.  (Applause.) And State Treasurer Bill Lockyer is here.  (Applause.)

      And you’re here.  (Applause.)  I see you.  (Applause.)  Thank you.

      It is nice to be back West in the great state of California. And let me -- (applause) -- let me just say this.  Obviously, there are extraordinary responsibilities to this job.  There are certain pleasures, as well.  And coming in on Marine One and then just coming right past the Golden Gate Bridge, that's a pretty nice perk.  (Applause.)  I’ve got to say, one of the greatest -- one of the greatest views in the world.

      I had come in from a town hall meeting hosted by Facebook.  (Applause.)  And I was happy to find out that my Facebook page was doing pretty well.  (Laughter.)  We had -- I’ve got 19 million friends, which -- (laughter and applause) -- which only puts me half a million friends behind SpongeBob SquarePants.  (Laughter.)  So that's something to aspire to.  (Laughter.)  Keeping up with SpongeBob.  (Laughter.)

      AUDIENCE MEMBER:  We love you!

      THE PRESIDENT:  I love you back.  (Applause.)  I do.

      It’s especially nice to be out of Washington, D.C.  (Applause.)  There are wonderful folks doing great work in Washington, but I have to say that the conversation you hear in Washington is just different from the conversation you hear around kitchen tables or around office coolers.  And that's why we decided that our reelection campaign will be the first one in modern history to be based outside of Washington, D.C.  We're going back to Chicago.  (Applause.)   

      We’re going back to Chicago because I don't want our campaign only hearing from pundits and power brokers and the cable chatter.  I want our campaign to be hearing from the people who got us here.  (Applause.)  I want to make sure we’re putting the campaign back in your hands, the hands of the same organizers and volunteers that proved the last time that together ordinary people can do extraordinary things.  (Applause.)  When we’re together there is nothing we can’t do, including elect a guy names Barack Obama to the highest office in the world.  (Applause.)

      Now, a few things have changed since the last time around.  I’m older.  (Laughter.)  I am grayer.  (Laughter.)

      AUDIENCE MEMBER:  That's all right, you still fine.  (Applause.)

      THE PRESIDENT:  But my memory has not gone, and so I can still remember that night in Grant Park when there was so much excitement in the streets and that sense of hope and possibility. And I know you remember not only the good feeling, but also what I said on that night.  I said that our work wasn’t ending; it was just beginning.  I said that our climb was going to be steep.  We had so many challenges ahead of us.  And I have to say that, at the time, I cautioned people.  I said we may not get there in one year.  We may not even get there in one term.  But if we came together, if we showed the same fortitude and persistence and optimism that had gotten us to Election Night, then we could bring about the change that we had talked about; the change that we had envisioned for our communities, for our kids, for our grandkids; the commitments that we had made to each other.

      Because that’s what the campaign was about.  It was a sense of mutual commitment.  The campaign wasn’t about me.  It was about what all of us imagined our country could be.  (Applause.)     And it turns out that the climb was even steeper than some of us had anticipated.  We took office in the middle of the worst recession in our lifetimes -- one that left millions of Americans without jobs; hundreds of thousands of people without homes; folks who kept their jobs or kept their homes struggling to pay the bills.  It was a recession that was so bad that many families are still grappling with the aftershocks even to this day.

      And we had to make tough decisions right off the bat.  We had to immediately move a Recovery Act through that would ensure that we didn’t dip into a depression; that would help states and local governments keep teachers on the job, and firefighters on the job, and police officers on the job -- (applause) -- that would make sure that we cut taxes for Americans so they had a little more money in their pockets to help get through tough times.

      Some of the decisions we made were not popular.  You remember folks talking about the auto bailout.  A lot of folks were skeptical -- we should just let the auto industry in America go by the wayside.  But two and a half years later, our economy is growing again.  We’re creating jobs again.  (Applause.)  Over the last four months, we’ve seen the largest drop in unemployment since 1984.  (Applause.)  Over the last 13 months, we’ve added nearly 2 million private sector jobs.  (Applause.)

      And along the way, we did a few other things:  The largest investment in clean energy in our history.  (Applause.)  The largest investment in science and basic research that we had seen in years.  (Applause.)  Largest investment in our infrastructure since Dwight Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System.  (Applause.)

      We passed a law that had eluded folks for a hundred years, finally making sure that every single American in this country won’t go bankrupt because they get sick, will be able to get health care coverage even if they’ve got a preexisting condition. We moved that forward.  (Applause.)

      We changed our student loan program so that billions of dollars that were going to big banks are now going directly to students, and millions more young people are able to go to college as a consequence.  (Applause.)

      We put two wise women on the Supreme Court, including the first Latina Supreme Court justice.  (Applause.)  And we rolled back “don't ask, don't tell,” so that everybody can serve their country regardless of who they love.  (Applause.)

      And then we dealt with pirates -- (laughter) -- and a pandemic.  You forgot about that.  An oil spill.  We’ve been pretty busy.  And yet our work is not finished.  It is going --

      AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Gay marriage.

      THE PRESIDENT:  Our work is not finished.  (Applause.)  It is going to take -- it is going to take more than a couple of years.  It is going to take more than one term for us to finish everything that we need to do.  (Applause.)  And I am reminded -- I’m reminded almost every night, when I read letters from people from all across the country talk about what it’s like to send out 16 resumes and not get a response back; a child writing saying their parents are about to lose their home -- Mr. President, is there something you can do to help?

      It’s heartbreaking.  There’s so much resilience and so much strength out there, and yet still so much that needs to be done.
      And so when I think about running for reelection, I don’t look backwards.  I look forward.  I say to myself, what can we do for those Americans out there?  That’s what I think about when I wake up every morning.  That’s what I think about when I go to bed at night.  And that’s what this campaign has to be about -- about your jobs, about your families, about your hopes, about your dreams.  That’s what we’re fighting for.

      Because of you, we’ve been able to make great progress over these last few years.  But that progress can’t make us complacent.  It can’t make us content.  It should remind us that change, yes, is possible, but we’ve got to finish what we started.  We’ve got to finish what we started.  (Applause.)

      Because of you, yes, we were able to prevent another depression.  But in the next few years, we’ve got to make sure that the new jobs and industries of our time are created right here in the United States of America.  (Applause.)  We’ve got to be prepared to win the future.  We’ve got to be prepared to win the future.  And that means making sure we’re investing in innovation, education, infrastructure -- (applause) -- all those ingredients that can keep our economy dynamic.

      Because of you, we’ve made college more affordable for millions of students.  (Applause.)  But we’re not done.  We’re not done.  We’ve raised standards for teaching and learning in schools all across the country by launching a competition called Race to the Top, but now we’ve got to keep that reform going until every child is ready to graduate, every child is ready for college, every child can actually afford to go to college, every child is ready for a career.  (Applause.)

      That’s how we’ll out-educate and out-compete the rest of the world for the jobs of the future right here in the United States of America.  (Applause.)

      Yes, because of you, we’ve made the largest investments in clean and renewable energy in our history.  (Applause.)  And those are already creating jobs and new businesses.  But high gas prices are killing folks out there -- killing you.  You know.  It’s rough.  You say, “it’s just really rough.”  (Laughter.)

      I admit, Secret Service doesn’t let me pump gas now.  (Laughter.)  But I remember what it was like filling up.  (Laughter.)  And you think about a family that has to drive 50 miles to work.  They don't have a choice.  That's where their job is.  They may not be able to sell their home and move closer, That's not an option for them, especially in this housing market.
      It would be nice if they could buy a hybrid, but they might not have the money, and they're driving that old beater.  And it’s getting eight miles a gallon.  (Laughter.)  And that's no joke.  We gave everybody a tax cut, but a lot of that money gets eaten up by high gas prices.

      And so we’ve got to keep making investments in clean energy. We’ve got to strive for energy independence in this country.  (Applause.)  We’ve got to invest in solar and wind and electric cars, and it’s time we stopped giving the oil companies $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies -- take that money and put it into clean energy.  (Applause.)

      That makes no sense.  We’ve got to change it.  Instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy, let’s invest in tomorrow’s energy.  (Applause.)  It’s good for our security.  It will grow our economy, and it will leave our children with a safer and cleaner planet.  (Applause.)

      Because of all of you, we’ve put hundreds of thousands of people to work rebuilding our infrastructure.  But now we’ve got to make sure that we’re built to compete in the 21st century.  Not just new roads and new bridges, but high-speed rail and high-speed Internet.  (Applause.)  A smart grid to make sure that we can move all that clean energy all across the country.

      I want to make sure that America is the best place on Earth to do business.  (Applause.)  And part of that is having a world-class infrastructure.  I don't want folks flying around the world and saying, how come our airports aren’t as nice as they are in Beijing or Singapore?  I don’t want people going to Europe and saying, boy, these are really nice trains -- how come we don’t have trains like this?  (Applause.)

      That’s not the American way.  I mean, I hate to be parochial but I want us to have the best stuff.  (Applause.)  That’s part of what it means to be American.  We got nice infrastructure.

      AUDIENCE MEMBER:  We’ve got the best President!

      THE PRESIDENT:  Well -- (applause.)  We got to out-build, we got to out-educate, out-innovate the rest of the world.

      Because of you we finally got health care passed.  (Applause.)  We said health care should no longer be a privilege in this country; it should be something that’s affordable and available for every American.  We said in the United States you should not go bankrupt when you get sick.  But you know there are folks who want to roll it back --

      AUDIENCE:  Booo --

      THE PRESIDENT:  -- before it even has a change to get implemented effectively.

      Because of you we passed Wall Street reform that helps to make sure that we don’t go through the same kind of crisis that we went through before, and you as consumers aren’t taken advantage of when it comes to mortgages or credit cards.  But you know there are some folks who want to roll it back.

      AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Booo --

      THE PRESIDENT:  Because of you we passed a law that says a woman should get an equal day’s pay for an equal day’s work.  What do you think, Nancy Pelosi?  Do you agree with that?  (Applause.)

      But you all know that there’s a lot more that can be done. With it comes to enforcement of those laws.  Yes, we overturned “don’t ask, don’t tell,” but we still have more work to do to make sure this country is fully equal and treats everybody with dignity and respect.  (Applause.)  We’ve got more work to do.  We removed 100,000 troops from Iraq and ended combat missions there like I promised we would.  (Applause.)  But we’ve still got more work to do to make ourselves secure and bring our troops home.

      We’ve got to protect the changes that we made, and we’ve got to make the changes that remain undone.  We’ve got to keep moving forward.  We’ve got to keep working for the America that we believe in, the America we want to leave behind to our kids.  And that’s what the debate we’re having in Washington right now is all about.

      There’s a lot of talk right now about debt and deficits and budget and spending.  What this debate is really about is what kind of future we want; about what kind of country we believe in fundamentally.  I believe in an America where a government lives within its means.  (Applause.)  I want a government that is lean and effective and not wasting your money -- because you don’t have any money to waste -- which means we’ve got to cut some spending in Washington.  We’ve got to cut domestic spending.  We’ve also got to cut defense spending.  (Applause.)  And we’ve got to cut spending in our tax code.  We’ve got a whole bunch of loopholes in there that we don’t need.  We’ve got to eliminate every dime of waste.

      And if we want to take responsibility for the debt that we owe, then we’ve got to make some tough decisions.  There are going to be some things that would be nice to have but we can afford to do without.  We all need to share in the sacrifice to get us on a stable financial footing.

      And by the way, if you are progressive, you’ve got to be just as concerned about that as somebody who considers themselves a fiscal conservative, because the fact of the matter is, if money that could be going to Head Start or money that could be going to programs that are putting people back to work, if that money is being wasted, that’s not good -- that doesn’t promote progressive values.  We’ve got to be just as scrupulous in thinking about how government spends money as anybody else.  We’ve got to be more so.  (Applause.)

      But let me tell you something.  I will not reduce our deficit by sacrificing the things that have always made America great.  (Applause.)  The things that have made Americans prosper. I won’t sacrifice our investments in education.  I will not sacrifice those.  (Applause.)  I won’t sacrifice our investments in science and basic research.  (Applause.)  I won’t sacrifice the safety of our highways or our airports.  I won’t sacrifice our investment in clean energy at a time when our dependence on foreign oil is causing Americans so much pain at the pump.  (Applause.)  I will not sacrifice America’s future.  That I will not do.  (Applause.)

      If we want to reduce our deficit, yes, we need to cut spending.  But we need shared sacrifice.  And that means ending the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans in this country.  We can afford it.  (Applause.)

      It’s not because we want to punish success.  It’s because if we’re going to ask everybody to sacrifice a little, we can’t just tell millionaires and billionaires they don't have to do a thing -- just relax, that's fine.  We’ll take care of this.  (Laughter.)  Go count your money.  That's fine.  (Laughter and applause.)

      Because some of you bought my book, I fall in this category.  (Laughter.)  I’m speaking about myself.  I can afford to do a little more, especially when the only way to pay for these tax cuts for the wealthy is to ask seniors to pay thousands of dollars more for health care.

      AUDIENCE:  Booo!

      THE PRESIDENT:  Or cut children from Head Start, or doing away with health insurance for millions of people on Medicaid, seniors in nursing homes, or poor kids, or middle-class families who’ve got an autistic child.  That's not a tradeoff I’m willing to make.  (Applause.)  And that's not a tradeoff most Americans are willing to make, regardless of party.  We can do better than that.  We are better than that!  (Applause.)  We are better than that!  (Applause.)

      The America we know is great not because of our skyscrapers or the size of our GDP.  It’s because we’ve been able to keep two ideas together at the same time.  The first idea is that we are all individuals endowed with certain inalienable rights and liberties; that we are self-reliant; we are entrepreneurs.  We don't expect others to do for us what we can do for ourselves, and we don't really like people telling us what to do.  (Laughter.)

      But the second idea, just as important is that we’re all in this together; that we look out for one another; that I am my brother’s keeper; that I am my sister’s keeper.  (Applause.)  That I want to make sure that a child born in a tough neighborhood has the same opportunities I had.  (Applause.)  And I do that -- I feel that way not out of charity, but because my life is richer, my life is better, when the people around me have some measure of security and some measure of dignity, and they, too, have a shot at the American Dream.  (Applause.)

      That’s our vision for America.  It’s not a vision of a small America.  It’s a vision of a big America, of a compassionate America, a caring America, an ambitious America.  And that’s what this campaign is about.

      There are those right now who say that this is kind of the end of the line.  We’ve got these deficits, we’ve got debt, we’ve gone through this recession, there’s international competition.  China and India and Brazil, they’re all growing faster than we are.  And you know what, maybe we’ve just got to shrink.  We’ve got to shrink everything.  We can’t afford to do big things.  We can’t afford to make sure every child gets a shot at college.  We can’t afford to make sure that we’ve got the best roads and ports and airports.  We can’t afford to make sure that every senior knows they’ve got basic health care available to them when they get older.  We can’t afford to keep our air and water clean.  We can’t afford to invest in the arts.  We can’t afford to maintain our national parks.

      That’s not a vision of America that I want to pass on to Malia and Sasha.  (Applause.)  I want a vision of America that is big and bold and ambitious as it has ever been.  (Applause.)  That’s what I’m fighting for and that’s what this campaign has to be about -- a vision of a big, generous, compassionate America; a vision where we’re living within our means but we’re still investing in our future; a vision where we all share sacrifice, nobody bears all the burden, and we all share an opportunity; a vision where we live up to the idea that no matter who you are, no matter where you come from, no matter what you look like, no matter whether your ancestors landed here on Ellis Island or came here on slave ships or came across the Rio Grande, we are all connected.  (Applause.)  We will rise and fall together.  (Applause.)

      That's the vision of America that I’ve got.  That's the idea at the heart of America.  (Applause.)  That's the idea at the heart of our campaign!  (Applause.)

      And that's why I’m going to need your help, now more than ever.

      AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I’m in!

      THE PRESIDENT:  This campaign -- you’re in.  (Applause.)
      I need you all in.

      AUDIENCE:  I’m in!  We’re in!  (Applause.)

      THE PRESIDENT:  This campaign is still at its early stages, but now is the time when you can shape it.  Now is the time when you can get out of the gate strong.  I know there are times where some of you have felt frustrated because we haven’t gotten everything done as fast as we wanted.  We didn't get everything exactly the way we had planned.

      AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Health care.

      AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Single-payer.

      THE PRESIDENT:  See, there?  Case in point, right?  All right.  See I knew I’d open up this can of worms.  (Laughter.)

      Look, there are times where I felt the same way that you do. This is a big, complicated, messy democracy.  Change is not simple.  Everybody likes change in the abstract, but change in the concrete is hard.  (Applause.)  It’s tough.  It requires work.  (Applause.)

      Not everybody agrees with us.  Not everybody agrees in this auditorium about issues.  That's part of what makes this country special, is the nature of our democracy.  And so sometimes it can be frustrating.  And I know there are times where you’re sitting there and you’re thinking, golly, you know, Obama, he’s made some compromise with the Republicans on this or that.  Or, how come he’s -- he should have done it this way.  Everybody is a political consultant.  (Laughter.)  And if he had just phrased it that way, I’m sure we could have gotten health care done in two months.  (Laughter and applause.)  You know who I’m talking about -- you.  That’s right.

      And then your friends come and you say, oh, Obama has changed.  I used to be so excited; I still have the poster, but  -- (laughter and applause.)  I know.  I know.

      Sometimes I get frustrated.  There are times where I am just so burdened by the fact that there are still so many folks out there who we haven’t -- haven’t gotten the help that they need.  And so I understand how you guys feel.  But we knew this wouldn’t be easy.  We knew that on a journey like this there were going to be setbacks, there were going to be detours.  There were going to be some times where we stumbled.

      People act like the campaign was easy.  They weren’t on the campaign.  (Laughter.)  They all look back -- oh, Obama, he ran such a perfect campaign; it was so smooth.  What campaign were you on?  (Laughter and applause.)  This was hard.  So we knew that there were going to be setbacks and stumbles.

      But here’s what keeps me going:  At every juncture in our history, when our future was on the line, when we were at a crossroads like we are right now, we pulled through, and we pulled through together.  We were able to make the changes that were needed.  And it was hard. It was full of debate and sometimes rancor, and sometimes worse. That’s how this country became more equal.  That’s how the women’s movement started.  That’s how the civil rights movement started.  That’s how the union movement started.  (Applause.)

      At every juncture there’s been resistance and debate and uncertainty, but somehow, we pulled through -- together.  So whenever you hear people say our problems are too big to solve; whenever you hear people say we’ve got to shrink back on our dreams; whenever you hear people say we can’t bring about the changes that we seek; whenever you hear people say, well, the campaign was this or that, but now governing is somehow different -- I just want you to think about all the progress that we’ve already made.  (Applause.)

      I want you to think about all the unfinished business we’ve got ahead of us.  I want you to be excited about the future that lies before us.  I want to remind you and everybody else of those three simple words that summed up what we believe as a people:  Yes, we can.

      Thank you, everybody.  God bless you.  (Applause.)

                                              END                  9:32 P.M. PDT