Remarks by the President at a Facebook Town Hall

Facebook Headquarters
Palo Alto, California

1:58 P.M. PDT

      THE PRESIDENT:  Well, thank you so much, Facebook, for hosting this, first of all.  (Applause.)  My name is Barack Obama, and I'm the guy who got Mark to wear a jacket and tie.  (Applause.)  Thank you.  (Laughter.)  I'm very proud of that.  (Laughter.)

      MR. ZUCKERBERG:  Second time.

      THE PRESIDENT:  I know.  (Laughter.)  I will say -- and I hate to tell stories on Mark, but the first time we had dinner together and he wore this jacket and tie, I'd say halfway through dinner he’s starting to sweat a little bit.  It’s really uncomfortable for him.  So I helped him out of his jacket.  (Laughter.)  And in fact, if you’d like, Mark, we can take our jackets off.  (Applause.)

      MR. ZUCKERBERG:  That's good.

      THE PRESIDENT:  Woo, that's better, isn’t it?

      MR. ZUCKERBERG:  Yes, but you're a lot better at this stuff than me.  (Laughter.)

      THE PRESIDENT:  So, first of all, I just want to say thank you to all of you for taking the time -- not only people who are here in the audience, but also folks all over the country and some around the world who are watching this town hall.

      The main reason we wanted to do this is, first of all, because more and more people, especially young people, are getting their information through different media.  And obviously what all of you have built together is helping to revolutionize how people get information, how they process information, how they’re connecting with each other.

      And historically, part of what makes for a healthy democracy, what is good politics, is when you’ve got citizens who are informed, who are engaged.  And what Facebook allows us to do is make sure this isn’t just a one-way conversation; makes sure that not only am I speaking to you but you're also speaking back and we're in a conversation, were in a dialogue.  So I love doing town hall meetings.  This format and this company I think is an ideal means for us to be able to carry on this conversation.

      And as Mark mentioned, obviously we're having a very serious debate right now about the future direction of our country.  We are living through as tumultuous a time as certainly I've seen in my lifetime.  Admittedly, my lifetime is a lot longer than most of yours so far.  This is a pretty young crowd.  But we're seeing, domestically, a whole series of challenges, starting with the worst recession we've had since the Great Depression.  We're just now coming out of it.  We've got all sorts of disruptions, technological disruptions that are taking place, most of which hold the promise of making our lives a lot better, but also mean that there are a lot of adjustments that people are having to make throughout the economy.

      We still have a very high unemployment rate that is starting to come down, but there are an awful lot of people who are being challenged out there, day in, day out, worrying about whether they can pay the bills, whether they can keep their home.

      Internationally, we're seeing the sorts of changes that we haven't seen in a generation.  We've got certain challenges like energy and climate change that no one nation can solve but we're going to have to solve together.  And we don't yet have all the institutions that are in place in order to do that.

      But what makes me incredibly optimistic -- and that's why being here at Facebook is so exciting for me -- is that at every juncture in our history, whenever we face challenges like this, whether it’s been the shift from a agricultural age to a industrial age, or whether it was facing the challenges of the Cold War, or trying to figure out how we make this country more fair and more inclusive, at every juncture we’ve always been able to adapt.  We’ve been able to change and we’ve been able to get ahead of the curve.  And that’s true today as well, and you guys are at the cutting edge of what’s happening.

      And so I’m going to be interested in talking to all of you about why this debate that we’re having around debt and our deficits is so important, because it’s going to help determine whether we can invest in our future and basic research and innovation and infrastructure that will allow us to compete in the 21st century and still preserve a safety net for the most vulnerable among us.

      But I’m also going to want to share ideas with you about how we can make our democracy work better and our politics work better -- because I don’t think there’s a problem out there that we can’t solve if we decide that we’re going to solve it together.

      And for that, I’m grateful for the opportunity to speak to you.  And instead of just giving a lot of long speeches I want to make sure that we’ve got time for as many questions as possible.

      So, Mark, I understand you got the first one.

      MR. ZUCKERBERG:  Yes, let’s start off.  So let’s start off with the conversation about the debt.  So I understand that yesterday morning you had a town hall in Virginia where you talked about your framework not only for resolving the short-term budget issues, but the longer-term debt.  And you spent some time talking about tax reform and some cost cutting, but you also spent a lot of time talking about things that you didn’t think that we could cut -- in education, infrastructure and clean energy.

      So my question to kind of start off is:  What specifically do you think we should do, and what specifically do you think we can cut in order to make this all add up?

      THE PRESIDENT:  Well, let me, first of all, Mark, share with you sort of the nature of the problem, because I think a lot of folks understand that it’s a problem but aren’t sure how it came about.

      In 2000, at the end of the Clinton administration, we not only had a balanced budget but we actually had a surplus.  And that was in part because of some tough decisions that had been made by President Clinton, Republican Congresses, Democratic Congresses, and President George H.W. Bush.  And what they had said was let’s make sure that we’re spending wisely on the things that matter; let’s spend less on things that don’t matter; and let’s make sure that we’re living within our means, that we’re taking in enough revenue to pay for some of these basic obligations.

      What happened then was we went through 10 years where we forgot what had created the surplus in the first place.  So we had a massive tax cut that wasn’t offset by cuts in spending.  We had two wars that weren’t paid for.  And this was the first time in history where we had gone to war and not asked for additional sacrifice from American citizens.  We had a huge prescription drug plan that wasn’t paid for.

      And so by the time I started office we already had about a trillion-dollar annual deficit and we had massive accumulated debt with interest payments to boot.  Then you have this huge recession.  And so what happens is less revenue is coming in -- because company sales are lower, individuals are making less money -- at the same time there’s more need out there.  So we’re having to help states and we’re having to help local governments.
      And that -- a lot of what the recovery was about was us making sure that the economy didn’t tilt over into a depression by making sure that teachers weren’t laid off and firefighters weren’t laid off, and there was still construction for roads and so forth -- all of which was expensive.  I mean, that added about another trillion dollars worth of debt.

      So now what we’ve got is a situation not only do we have this accumulated debt, but the baby boomers are just now starting to retire.  And what’s scary is not only that the baby boomers are retiring at a greater rate, which means they're making greater demands on Social Security, but primarily Medicare and Medicaid, but health care costs go up a lot faster than inflation and older populations use more health care costs.  You put that all together, and we have an unsustainable situation.

      So right now we face a critical time where we’re going to have to make some decisions how do we bring down the debt in the short term, and how do we bring down the debt over the long term.

      In the short term, Democrats and Republicans now agree we’ve got to reduce the debt by about $4 trillion over the next 10 years.  And I know that sounds like a lot of money -- it is.  But it’s doable if we do it in a balanced way.

      What I proposed was that about $2 trillion over 10 to 12 years is reduction in spending.  Government wastes, just like every other major institution does, and so there are things that we do that we can afford not to do.  Now, there are some things that I’d like to do, are fun to do, but we just can’t afford them right now.

      So we’ve made cuts in every area.  A good example is Pentagon spending, where Congress oftentimes stuffs weapons systems in the Pentagon budget that the Pentagon itself says we don’t need.  But special interests and constituencies helped to bloat the Pentagon budget.  So we’ve already reduced the Pentagon budget by about $400 billion.  We think we can do about another $400 billion.

      So we’ve got to look at spending both on non-security issues as well as defense spending.  And then what we’ve said is let’s take another trillion of that that we raise through a reform in the tax system that allows people like me -- and, frankly, you, Mark -- for paying a little more in taxes.  (Laughter.)

      MR. ZUCKERBERG:  I’m cool with that.

      THE PRESIDENT:  I know you’re okay with that.  (Laughter.)  Keep in mind, what we’re talking about is going back to the rates that existed when Bill Clinton was President.  Now, a lot of you were -- (laughter) -- I’m trying to say this delicately -- still in diapers at that time.  (Laughter.)  But for those of you who recall, the economy was booming, and wealthy people were getting wealthier.  There wasn’t a problem at that time.  If we go back to those rates alone, that by itself would do a lot in terms of us reducing our overall spending.  And if we can get a trillion dollars on the revenue side, $2 trillion in cutting spending, we can still make investments in basic research.

      We can still invest in something we call ARPA-E, which is like DARPA except just focused on energy, so that we can figure out what are the next breakthrough technologies that can help us reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.

      We can still make investments in education, so we’ve already expanded the Pell Grant program so that more young people can go to college.  We’re investing more in STEM education -- math and science and technology education.  We can still make those investments.  We can still rebuild our roads and our bridges, and invest in high-speed rail, and invest in the next generation of broadband and wireless, and make sure everybody has access to the Internet.  We can do all those things while still bringing down the deficit medium term.

      Now, there’s one last component of this -- and I know this is a long answer but I wanted to make sure everybody had the basic foundations for it.  Even if we get this $4 trillion, we do still have a long-term problem with Medicare and Medicaid, because health care costs, the inflation goes up so much faster than wages and salaries.  And this is where there’s another big philosophical debate with the Republicans, because what I’ve said is the best way for us to change it is to build on the health reform we had last year and start getting a better bang for our health care dollar.

      We waste so much on health care.  We spend about 20 percent more than any other country on Earth, and we have worse outcomes because we end up having multiple tests when we could just do one test and have it shared among physicians on Facebook, for example.

      We could focus on the chronically ill; 20 percent of the patients account for 80 percent of the costs.  So doing something simple like reimbursing hospitals and doctors for reducing their readmissions rate, and managing somebody with a chronic illness like diabetes so that they're taking their meds on a regular basis so that they don't come to the emergency room, that saves huge amounts of money.

      So that's what health care reform was about last year or a year and a half ago, and what we want to do is build on that and continue to improve the system.

      What the Republicans right now are saying is, number one, they can't agree to any increases in taxes, which means we’d have to cut out -- of that $4 trillion, all of it would come from education, transportation -- areas that I think are critical for our long-term future.

      So, for example, they proposed 70 percent cuts in clean energy.  Well, I don't know how we free ourselves from dependence on foreign oil -- and anybody who is paying gas prices knows that there’s an economic component to this as well as an environmental component to it -- if we’re not investing in the basic research and technology that allows solar, wind and others to thrive and develop.

      At the same time, what they’ve said is let’s make Medicare into a voucher program, so that retirees, instead of knowing that they're always going to have health care, they're going to get a voucher that covers part of the cost, and whatever health care inflation comes up is all going to be on them.  And if the health insurance companies don't sell you a policy that covers your illnesses, you’re out of luck.

      I think it is very important for us to have a basic social safety net for families with kids with disabilities, for seniors, for folks who are in nursing homes, and I think it’s important for us to invest in our basic research.  We can do all those things, but we’re only going to be able to do it by taking a balanced approach.  And that's what this big debate is about -- all about right now.  All right?

      MR. ZUCKERBERG:  All right, so -- sorry, don't mean to cut off the applause.  (Applause.)

      THE PRESIDENT:  No, no, no, no, no.

      MR. ZUCKERBERG:  That was a very thorough answer.

      THE PRESIDENT:  No, they were -- they were stunned by the length of that answer.  (Laughter.)  But it’s complicated stuff.

      MR. ZUCKERBERG:  So the next question is from someone watching Facebook live.  Jay Aptine (ph) from Williamsburg, Virginia writes in and asks:  “The housing crisis will not go away.  The mortgage financing for new homebuyers with low to moderate income is becoming very difficult.  As President, what can you do to relax the policies that are disqualifying qualified homebuyers from owning their first home?  How can you assure the low to moderate homebuyers that they will have the opportunity to own their first home?”

      THE PRESIDENT:  Well, it’s a good question.  And I’ll be honest with you, this is probably the biggest drag on the economy right now that we have -- along with I know the frustrations people have about gas prices.  What we’ve really seen is the housing market, which was a bubble, had greatly over-inflated in all regions of the country.  And I know I probably don't get a lot of sympathy about that here because I can only imagine what rents and mortgages you guys are paying.

      It is a real drag in all sorts of ways.  People, first of all, they feel poorer even if they still have a home or they’ve already purchased a home, because for a lot of folks their mortgage is now what’s called underwater.  The mortgage is more than the home is worth.  And so if you feel like your most important asset is now worth less than your debt, that's going to constrain how you spend.  People who want to move have a great deal of trouble selling, and people who want to buy, as you pointed out, are seeing terms a lot more restrictive.

      So we've put in place a bunch of programs to try to see if we can speed along the process of reaching a new equilibrium.  For example, what we did is we went to the mortgage lender and said, why don't you renegotiate with your mortgage -- with the person with the mortgage, renegotiate the terms of their mortgage so that their principal is a little bit lower, they can afford the payments, and that way homes don't get foreclosed on, there are fewer homes on the market, and that will raise prices and that will be good for everybody.  And we've seen some significant progress on that front.

      The challenge we still have, as your questioner properly points out, is that a lot of people who bought a first home when credit was easy now are finding that credit is tough.  And we've got to strike a balance.  Frankly, there’s some folks who are probably better off renting.  And what we don't want to do is return to a situation where people are putting no money down and they’ve got very easy payment terms at the front end and then it turns out five years from now, because they’ve got an adjustable rate mortgage, that they couldn't afford it and they lose their home.

      I think the regulators are trying to get that balance right. There are certain communities with high foreclosure rates where what we're trying to do is see if can we help state and local governments take over some of these homes and convert them and provide favorable terms to first-time home buyers.  But, frankly, I think we've got to understand that the days where it was really easy to buy a house without any money down is probably over.  And what we -- what I'm really concerned about is making sure that the housing market overall recovers enough that it’s not such a huge drag on the economy, because if it isn’t, then people will have more confidence, they’ll spend more, more people will get hired, and overall the economy will improve.

      But I recognize for a lot of folks who want to be first-time homebuyers it’s still tough out there.  It’s getting better in certain areas, but in some places, particularly where there was a big housing bubble, it’s not.

      MR. ZUCKERBERG:  So I think the next question is from a Facebook employee in the room today.  So Lauren Hale has a question.  Lauren, where are you from?

      Q    Hi -- over here.

      THE PRESIDENT:  Hey, Lauren.

      Q    Hi, Mr. President.  Thank you so much for joining us today.  I am originally from Detroit, Michigan, and now I'm out here working at Facebook.  So my question for you kind of builds on some of the things we were just talking about.  At the beginning of your term you spent a lot of time talking about job creation and the road to economic recovery, and one of the ways to do that would be substantially increasing federal investments in various areas as a way to fill the void left from consumer spending.  Since then, we’ve seen the conversation shift from that of job creation and economic recovery to that of spending cuts and the deficit.  So I would love to know your thoughts on how you’re going to balance these two going forward, or even potentially shift the conversation back.

      THE PRESIDENT:  Well, you’re exactly right that when I first came into office our number-one job was preventing us from getting into another Great Depression.  And that was what the Recovery Act was all about.  So we helped states make sure that they could minimize some of the layoffs and some of the difficult budget choices that they faced.  We made sure that we had infrastructure spending all around the country.  And, in fact, we made the biggest investment in infrastructure since Dwight Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System.

      We made the largest investment in history in clean energy research, and it’s really paying off.  For example, when I came into office, we had about 2 percent of the advanced battery manufacturing here in America.  And as everybody here knows, what’s really holding us back from my goal of a million electric vehicles on the road is that battery technology is still tough.  It’s clunky; it’s heavy; it’s expensive.  And if we can make significant improvements in battery technology then I think the opportunities for electric vehicles, alternative vehicles that are much cheaper -- our opportunities are limitless.

      So those were all investments that we made in the first two years.  Now, the economy is now growing.  It’s not growing quite as fast as we would like, because after a financial crisis, typically there’s a bigger drag on the economy for a longer period of time.  But it is growing.  And over the last year and a half we’ve seen almost 2 million jobs created in the private sector.

      Because this recession came at a time when we were already deeply in debt and it made the debt worse, if we don’t have a serious plan to tackle the debt and the deficit, that could actually end up being a bigger drag on the economy than anything else.  If the markets start feeling that we’re not serious about the problem, and if you start seeing investors feel uncertain about the future, then they could pull back right at the time when the economy is taking off.

      So you’re right that it’s tricky.  Folks around here are used to the hills in San Francisco, and you’ve driven -- I don’t know if they still have clutch cars around here.  Anybody every driven a clutch car?  (Laughter.)  I mean, you got to sort of tap and -- well, that’s sort of what we faced in terms of the economy, right?  We got to hit the accelerator, but we’ve got to also make sure that we don’t gun it; we can’t let the car slip backwards.  And so what we’re trying to do then is put together a debt and deficit plan that doesn’t slash spending so drastically that we can’t still make investments in education, that we can’t still make investments in infrastructure -- all of which would help the economy grow.

      In December, we passed a targeted tax cut for business investment, as well as the payroll tax that has a stimulus effect that helps to grow the economy.  We can do those things and still grow the economy while having a plan in place to reduce the deficit, first by 2015, and then over the long term.  So I think we can do both, but it does require the balanced approach that I was talking about.

      If all we’re doing is spending cuts and we’re not discriminating about it, if we’re using a machete instead of a scalpel and we’re cutting out things that create jobs, then the deficit could actually get worse because we could slip back into another recession.

      And obviously for folks in Detroit, where you’re from, they know that our investments can make a difference because we essentially saved the U.S. auto industry.  We now have three auto companies here in America that are all turning a profit.  G.M. just announced that it’s hiring back all of the workers that it was planning to lay off.  And we did so, by the way, at the same time as we were able to increase fuel efficiency standards on cars for the first time in 30 years.  So it can be done, but it takes a balanced approach.  (Applause.)

      MR. ZUCKERBERG:  All right, so we have a question from the University of Florida, where in February, you launched this initiative at Whitehouse.gov, younger Americans with this goal to have a hundred youth roundtables across the country and a bunch of them are taking place right now, watching this Facebook live.

      So Cesar Fernandez (ph) and Elisa Rectanas (ph) are participating in one of those roundtables, and they wanted to ask you this:  “Mr. President, in your deficit reduction speech last week you spoke of the need to not only reduce government spending but to also increase federal revenue.  In light of our nation’s budget challenges, will your administration consider revisiting policies such as the DREAM Act, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will reduce the deficit by $1.4 billion and increase the government revenue by $2.3 billion over the next 10 years?”  (Applause.)

      THE PRESIDENT:  Let me talk about not only the DREAM Act but about immigration policy generally.  And I want to thank -- Sheryl Sandberg actually participated in a discussion that we had yesterday, bringing together business leaders and government officials and faith leaders, a broad cross-section of Americans together to talk about how do we finally fix an immigration system that's fundamentally broken.

      For those of you who aren’t familiar, the DREAM Act is -- deals with a particular portion of the population, kids who were brought here when they were young by their parents; their parents might have come here illegally -- the kids didn't do anything.  They were just doing what kids do, which is follow their parents. They’ve grown up as Americans.  They went to school with us or with our kids.  They think of themselves as Americans, but many of them still don't have a legal status.

      And so what we’ve said is, especially for these young people who are our neighbors, our friends, our children’s friends, if they are of good character and going to school or joining our military, they want to be part of the American family, why wouldn’t we want to embrace them?  Why wouldn’t we want to make sure that -- (applause.)  Why wouldn’t we want to make sure that they're contributing to our future?

      So that's the DREAM Act.  But that's just a small part of a broader challenge that we have.  Immigration in this country has always been complicated.  The truth of the matter is that we are both a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws.  Sometimes the laws haven’t been fair.  Sometimes the laws have been restrictive to certain ethnic groups.  There have been quotas.  Sometimes our immigration policies have been arbitrary and have been determined by whether industry at a particular time was willing to bring in workers on the cheap.

      But what’s undeniable is America is a nation of immigrants. That’s our history and that’s what makes us stronger.  Because we’ve got ambitious people from all around the world who come here because they’ve got a new idea and they want to create the new big thing, or they just want a better future for their kids and their family, and that dynamism is part of what’s propelled our progress and kept us young.

      Now, I think most Americans understand that and most Americans agree with that.  At the same time, I think most Americans feel there should be an orderly process to do it.  People shouldn’t just be coming here and cutting in front of the line, essentially, and staying without having gone through the proper channels.

      So what we’ve said is let’s fix the whole system.  First of all, let’s make the legal immigration system more fair than it is and more efficient than it is.  And that includes, by the way, something I know that is of great concern here in Silicon Valley. If we’ve got smart people who want to come here and start businesses and are PhDs in math and science and computer science, why don’t we want them to say?  (Applause.)  I mean, why would we want to send them someplace else?  (Applause.)

      So those are potential job creators.  Those are job generators.  I think about somebody like an Andy Grove of Intel. We want more Andy Groves here in the United States.  We don’t want them starting companies -- we don’t want them starting Intel in China or starting it in France.  We want them starting it here.

      So there’s a lot that we can do for making sure that high-skilled immigrants who come here, study -- we’ve paid for their college degrees, we’ve given them scholarships, we’ve given them this training -- let’s make sure that if they want to reinvest and make their future here in America that they can.  So that’s point number one.

      But point number two is you also have a lot of unskilled workers who are now here who are living in the shadows.  They’re contributing to our economy in all sorts of ways.  They’re working in the agricultural sector.  They are in restaurants, and they’re in communities all across the country looking after children and helping to building America.  But they’re scared, and they feel as if they’re locked out of their surroundings.

      And what I’ve said is they did break the law; they came here -- they have to take responsibility for that.  They should pay a fine.  They should learn English.  They should go to the back of the line so that they don’t automatically get citizenship.  But there should be a pathway for them to get legalized in our society so they don’t fear for themselves or their families, so that families aren’t separated.

      At the same time, let’s make sure we’ve got a secure border so that folks aren’t wandering through the desert to get here.  Let’s make the legal immigration system more efficient and more effective so there aren’t huge backlogs.

      This is all part of what we call comprehensive immigration reform.  And there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to achieve a system that is fair, is equitable, is an economic engine for America that helps the people who are already here get acculturated, and make sure that our laws aren’t being broken but we’re still true to our traditions.

      But, as I mentioned to Sheryl yesterday, I can’t solve this problem by myself.  Nancy Pelosi is a big champion of this.  The Democratic caucus in the House I think is prepared for -- a majority of them are prepared to advance comprehensive immigration reform.  But we’re going to have to have bipartisan support in order to make it happen.  And all of you have to make sure your voices are heard, saying this is a priority, this is something important -- because if politicians don’t hear from you, then it probably won’t happen.  I can’t do it by myself.  We’re going to have to change the laws in Congress, but I’m confident we can make it happen.  (Applause.)

      MR. ZUCKERBERG:  All right.  So the next one is from a Facebook employee, Leo Abraham.  Leo, where are you from?

      THE PRESIDENT:  Hey, Leo.

      Q    Hi, hey.  I’m from -- originally from San Jose, California.  My question is:  The 2012 budget plan proposed by Paul Ryan has been praised by many in the media as bold or brave. Do you see this as a time that calls for boldness, and do you think that the plan you outlined last week demonstrated sufficient boldness, or is this just a media creation?

      THE PRESIDENT:  No, it’s a great question.  Look, here is what I’d say.  The Republican budget that was put forward I would say is fairly radical.  I wouldn’t call it particularly courageous.  I do think Mr. Ryan is sincere.  I think he’s a patriot.  I think he wants to solve a real problem, which is our long-term deficit.  But I think that what he and the other Republicans in the House of Representatives also want to do is change our social compact in a pretty fundamental way.

      Their basic view is that no matter how successful I am, no matter how much I’ve taken from this country -- I wasn’t born wealthy; I was raised by a single mom and my grandparents.  I went to college on scholarships.  There was a time when my mom was trying to get her PhD, where for a short time she had to take food stamps.  My grandparents relied on Medicare and Social Security to help supplement their income when they got old.

      So their notion is, despite the fact that I’ve benefited from all these investments -- my grandfather benefited from the GI Bill after he fought in World War II -- that somehow I now have no obligation to people who are less fortunate than me and I have no real obligation to future generations to make investments so that they have a better.

      So what his budget proposal does is not only hold income tax flat, he actually wants to further reduce taxes for the wealthy, further reduce taxes for corporations, not pay for those, and in order to make his numbers work, cut 70 percent out of our clean energy budget, cut 25 percent out of our education budget, cut transportation budgets by a third.  I guess you could call that bold.  I would call it shortsighted.  (Applause.)

      And then, as I said, there’s a fundamental difference between how the Republicans and I think about Medicare and Medicaid and our health care system.  Their basic theory is that if we just turn Medicare into a voucher program and turn Medicaid into block grant programs, then now you, a Medicare recipient, will go out and you’ll shop for the best insurance that you’ve got -- that you can find -- and that you’re going to control costs because you’re going to say to the insurance company, this is all I can afford.

      That will control costs, except if you get sick and the policy that you bought doesn’t cover what you’ve got.  Then either you’re going to mortgage your house or you’re going to go to the emergency room, in which case I, who do have insurance, are going to have to pay for it indirectly because the hospital is going to have uncompensated care.

      So they don’t really want to make the health care system more efficient and cheaper.  What they want to do is to push the costs of health care inflation on to you.  And then you’ll be on your own trying to figure out in the marketplace how to make health care cheaper.

      The problem is, you’re just one person.  Now, you work at Facebook, it’s a big enough company; Facebook can probably negotiate with insurance companies and providers to get you a pretty good deal.  But if you’re a startup company, if you’re an entrepreneur out there in the back of your garage, good luck trying to get insurance on your own.  You can’t do it.  If you’re somebody who’s older and has a preexisting condition, insurance companies won’t take you.

      So what we’ve said is let’s make sure instead of just pushing the costs off on to people who individually are not going to have any negotiating power or ability to change how providers operate, or how hospitals or doctors operate, how insurance companies operate, let’s make sure that we have a system both for Medicare but also for people who currently don’t have health insurance where they can be part of a big pool.  They can negotiate for changes in how the health care system works so that it’s more efficient; so that it’s more effective; so that you get better care, so that we have fewer infection rates, for example, in hospitals; so there are fewer readmission rates; so that we’re caring for the chronically ill more effectively; so that there are fewer unnecessary tests.  That’s how you save money.  The government will save money, but you’ll also save money.

      So we think that’s a better way of doing it.  Now, what they’ll say is, well, you know what, that will never work because it’s government imposed and it’s bureaucracy and it’s government takeover and there are death panels.  I still don’t entirely understand the whole “death panel” concept.  But I guess what they’re saying is somehow some remote bureaucrat will be deciding your health care for you.  All we’re saying is if we’ve got health care experts -- doctors and nurses and consumers -- who are helping to design how Medicare works more intelligently, then we don't have to radically change Medicare.

      So, yes, I think it’s fair to say that their vision is radical.  No, I don't think it’s particularly courageous.  Because the last point I’ll make is this.  Nothing is easier than solving a problem on the backs of people who are poor or people who are powerless or don't have lobbyists or don't have clout.  I don't think that's particularly courageous.  (Applause.)

      MR. ZUCKERBERG:  All right, the next one is from the web.  We’ve got a question from Kwami Simmons (ph) from Orlando, Florida.  And he asks:  “I strongly believe that education is the greatest equalizer.  With so many problems plaguing our current system, is it possible to examine a complete overhaul of the system so that it addresses the needs of modern students?”

      And before you jump in, I just want to say as someone who has spent a bunch of time researching education and who cares about this, I think the Race to the Top stuff that you guys have done is one of the most under-appreciated and most important things that your administration has done.  (Applause.)  

      THE PRESIDENT:  I appreciate that.  This is an area where actually I think you’ve seen the parties actually come together. And there’s some good bipartisan work being done.

      It used to be that the argument around education always revolved around the left saying we just need more money, and the right saying we should just blow up the system because public schools aren’t doing a good job.  And what you’re now seeing is people recognizing we need both money and reform.  It’s not an either-or proposition; it’s a both-and proposition.

      So what Mark just mentioned, something called Race to the Top, pretty simple concept.  Most federal dollars are allocated through a formula.  If you’ve got a certain number of poor kids or you’ve got a certain number of disabled kids in your school district, there’s a formula, and you get a certain amount of money.  And every state and every school district gets that money according to the formula.

      What we did was we took about 1 percent of the total spending on education and we said, to get this 1 percent, show us that you’re reforming the system.  It’s almost -- it’s like a competition model.  And so every state, every school district could apply.  And you had to show us that you had a good plan to retrain teachers and recruit and do good professional development so we’ve got the best teacher possible.

      You had to have accountability.  You had to show us that you were actually making progress in the schools, and that you were measuring through data the improvements that were being made; that you were reaching into the schools that were hardest to reach -- because there are about 2,000 schools around the country that account for the majority of dropouts in our country.  They're like dropout factories -- so show us a plan to go into those schools and really make a big difference.

      And what’s happened is that over 40 states, in the process of competing for this extra money, ended up initiating probably the most meaningful reforms that we’ve seen in a generation.  And so it’s made a huge difference.  Even those states that didn't end up actually winning the competition still made changes that are improving the potential for good outcomes in the schools.

      So that's the kind of creative approach that you’ve seen some Democrats and some Republicans embrace.  And our hope is we can build on that.

      A couple of things that we know work:  The most important thing to a good education is making sure we’ve got a good teacher in front of that classroom.  And so providing more support for teachers, recruiting the best and brightest into teaching, making sure that they're compensated, but also making sure that they're performing, that's hugely important.

      The other thing is good data so that there’s a constant feedback, not just a bunch of standardized tests that go into a drawer or that people may game in order not to get penalized.  That's what happened under No Child Left Behind.  But instead, real good data that you can present to the teacher while they're still teaching that child and say, you know what, this child is falling behind in math; here are some ways to do it, to improve their performance.

      So we’re starting to see real progress on the ground, and I’m optimistic that we can actually, before the 2012 election, potentially have a federal education law that will embody some of the best information that we have about how to initiate good school reform.

      Now, last point I’ll make on this:  Government alone can’t do it.  One of the things every time I come to Silicon Valley that I’m inspired by but I’m also frustrated by is how many smart people are here, but also frustrated that I always hear stories about how we can’t find enough engineers, we can’t find enough computer programmers.  You know what, that means our education system is not working the way it should, and that's got to start early.

      And that's why we’re emphasizing math and science.  That's why we’re emphasizing teaching girls math and science.  (Applause.)  That's why we’re emphasizing making sure that black and Hispanic kids are getting math and science.  (Applause.)

      We’ve got to do such a better job when it comes to STEM education.  AAnd that’s one of the reasons, by the way, that we had our first science fair at the White House in a very long time, just because we want to start making science cool.  (Applause.)  I want people to feel the same way about the next big energy breakthrough or the next big Internet breakthrough, I want people to feel the same way they felt about the moon launch -- that that’s how we’re going to stay competitive for the future.  And that’s why these investments in education are so important.

      But, as I said, government alone can’t do it.  There has got to be a shift in American culture, where once again we buckle down and we say this stuff is important and it’s -- that’s why, Mark, the work you’re doing in Newark, for example, the work that the Gates Foundation are doing in philanthropic investments, in best practices and education -- especially around math and science training -- are going to be so important.

      We’ve got to lift -- we’ve got to lift our game up when it comes to technology and math and science.  That’s, hopefully, one of the most important legacies that I can have as President of the United States.  (Applause.)

      MR. ZUCKERBERG:  All right.  So the next one is from another Facebook employee.  Here’s James Mitchell.  So, James Mitchell, where are you from?

      THE PRESIDENT:  Here’s James back here.

      Q    Hi, Mr. President.

      THE PRESIDENT:  Hey, James.

      Q    I'm James Mitchell, born in Chicago and raised out here in Cupertino, California.  I have yet another question for you about the debt and health care.

      THE PRESIDENT:  Go ahead.

      Q    So the biggest threat we have fiscally is the rise in health care costs.  Unfortunately, a lot of the solutions we hear to Medicare and Medicaid don’t involve actually slowing down the rise in health care costs.  Instead, they involve shifting costs to beneficiaries and states.  So my question is:  Can you talk a bit more about what provisions of the Affordable Health Care Act are designed to slow down the rise of health care costs, and what policies you’d like to see enacted in the future to continue to slow down the rise of health care costs?

      THE PRESIDENT:  Let me give you a couple of examples, because you’re exactly right in how you describe it.  I don’t want to just shift the health care costs on to the American people, I want to actually reduce health care costs.

      Let’s take the example of health IT.  We’re in Silicon Valley, so we can talk about IT stuff.  I’ll try to sound like I know what I’m talking about.  (Laughter.)  The health care system is one of the few aspects of our society where a lot of stuff is still done on paper.  The last time you guys went to a doctor’s office or maybe to your dentist’s office, how many people still had, like, to fill out a form on a clipboard?  Right?  And the reason for that is because a large chunk of our provider system is not automated.  So what ends up happening is you may go to your primary care physician; he does some basic tests, he sees something of concern, he refers you to a specialist.  You go to the specialist; he’ll do another test.

      You’re getting charged, or your insurance company is getting charged, for both those tests, as opposed to the test that was taken by your primary care physician being emailed to the specialist.  Or better yet, if it turns out that there may be three or four specialists involved, because it’s a difficult diagnosis -- this is all hypothetical; you look very healthy.  (Laughter.)  But let’s say there were a bunch of specialists.  What would be ideal would be if you get all the specialists together with the primary care physician the first time you’re seen so that you’re not paying for multiple visits as well as multiple tests.

      That’s not how it works right now.  Now, part of it is technology.  So what we did in the Affordable Care Act, building on what we did with the Recovery Act, is try to provide incentives to providers to start getting integrated, automated systems.  And it’s tough because the individual doctor may say to him or herself, I don’t want to put out the initial capital outlay; that’s expensive even though it may make my system more efficient later on.

      So providing some incentives, some help, for the front end investments for a community hospital or for individual providers so that we can slowly get this system more effective, that’s priority number one.

      We know it can be done, by the way.  Surprisingly enough, the health care system that is -- does the best job on this of anybody is actually the Veterans Administration, the VA health care system, because it’s a fully integrated system.  Everybody is working for the VA, all the doctors, all the hospitals, all the providers, so they’ve been able to achieve huge cost savings just because everybody is on a single system.     

      It’s also, though, how we reimburse doctors and how we reimburse hospitals.  So right now, what happens is, when you’ve taken those two tests, if you’re old enough to qualify for Medicare, well, each doctor sends their bill to Medicare and Medicare pays both bills.  And let’s say that you end up getting an operation.  They’ll send the bill for that, and Medicare pays that.  Let’s say they didn’t do a very good job, or you got sick in the hospital, and you are readmitted and you have to be treated again and they have to do the operation all over again.  Medicare then gets billed for the second operation.

      I mean, imagine if that’s how it worked when you bought a car.  So you go, you buy your car.  A week later, the car doesn’t work.  You go back to the dealer and they charged you to fix the bad job that they did in the first place.  Well, that’s what Medicare does all the time.  So we don’t provide incentives for performance.  We just provide -- we just pay for the number of qualified items that were procedures that were performed or tests that were performed by the provider.

      So what we want to do is to start changing how folks are reimbursed.  Let’s take a hospital.  We want to give -- this is sort of like Race to the Top, what Mark was talking about in education.  We want to be able to say to a hospital, if you do a really good job reducing infection rates in the hospital, which kill tens of thousands of people across America every year and are a huge cause for readmission rates, and we know that hospitals can drastically reduce those reinfection rates just by simple protocols of how employees are washing their hands and how they’re moving from room to room and so forth -- there are hospitals who have done it -- if we can say to a hospital, you’ll get a bonus for that, Medicare will reimburse you for instituting these simple procedures, that saves the whole system money.

      And that's what we’ve tried to do in the Affordable Care Act, is to start institutionalizing these new systems.  But it takes time because we’ve got a private sector system -- it’s not like the VA -- a bunch of individual doctors, individual hospitals spread out all across the country with private insurers.  So it’s not something that we can do overnight.

      Our hope is, is that over the next five years, we’re able to see significant savings through these mechanisms, and that will save everybody -- not just people who are on Medicare and Medicaid -- it will save everybody money including folks here at Facebook.  Because I’m sure that you guys provide health insurance and I suspect if you look at your health insurance bills they don't make you happy.  Okay.  (Applause.)

      MR. ZUCKERBERG:  So we have time for only one more question.
      THE PRESIDENT:  All right.

      MR. ZUCKERBERG:  It’s a question from Terry Atwater (ph) from Houston, Texas:  “If you had to do anything differently during your first four years, what would it be?”

      THE PRESIDENT:  Well, it’s only been two and a half, so I’m sure I’ll make more mistakes in the next year and a half.  The jury will still be out.  (Laughter.)  There are all sorts of day-to-day issues where I say to myself, oh, I didn't say that right, or I didn't explain this clearly enough, or maybe if I had sequenced this plan first as opposed to that one, maybe it would have gotten done quicker.

      Health care obviously was a huge battle, and if it hadn’t been for Nancy Pelosi and her leadership in the House and the great work that -- (applause) -- Anna Eshoo and Mike Honda and others did -- we wouldn’t have gotten it done if it hadn’t been for great work in Congress.

      But I do think that it was so complicated that at a certain point people just started saying, oh, this is typical Washington bickering.  And I’ve asked myself sometimes is there a way that we could have gotten it done more quickly and in a way that the American people wouldn’t have been so frustrated by it?   I’m not sure I could have because there’s a reason why it hadn’t gotten done in a hundred years.  It is a -- it’s hard to fix a system as big as health care and as complicated as our health care system.

      I can tell you that -- I think the best way to answer the question is what do I feel I still have to get done, where I still feel a huge sense of urgency.  I’ve talked about a couple of things.  Getting our deficits and debt under control in a balanced way I feel needs to happen while I’m President.  I don't want to leave it to the next President.

      Immigration -- something I mentioned -- we have not gotten done.  It’s something I care deeply about.  It’s the right thing for the country.  I want to get that done while I’m President.

      Energy -- we haven’t talked a lot about energy today, but first of all, $4-a-gallon gas really hurts a lot of people around this country.  It’s not because they're wasteful, but if you’re driving 50 miles to work and that's the only job you can find, and you can’t afford some hybrid so you’re stuck with the old beater that you’re driving around that gets eight miles a gallon, these gas prices are killing you right now.

      And so this is the reason why I’ve said that it is so important for us to invest in new approaches to energy.  We’ve got to have a long-term plan.  It means investing in things like solar and wind, investing in biofuels, investing in clean car technology.  It means converting the federal fleet 100 percent to fuel-efficient vehicles, because we’re a huge market maker. Obviously it turns out that I’ve got a lot of cars as President. (Laughter.)

      And if we’re out there purchasing electric cars and hybrids, that can help boost demand and drive down prices.  Continuing to increase fuel-efficiency standards on cars; increasing oil production but in an intelligent way.  I mean, those are all hugely important.  And by the way, we can pay for it.

      Let me say this.  We lose -- the Treasury loses $4 billion a year on subsidies to oil companies.  Now, think about this.  The top five oil companies have made somewhere between $75 billion and $125 billion every year for the last five years.  Nobody is doing better than Exxon.  Nobody is doing better than Shell or these other companies.  They are doing great.  They are making money hand over fist.  Well, maybe Facebook is doing a little better.  (Laughter.)  But you get the idea.  They’re doing really well.  They don’t need special tax breaks that cost us $4 billion.  So what we’ve said is, why can’t we eliminate the tax breaks for the oil companies who are doing great, and invest that in new energy sources that can help us save the planet?  (Applause.)

      So when it comes to energy, when it comes to immigration, when it comes to getting our deficit under control in a balanced and smart way, when it comes to improving our math and science education, when it comes to reinvesting in our infrastructure, we’ve just got a lot more work to do.

      And I guess my closing comment, Mark, would just be I hope that everybody here -- that you don’t get frustrated and cynical about our democracy.  I mean it is frustrating.  Lord knows it’s frustrating.  (Laughter.)  And I know that some of you who might have been involved in the campaign or been energized back in 2008, you’re frustrated that, gosh, it didn’t get done fast enough and it seems like everybody is bickering all the time.  Just remember that we’ve been through tougher times before.  We’ve always come out ascendant, we’ve always come out on top, because we’ve still got the best universities in the world, we’ve still got the most productive workers in the world, this is still the most dynamic, entrepreneurial culture in the world.

      If we come together, we can solve all these problems.  But I can’t do it by myself.  The only way it happens is if all of you still get involved, still get engaged.

      It hasn’t been that long since Election Day, and we’ve gone through some very, very tough times and we’ve still gotten a lot done.  We’ve still been able to get this economy recovering.  We’ve still been able to get health care passed.  We’ve still been able to invest in clean energy.  We’ve still been able to make sure that we overturn “don’t ask, don’t tell.”  We still made sure that we got two women on the Supreme Court.  We’ve made progress.  (Applause.)

      So rather than be discouraged, I hope everybody is willing to double down and work even harder.  Regardless of your political affiliation, you’ve got to be involved, especially the young people here, your generation.  If you don’t give us a shove, if you don’t give the system a push, it’s just not going to change.  And you’re going to be the ones who end up suffering the consequences.

      But if you are behind it, if you put the same energy and imagination that you put into Facebook into the political process, I guarantee you there’s nothing we can’t solve.

      All right?  Thank you, Mark.  (Applause.)

      MR. ZUCKERBERG:  So I just want to thank you again.  It’s such an honor to have you here.

      THE PRESIDENT:  We had a great time.

      MR. ZUCKERBERG:  And as a small token of our appreciation, in case for some reason you want to dress like me --

      THE PRESIDENT:  Nice, nice.

      MR. ZUCKERBERG:  A Facebook hoodie.  (Applause.)

      THE PRESIDENT:  This is a high-fashion statement right here. This is beautiful.

      Thank you very much, everybody.  Appreciate you.  (Applause.)

                                           END                         3:04 P.M. PDT

Remarks by the President at Easter Prayer Breakfast

East Room

8:39 A.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  Thank you.  Please, please have a seat.

Well, it is absolutely wonderful to be here with all of you today.  I see so many good friends all around the room.

Before I begin, I want to acknowledge one particular member of my administration who I’m extraordinarily proud of and does not get much credit, and that is USAID Administrator, Dr. Raj Shah, who is doing great work with faith leaders.  (Applause.)  Where’s Raj?  Where is he?  There he is right there.  Raj is doing great work with faith leaders on our Feed the Future global hunger program, as well as on a host of other issues.  We could not be prouder of the work that he’s doing.  I also want to acknowledge Congressman Mike McIntyre and his wife, Dee.  (Applause.)  Mike -- as some of you know, obviously, North Carolina was ravaged by storms this past weekend, and our thoughts and prayers are with all the families who have been affected down there.  I know that Mike will be helping those communities rebuild after the devastation.

To all the faith leaders and the distinguished guests that are here today, welcome to our second annual -- I’m going to make it annual, why not?  (Laughter and applause.)  Our second Easter Prayer Breakfast.  The Easter Egg Roll, that’s well established.  (Laughter.)  The Prayer Breakfast we started last year, in part because it gave me a good excuse to bring together people who have been such extraordinary influences in my life and such great friends.  And it gives me a chance to meet and make some new friends here in the White House.

I wanted to host this breakfast for a simple reason -– because as busy as we are, as many tasks as pile up, during this season, we are reminded that there’s something about the resurrection -- something about the resurrection of our savior, Jesus Christ, that puts everything else in perspective. 

We all live in the hustle and bustle of our work.  And everybody in this room has weighty responsibilities, from leading churches and denominations, to helping to administer important government programs, to shaping our culture in various ways.  And I admit that my plate has been full as well.  (Laughter.)  The inbox keeps on accumulating.  (Laughter.)
 
But then comes Holy Week.  The triumph of Palm Sunday.  The humility of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet.  His slow march up that hill, and the pain and the scorn and the shame of the cross.

And we’re reminded that in that moment, he took on the sins of the world -- past, present and future -- and he extended to us that unfathomable gift of grace and salvation through his death and resurrection.

In the words of the book Isaiah:  “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities:  the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.”

This magnificent grace, this expansive grace, this “Amazing Grace” calls me to reflect.  And it calls me to pray.  It calls me to ask God for forgiveness for the times that I’ve not shown grace to others, those times that I’ve fallen short.  It calls me to praise God for the gift of our son -- his Son and our Savior.

And that’s why we have this breakfast.  Because in the middle of critical national debates, in the middle of our busy lives, we must always make sure that we are keeping things in perspective.  Children help do that.  (Laughter.)  A strong spouse helps do that.  But nothing beats scripture and the reminder of the eternal.

So I’m honored that all of you have come here this Holy Week to join me in a spirit of prayer, and I pray that our time here this morning will strengthen us, both individually as believers and as Americans.  And with that, let me introduce my good friend, Bishop Vashti McKenzie, for our opening prayer.  (Applause.)

END
8:45 A.M. EDT

Remarks by the President at a DNC Event

Navy Pier
Chicago, Illinois

9:16 P.M. CDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, Chicago!  (Applause.)  It is good to be back in Chicago!  (Applause.)  It’s good to be back in Navy Pier.  (Applause.)  And I didn’t have to pay for parking.  (Laughter.) 

I remember driving around that parking lot -- (laughter) -- taking Malia and Sasha to the Children’s Museum.  Can't find a spot.  (Laughter.)  You keep on going up, around and around and around.  (Laughter.)  It’s a lot smoother these days.  (Applause.) 

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Love you!

THE PRESIDENT:  Love you back.  (Applause.) 

Everybody is a special guest, but we've got some super, super special guests.  First of all, we've got in the house “Mr. Cub” -- Ernie Banks is here.  (Applause.)  Second of all, we've got a former Bull who doesn’t look like he’s aged at all -- (laughter) -- still has that baby-face -- B.J. Armstrong is in the house.  (Applause.) 

I want to thank Colby Caillat for performing tonight -- (applause) -- and she’s going to be at White House Easter Egg Roll.  That's big.  (Laughter.)  You know you're big time.  (Laughter.)  Justin Bieber was just there.  (Applause.) 

Although I have to confess -- this is a little side note.  The White House Christmas party or “Christmas in Washington” event was going on.  And Usher was there and there were a bunch of performers.  And there was this little guy who really sang well, great entertainer.  And I was sort of acknowledging all the crowd, and I said, “And give it up for Justin “Biber.”  (Laughter.)  I didn’t know him at the time.  And everybody yelled, “It’s ‘Beeber’.”  And Malia and Sasha were mortified -- (laughter) -- when they heard that I had mispronounced his name. Anyway, that's an aside.

Rashard Mendenhall is in the house.  (Applause.)  Chicagoan and Pittsburgh Steeler. 

Now, in addition, before I begin, I want to pay tribute to a friend who has recently taken over this town.  He’s become the most powerful man in Chicago.  Unbelievable energy, sharp elbows -- (laughter) -- but has brought Chicagoans a new sense of hope about our future.  Give it up for Derek Rose.  (Applause.) 

AUDIENCE:  MVP!  MVP!  MVP!

THE PRESIDENT:  MVP!  MVP!  MVP!

I suppose Rahm is doing a pretty good job, too.  (Laughter.) 

And as good as Derek is, the Bulls would not be where they need to be if it were not for -- Mr. Joakim Noah is in the house. (Applause.)  And his mom is there, and I love his mom, too.  She’s wonderful.  Yes, it’s mom, you know, come on.  (Laughter.) 

Now, even as we are all excited about what the future holds for Chicago under its new mayor, we also owe Rahm’s predecessor, my chief of staff’s big brother, a huge debt of gratitude for taking a city that was already a great American city and turning it into a great world city, healing some of the divisions in this city.  We are grateful for Richard Daley.  Give it up for Richard Daley.  (Applause.)

But I can tell you that I like to tease Rahm.  I joke about him.  This is a guy who stepped in, in one of the toughest jobs in Washington -- if not the toughest job -- and stood by my side every step of the way.  And I have seen how he performs under pressure.  I have seen the kind of commitment that he has to the American people.  You guys made a good choice.  He is going to be a great mayor, and I am proud to call Rahm Emanuel my friend.  (Applause.)

So I look around the room and as crowded as it is, I just see friends everywhere.  (Applause.)  People I’ve been knowing for a long, long time.  It’s good to be home.  (Applause.)  It is good to be home.

This is the city where I fell in love and started a family. This is the city where I got my start in politics 25 years ago, working with churches on the South Side to bring jobs to the jobless and hope to the hopeless.  It’s where I stood with so many of you in Grant Park, almost two and a half years ago when we showed the world that all things are possible in the United States of America.  (Applause.)

And some of you may have heard this is where we’re going to be basing our headquarters for the 2012 campaign, right here, back home in Chicago.  (Applause.) 

Now, this is the first time in modern history that a sitting President has based their reelection campaign outside of Washington.  (Applause.)  But I decided I don't want our campaign to be just hearing all the pundits and the powerbrokers.  I want our campaign to be here because you guys are the ones who got me started.   (Applause.)  I see people in this audience who supported me when nobody could pronounce my name.  (Laughter.)  I see folks who supported me when I ran for Congress and got a beatdown -- (laughter) -- and then helped to nurse me back to health. 

One of the things that I’ve seen again and again over the last couple of years is the conversation in Washington is very different from the conversation around kitchen tables and office coolers.  And I wanted to make sure that our campaign was rooted in your hopes and rooted in your dreams.  (Applause.)  I want to make sure we’re putting the campaign in your hands -- in the same hands, the same organizers, the same volunteers who proved the last time that together ordinary folks can do extraordinary things.  That’s what this campaign is about.  (Applause.) 

Now, we’re all a bit older.  (Laughter.)  Some of us are a little bit grayer. 

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Oh, yeah.  But you look good!  (Laughter.)   

THE PRESIDENT:  I’ll let Michelle know you said that.  (Laughter.) 

But all of us can remember that night in Grant Park, the excitement in the streets, the sense of hope, the sense of possibility.  And yet, even as we celebrate -- you remember what I said back then?  I said our work wasn’t ending; our work was just beginning -- because while it was clear that I was going to have a full plate going into Election Day, I’d be lying if I said that I knew how a plate -- how full that plate would be.  (Laughter.)  It’s been a little fuller than we imagined. 

We took office in the middle of the worst recession in our lifetimes -- one that left millions of Americans without jobs, had folks losing their homes.  A recession so bad that many families are still grappling with the aftershocks, even though the economy is growing again. 

But the 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 two million private sector jobs.  That didn’t happen by accident.  It happened because we made some tough choices -- like saving the American auto industry.

You remember they said it couldn't be done.  There were some folks who were going to write it off, but it was the right thing to do.  And now GM is hiring back every single worker they laid off -- (applause) -- and every one of the Big Three American automakers are making a profit once again.  That's because of the tough choices we made, because of the work you did getting me into office.  (Applause.)   

So make no mistake.  Because of you, we’ve been able to make real progress over the last few years.  Because of you, we were able to prevent another Great Depression.  Because of you, we’re making the most meaningful education reforms in a generation through a competition called Race to the Top, raising teachers up and raising learning standards in schools and states across America. 

Because of you, we overcame the status quo and reformed Wall Street, making sure that we’ve got some of the toughest consumer protections so you won’t get cheated when you apply for a mortgage or when you take out a credit card.  (Applause.)

Because of you, we did what we’ve been trying to do for almost a century and we made sure that everybody in this society of ours, if you get sick you don’t have to go bankrupt.  (Applause.)  If you get sick you don’t have to mortgage your house.  If your child has a preexisting condition they’re still going to be cared for because we passed health care reform that provided coverage for 30 million Americans.  (Applause.)  Because of you, we were able to rein in the worst abuses of the health care industry.  Because of you, not here in the United States of America are we going to have people who are on the streets because they get sick. 

Now, along the way we did a few other things.  We signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter bill, very simple idea that women need to get paid the same as men for the same kind of work.  (Applause.)  We finally overturned the injustice of “don't ask, don't tell,” and we said that everybody can serve their country. They don't have to lie to serve the country that they love.  (Applause.)  We put two women on the Supreme Court, including the first Latina justice.  (Applause.) 

We brought back 100,000 troops from Iraq and ended our combat mission there because we knew -- (applause) -- we knew that it was time. 

And along the way, we had to deal with pirates.  (Laughter.) Who thought we were going to have to deal with pirates?  (Laughter.)  That wasn’t in my campaign platform.  (Laughter.)  Pandemic, earthquakes.  Now --

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Oil spill.

THE PRESIDENT:  Oil spill.  Don’t forget oil spill.  Golly.  (Laughter.) 

Now, part of the hopefulness and the anticipation we all felt that night in Grant Park was also about what we could do to secure and restore America’s standing in the world.  So that’s why we strengthened our alliances.  We signed historic arms control agreements, secured loose nuclear materials.  (Applause.) That’s why we’re on the right side of history now throughout the Middle East, because we believe in preventing innocents from getting slaughtered, and we believe in human rights for all people.  (Applause.) 

That’s why we’ve taken the fight to al Qaeda.  That’s why we’re still working in Iraq to make sure that that transitions to a peaceful democracy.  That’s why we’re taking care of those veterans when they come home because that is a sacred obligation that we have.  (Applause.) 

So here is the point, Chicago.  We have faced an extraordinary array of challenges at home and around the world.  But we wouldn’t have made any of this progress if it hadn’t been for you.  I was talking to a group earlier and I said, you know, I grew up here in Chicago.  I wasn’t born here.  (Laughter.)  Just want to be clear.  I was born in Hawaii.  (Applause.)  But I became a man here in Chicago.  (Applause.)  And a lot of the people who are here today -- the values, the ideals, my beliefs, my core convictions about what makes America great were forged here. 

Because it’s here in this incredibly diverse city, that people from every background, every creed, every color, from farm towns and inner-city neighborhoods that somehow come together, immigrants from all around the world, it is here that I was reminded about why America is so great.

It’s not the size of our skyscrapers.  It’s not the size of our GDP.  It’s the fact that we’re able to keep two ideas together at the same time:  One, that we’re all individuals with -- endowed with certain inalienable rights and liberties; and we’re self-reliant; and we’re entrepreneurs; and we don't want folks telling us what to do.  That’s part of -- being an individual is so important to us.  But we also have this idea that we’re all in this together; that we look out for one another; that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper; that I want to make sure that child on the South Side or the West Side or out in Maywood or out in Dolton, that they’ve got the same opportunities that I’ve had.  (Applause.)  And that I’m looking after them, not out of charity, but because my life is richer, my life is better when the people around me are happy and the people around me have a shot at the American Dream. 

And those values that all of you helped to form in me, I carried those with me to the White House.  I wake up every day with them and I go to bed every night with them.  I’m thinking about you. 

And when I read those letters every night, from constituents all across the country, and they talk about what it’s like to send out 16 resumes and not get an answer back; and the desperation that a parent feels thinking they might not be able to take care of their kids; or a child writing a letter saying their parents are losing their home and they’re going to have to move, and, Mr. President, is there something that you can do -- when I’m thinking about those things, I’m also thinking back here, thinking back home, about what you’ve taught me. 

See, that campaign in 2008, it wasn’t my campaign, it was your campaign.  It was about your best instincts, your best impulses, your vision for an America that is more fair and more just and more equal, and has opportunity for everybody -- (applause) -- regardless of color, regardless of race, regardless of creed, regardless of religion, regardless of sexual orientation.  (Applause.) 

If you hadn’t knocked on all those doors, if you hadn’t called up all your friends back in 2008, I wouldn’t be here.  But you know what, we didn’t come here tonight just to go down Memory Lane.  We didn’t come here tonight just to pat ourselves on the back.  We came here tonight because we know that for all the progress we’ve made we’ve still got business to do.  We are not finished.  (Applause.)  And the only way we’re going to finish is the same way we began this journey, and that is together. 

We’re going to have to keep on -- we’re going to have to keep on working.  (Applause.)  Together, we’ve got to make sure any American who is looking for work can find a job that pays the bills.  (Applause.)  Together, we’ve got to make sure that hardworking families that are doing everything right aren’t falling behind, but getting ahead.  We’ve got to reclaim the American Dream for all Americans. 

That’s the change we still believe in.  That’s what I think about every single day.  That’s our North Star.  That’s our destination.  And we’re not there yet.  With your help we can keep American on track, though. 

With your help we will attract new jobs and new businesses to our shores.  We will make sure American isn’t just competing, but we’re competing to win in this economy.  With your help we’re going to make sure all our kids are ready for college, all our kids are ready for careers.  Because a world-class education is the single most important factor in whether America succeeds in the 21st century.  (Applause.) 

With your help, we can rebuild our crumbling infrastructure -- not just our roads and our bridges, but our high-speed rail lines and our communications networks.  (Applause.)  With your help, we can continue to invest in cutting-edge medical research and breakthrough technologies, and finally have an energy policy that makes sure that our entire economy isn’t subject to $4 or $5 gallon gas -- (applause) -- and reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and clean up the planet in the process, so we can bequeath to our children and our grandchildren the kind of planet that we inherited.  (Applause.)  With your help, we can out-educate and out-innovate and out-compete the rest of the world.  (Applause.) 

And we can only do all this, by the way, if we get our fiscal issues under control.  I gave a speech about this yesterday.  (Applause.)  When I was running for President, I talked about a new era of responsibility in this country.  And part of that means restoring some common sense about our federal finances, restoring fiscal discipline in Washington, living within our means. 

Last week we were able to prevent a government shutdown.  And the reason we were able to do it was because we agreed to spending cuts, but we insisted on protecting investments in things like education and medical research.  (Applause.)  But now we’ve got to reign in this long-term deficit and deal with this long-term debt because it threatens our financial stability.  We won’t be able to do all those good things if we don't get our fiscal house in order. 

But if we don't deal with these issues, all the issues we care about we’re not going to be able to solve.  Educating our kids; caring for our sick; looking after our seniors and our poor -- all of that will be threatened.  So yesterday I tried to lay out a vision for how we tackle this problem.  We need to build on the compromises we made last week, but we can’t compromise on our investments to grow, the investments we need to create jobs.  (Applause.)

We’ve got to reform defense spending.  We’ve got to reform health care spending.  (Applause.)  But we’re not going to sacrifice our fundamental commitment that we made to one another through Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, the safety net for our people.  (Applause.)

And we need to bring some balance to our tax code.  Back in December I agreed to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans as much as I disliked it because it was the only way to prevent a tax hike on the middle class.  But the fact is we can’t afford $1 trillion of tax cuts for folks like me.  Not now -- not now, now when so many other Americans are struggling; not when our deficits are so high.

I think Americans like Michelle and me, we’ve been blessed. This country has given so much to us.  We can afford to do a little bit more to make sure that every child in this country has opportunity and every senior is looked after.  (Applause.)  I think that's something that we can do. 

That's our vision for America.  We’ve got a big vision for America, of a compassionate America and a caring America and an ambitious America, not a small America.  (Applause.)  It’s a vision where we’re living within our means but we’re still investing in our future.  Where everyone makes sacrifices; no one bears all the burden.  Where we live up to the idea that no matter who we are or what we look like, no matter whether our ancestors landed on Ellis Island or came here on slave ships or across the Rio Grande, we are connected to one another.  That I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper.  In this country, we rise and fall together.  (Applause.) 

That’s the idea at the heart of America.  That’s why we’re going to keep on fighting for immigration reform -- (applause) -- because we can’t have a nation that forgets its immigrant roots. We can have a nation that is a nation of laws but also a nation of immigrants. 

This idea of bringing everyone together and making sure that everybody is contributing, everybody is responsible, but everybody also looks out for one another -- that’s the idea at the heart of our last campaign.  That’s the idea at the heart of this campaign.  That’s the idea at the heart of America. 

This is not my campaign.  This is your campaign.  (Applause.)  And I’ve got to tell you, there’s going to come a time when I’ll fully engage in this race.  When the time comes, I will be campaigning.  (Laughter.)  I’ll be ready to go.  But I’ve got to tell you, right now, I still have this day job -- (laughter) --

AUDIENCE:  You're the big time.  (Applause.) 

THE PRESIDENT:  And that’s why I’m going to need your your help now more than ever.  This campaign is still in its early stages, but now is the time when you can help shape it to make sure it gets out of the gate strong. 

Let me tell you, I’m grayer and I’m a little dinged up.  (Laughter.)  I know there are times where some of you have felt frustrated because we’ve had to compromise with the Republicans on some issues.  There have been times people are frustrated because we didn’t get everything done in the first two years.  There have been times where I felt the same way you do.  But you know what, we knew this would not be easy. 

We knew that on a journey like this there are going to be setbacks, there are going to be detours, there are going to be times where you stumble.  But we also knew something else.  We knew that at each and every juncture in our history, when our future was on the line, when we were at a crossroads like we are now, the country came together.  We were able to make the changes that we needed. 

That’s what earlier generations did -- in Lexington, in Concord, in Salem, in Stonewall.  That’s what so many of you did out in cornfields in Iowa; polling places in Wrigleyville.  And that’s what I need each and every one of you to remember, and do one more time -- not for me, but for us.  (Applause.)  For the future we hold in common.  (Applause.)  For the better days that lie ahead.  (Applause.)  

So whenever you hear people say our problems are too big to solve or we can’t bring about the changes we seek, I want you to think about all the progress we’ve already made.  I think -- I want you to think about all the unfinished business that lies ahead.  I want you to be excited about the future that lies before us.  And I want to remind you, and I want you to remind everybody else, of those simple words that summed up what we believe as a people:  Yes, we can.  (Applause.) 

Thank you.  (Applause.)

END
9:47 P.M. CDT 

Remarks by the President at a DNC Event

N9NE Restaurant
Chicago, Illinois

6:12 P.M. CDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Hey!  Hey!  Hello, hello, hello!  Hello!  Hello, Chicago!  (Applause.)  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you, everybody.  It’s good to be home.  (Applause.)  Thank you.  Thank you.  All right, everybody have a seat.  Everybody have a seat.  You’re making me blush.  (Laughter.) 

We’ve got some very special guests here today.  First of all, my former seatmate in the Illinois state senate who is doing gangbuster work all over the state -- Attorney General Lisa Madigan is in the house.  Where is Lisa?  Where is she?  There she is.  (Applause.) 

A guy who I basically follow around to see what he eats and drinks so I can look like him, somebody who never ages, always doing the right thing on behalf of communities all across the state, especially here in Chicago -- Secretary of State Jesse White is in the house.  (Applause.) 

Our newly elected Cook County President, one of my earliest supporters, and also my former alderwoman -- so I hope that my garbage is still being picked up -- Toni Preckwinkle is in the house.  (Applause.)  She’s around here somewhere.

And then I have to admit that I got a little confused.  (Laughter.)  I walk in and there are these two guys talking, both of them very animated, both of them a little intimidating, even though they’re not tall in statute.  (Laughter.)  I was trying to figure out who I should bow to first.  I decided to go with the current mayor -- (laughter and applause) -- somebody who has done more to make Chicago not just a great American city but a great world city, and his legacy is going to be deep and lasting, as deep and lasting as his father’s was.  We are grateful for his service -- the mayor of the city of Chicago, Richard Daley.  (Applause.) 

Bill is doing okay, Rich.  (Laughter.)  I mean, you know, there are times where he’s still kind of figuring out where everything is -- (laughter) -- but overall he’s making the grade. Of course, he had some big shoes to fill.  And I could not be prouder of the job this man did on behalf of America as my chief of staff. 

As Bill knows, there probably is not a harder job in government than being chief of staff.  You get all the blame and little of the credit, and the pressures are enormous and they are constant.  And I rely extraordinarily heavily, given everything that’s on our plate, on the person who essentially oversees the executive functions of the White House. 

And so I am blessed now to have a great chief of staff, but I also am so lucky to have had in some of the toughest times that we’ve seen since the Great Depression somebody who is not only a great manager, a great strategist, a great political thinker, but also my friend.  Yes, he is foul-mouthed.  (Laughter.)  Yes, that finger thing is a little creepy.  (Laughter.)  But I love him anyway, and, Chicago, you did the right thing by electing him the next mayor of the city of Chicago -- Rahm Emanuel.  (Applause.)

Where did Rahm go?  He’s in the back somewhere.  He’s cutting a deal of some sort.  (Laughter.) 

Look, I don't want to make a long speech, mainly just because even though I'm not supposed to do it, I just want to go around and say hello to everybody -- (applause) -- because as I look around the room, I've got as good a collection of friends from every stage of my life in this room as anybody could hope for. 

I've got people who helped me get started as a lawyer.  I've got folks who helped me get started in politics.  I've got folks who worked with me down in Springfield.  I've got people who were some of my earliest supporters in my congressional race -- (applause) -- and nursed me back to health after a beating.  (Laughter.)  I've got folks who believed that I might be a United States senator when nobody could pronounce my name, long before I made a speech in Boston.  And then I've got people that had the faith that I could perform the functions of the highest office in the land.  (Applause.) 

I've got some folks who taught with me at the University of Chicago.  (Applause.)  I've got some Hyde-Parkers in the house.  (Applause.)  I've got some folks who were there the summer I met my wife and folks who were there when my children were born.  So as I look across the room it’s a record of my adult life and the people who helped me to become the man I am.

The last two and a half years have obviously been extraordinary.  We understood when we put together our presidential campaign that the country was entering a crossroads, that we were going to have to make some fundamental decisions about who we were and who we are as a people.  And I got into this race for President because I believed that what makes us great is our incredible commitment to individual freedom and individual responsibility; the fact that with some pluck and some hard work and some good fortune, here in America anybody can make it, regardless of race or creed or station. 

But what made us great is also the fact that this collection of people from all around the world are somehow able to come together and pledge allegiance not just to a flag but to a creed; that we’re able to join together in this common enterprise; that we’re able to look out for one another; that when we make it, we’re saying to ourselves, who else can we pull up the ladder; that there’s a sense of community that is not defined simply by ethnicity or where we go to church or mosque or synagogue or temple, but a commitment to each other that somehow is greater than the sum of its parts.

That's why I decided to run for President.  That's why you supported me.  Those are the values that you helped teach me when I first came to Chicago so many years ago.  And those values have been put to the test over the last two and a half years, because Americans have gone through a tough time. 

I can’t describe night after night reading the letters that I get, the emails that I get, from people all across the country -- just heartbreaking stories:  Children talking about their parents losing their jobs or losing their homes and wondering if they're going to be okay; folks sending out job application after job application after job application and nothing coming back.; parents of young men and women who’ve been killed in action, trying to describe how proud they are of those kids even though their heart just aches, and asking to make sure that as the Commander-in-Chief that I am living up to that full measure of devotion that they displayed. 

And so for the last two and a half years, what I’ve tried to do is to make sure that every day when I wake up, I remember why I ran and I remember why you supported me.  And whether it was passing a Recovery Act that would get the economy back on its feet and put people back to work; saving an auto industry that a lot of people had written off; making sure that we had a financial system that is functioning but also one that was sufficiently regulated, that consumers got a fair shake; making sure that we brought combat in Iraq to a close; making sure that anybody can serve in our military regardless of their sexual orientation -- (applause) -- making sure that in a country as wealthy as ours nobody is going bankrupt because they get sick, and no parent has to worry about selling their house because their child has a preexisting condition and he can’t get health insurance -- (applause) -- making sure that we got more women on the Supreme Court and that one of them is a Latina -- (applause) -- and making sure that women get equal pay for equal work so that my daughters when they come up -- (applause) -- are going to have the same chances as your sons. 

Each and every time we’ve had to make a decision, my guiding principle, that North Star, has been those values that we talked about during the campaign:  I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper.  A belief in an America that is competitive and compassionate.  A belief that there’s nothing we can’t accomplish if we come together, and that we have to think big in terms of what we need to accomplish. 

And we’ve made extraordinary progress, but we still have so much work to do.  There’s still too many people out there writing me letters that don’t have a job; too many folks who are worried about losing their home.  There’s still too many kids trapped in poverty in cities and rural areas all across America that we haven’t been able to reach.  There’s still discrimination out there.  There’s still unfairness and injustice out there. 

We’ve still got 100,000 troops in Afghanistan -- who are remarkable and doing everything they can to keep us safe.  We still have roads that need to be fixed and bridges that need to be repaired.  We still need an energy policy that doesn’t make us vulnerable to whatever spikes in the world oil market might occur. 

Right now, there are folks in the Chicago-land area who are every day trying to figure out how am I going to fill up my gas tank.  And all the tax cuts that we provided to help working-class and middle-class families, they’re worried about those tax breaks being entirely eaten up by $4.00 a gallon gas. 

We still have to worry about making sure that as the world’s largest economy, as the world’s wealthiest nation, that we’re taking the lead when it comes to climate change.  (Applause.)   We still have an obligation to make sure that we have an immigration policy in this country that matches up with our values as a nation of laws, but also a nation of immigrants.  (Applause.)  There are still small businesses out there just waiting to be started if they’re getting the right financing.  There are still young men and women who are just ready to seize the moment as engineers and scientists if we’re just making sure those research grants are flowing.  And we got to do all this in a context, as I talked about yesterday, in which our fiscal challenges are real. 

The speech I gave yesterday was not a partisan shot at the other side.  It was an attempt to clarify the choice that we have as a country right now.  (Applause.)  We agree, Democrats and Republicans, that we’ve got to come together and have a government that lives within its means, that is lean, is smart, is effective; that we’ve got a country that pays its bills and isn’t borrowing 30 or 40 cents for every dollar that we spend.  That is imperative. 

And if we’re progressive, we’ve got to care about the deficit just as much as the other side does, because we won’t be able to fund the research that's necessary, or the Head Start programs, or the college loan programs, or the infrastructure that we need, unless it’s on a firm, solid footing.

But how we get there is important.  And you’ve got right now one side that I believe is entirely sincere that says we no longer can afford to do big things in this country.  We can't afford to be compassionate. 

We can't afford Medicare so let’s make sure that seniors get a voucher, and if the health insurance companies aren’t giving them full coverage or they can’t afford coverage with the voucher they get, tough luck, they're on their own.

It’s a vision that says we can’t afford to rebuild our roads and our bridges.  We can’t afford high-speed rail.  We can’t afford broadband lines into rural areas so that everybody can be a part of this new global community.  We can’t afford to make sure the poor kid can go to college.  We can’t afford health care for another 50 million people.  That’s the choice they pose.

Now, understand, it is a choice.  Because they’re absolutely right -- if people like me, if most of the people in this room, can’t afford to pay a little bit more in taxes, then a lot of this stuff we can’t afford.  If we’re insisting that those of us who are doing best in this society have no obligations to other folks, then, no, we can’t afford it.

But if we’re willing to go back to our deepest roots and say to ourselves, you know what, that’s not how America was built, that’s not how we became the greatest nation on Earth, that’s not what the American way is all about; if we say to ourselves I do have that commitment to that child on the South Side or on the West Side or out in the south suburbs, for them to succeed, too  -- my life will be better if they succeed -- this is not charity, this is a good investment for me because I want to live in a society where all those kids have a shot; if we say to ourselves, you know what, I want people to have health care, I don’t want them going into the emergency room and sitting and waiting, and then getting the most expensive care; I think it makes sense for us to have a more effective health care system and one where everybody has basic coverage; if we’re saying to ourselves, I want to make sure that Malia and Sasha and your children and your grandchildren, that they’re inheriting a land that has clean rivers and air you can breathe and that's worth something to me, that's something I want to invest in because when I’m all finished here and I’m looking back on my life, I want to be able to say, we were good stewards of the planet --(applause) -- if that's what we believe, then we’ve got the ability to do that.  We’ve got the ability to do it, and it doesn’t take that much.  It just doesn’t take that much.

If we apply some practical common sense to this, we can solve our fiscal challenges and still have the America that we believe in.  That's what this budget debate is going to be about. And that's what the 2012 campaign is going to be about. 

And so over the next three months, six months, nine months, I’m going to be a little preoccupied.  (Laughter.)  I’ve got this day job that -- (laughter) -- that I’ve got to handle.  And it means that I’m not going to see all of you as often I’d like.  It means that I’m not going to be able to make that phone call to you and thank you even though my gratitude is profound.

It means that all of you are going to have to remember why I’m standing here, why we were successful -- because it wasn’t my campaign; it was your campaign.  It was your investment.  It was your time.  It was your energy.  It was your faith and it was your confidence that is allowing me to try to live up to those values that we share.

And if you remember that, and if you take ownership for that, and if you are just as fired up now -- despite the fact that your candidate is a little older and a lot grayer -- (laughter and applause) -- then I have every confidence that we are going to be able finish the job.

Thank you, Chicago.  I love you.  (Applause.)

END
6:35 P.M. CDT