Remarks by the President on the Fifth Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Louisiana

Xavier University
New Orleans, Louisiana

1:50 P.M. CDT

     THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, everybody.  It is good to be back.  (Applause.)  It is good to be back.

     AUDIENCE MEMBER:  It’s good to have you back!

     THE PRESIDENT:  I’m glad.  (Laughter.)  And due to popular demand, I decided to bring the First Lady down here.  (Applause.)

     We have just an extraordinary number of dedicated public servants who are here.  If you will be patient with me, I want to make sure that all of them are acknowledged.  First of all, you’ve got the governor of the great state of Louisiana -- Bobby Jindal is here.  (Applause.)  We have the outstanding mayor of New Orleans, Mitch Landrieu.  (Applause.)  We have the better looking and younger senator from Louisiana, Mary Landrieu.  (Applause.) 

     I believe that Senator David Vitter is here.  David -- right here.  (Applause.)  We have -- hold on a second now -- we’ve got Congressman Joe Cao is here.  (Applause.)  Congressman Charlie Melancon is here.  (Applause.)  Congressman Steve Scalise is here.  (Applause.) 

     Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, who has been working tirelessly down here in Louisiana, Shaun Donovan.  (Applause.)  We’ve got our EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson here -- homegirl.  (Applause.)  Administrator of FEMA Craig Fugate is here.  (Applause.)  The person who’s heading up our community service efforts all across the country -- Patrick Corvington is here.  (Applause.)  Louisiana’s own Regina Benjamin, the Surgeon General -- (applause) -- a Xavier grad, I might add.  (Applause.)  We are very proud to have all of these terrific public servants here. 

     It is wonderful to be back in New Orleans, and it is a great honor --

     AUDIENCE MEMBER:  We love you!

     AUDIENCE MEMBER:  We can’t see you!

     THE PRESIDENT:  It is a great honor -- (laughter) -- you can see me now?  (Laughter.)  Okay.  It is a great honor to be back at Xavier University.  (Applause.)  And I -- it’s just inspiring to spend time with people who’ve demonstrated what it means to persevere in the face of tragedy; to rebuild in the face of ruin. 

     I’m grateful to Jade for her introduction, and congratulate you on being crowned Miss Xavier.  (Applause.)  I hope everybody heard during the introduction she was a junior at Ben Franklin High School five years ago when the storm came.  And after Katrina, Ben Franklin High was terribly damaged by wind and water.  Millions of dollars were needed to rebuild the school.  Many feared it would take years to reopen -- if it could be reopened at all. 

     But something remarkable happened.  Parents, teachers, students, volunteers, they all got to work making repairs.  And donations came in from across New Orleans and around the world.  And soon, those silent and darkened corridors, they were bright and they were filled with the sounds of young men and women, including Jade, who were going back to class.  And then Jade committed to Xavier, a university that likewise refused to succumb to despair.  So Jade, like so many students here at this university, embody hope.  That sense of hope in difficult times, that's what I came to talk about today.

     It’s been five years since Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast.  There’s no need to dwell on what you experienced and what the world witnessed.  We all remember it keenly:  water pouring through broken levees; mothers holding their children above the waterline; people stranded on rooftops begging for help; bodies lying in the streets of a great American city.  It was a natural disaster but also a manmade catastrophe -- a shameful breakdown in government that left countless men, and women, and children abandoned and alone. 

     And shortly after the storm, I came down to Houston to spend time with some of the folks who had taken shelter there.  And I’ll never forget what one woman told me.  She said, “We had nothing before the hurricane.  And now we’ve got less than nothing.”

     In the years that followed, New Orleans could have remained a symbol of destruction and decay; of a storm that came and the inadequate response that followed.  It was not hard to imagine a day when we’d tell our children that a once vibrant and wonderful city had been laid low by indifference and neglect.  But that’s not what happened.  It’s not what happened at Ben Franklin.  It’s not what happened here at Xavier.  It’s not what happened across New Orleans and across the Gulf Coast.  (Applause.)  Instead this city has become a symbol of resilience and of community and of the fundamental responsibility that we have to one another. 

     And we see that here at Xavier.  Less than a month after the storm struck, amidst debris and flood-damaged buildings, President Francis promised that this university would reopen in a matter of months.  (Applause.)  Some said he was crazy.  Some said it couldn’t happen.  But they didn’t count on what happens when one force of nature meets another.  (Laughter.)  And by January -- four months later -- class was in session.  Less than a year after the storm, I had the privilege of delivering a commencement address to the largest graduating class in Xavier’s history.  That is a symbol of what New Orleans is all about.  (Applause.) 

     We see New Orleans in the efforts of Joycelyn Heintz, who’s here today.  Katrina left her house 14 feet underwater.  But after volunteers helped her rebuild, she joined AmeriCorps to serve the community herself -- part of a wave of AmeriCorps members who’ve been critical to the rebirth of this city and the rebuilding of this region.  (Applause.)  So today, she manages a local center for mental health and wellness.

     We see the symbol that this city has become in the St. Bernard Project, whose founder Liz McCartney is with us.  (Applause.)  This endeavor has drawn volunteers from across the country to rebuild hundreds of homes throughout St. Bernard Parish and the Lower Ninth Ward. 

     I’ve seen the sense of purpose people felt after the storm when I visited Musicians’ Village in the Ninth Ward back in 2006.  Volunteers were not only constructing houses; they were coming together to preserve the culture of music and art that’s part of the soul of this city -- and the soul of this country.  And today, more than 70 homes are complete, and construction is underway on the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music.  (Applause.) 

     We see the dedication to the community in the efforts of Xavier grad Dr. Regina Benjamin, who mortgaged her home, maxed out her credit cards so she could reopen her Bayou la Batre clinic to care for victims of the storm -- and who is now our nation’s Surgeon General.  (Applause.)

     And we see resilience and hope exemplified by students at Carver High School, who have helped to raise more than a million dollars to build a new community track and football field -- their “Field of Dreams” -- for the Ninth Ward.  (Applause.)

     So because of all of you -- all the advocates, all the organizers who are here today, folks standing behind me who’ve worked so hard, who never gave up hope -- you are all leading the way toward a better future for this city with innovative approaches to fight poverty and improve health care, reduce crime, and create opportunities for young people.  Because of you, New Orleans is coming back.  (Applause.)

     And I just came from Parkway Bakery and Tavern.  (Applause.)  Five years ago, the storm nearly destroyed that neighborhood institution.  I saw the pictures.  Now they’re open, business is booming, and that’s some good eats.  (Laughter.)  I had the shrimp po’boy and some of the gumbo.  (Applause.)  But I skipped the bread pudding because I thought I might fall asleep while I was speaking.  (Laughter.)  But I’ve got it saved for later.  (Laughter.) 

     Five years ago, many questioned whether people could ever return to this city.  Today, New Orleans is one of the fastest growing cities in America, with a big new surge in small businesses.  Five years ago, the Saints had to play every game on the road because of the damage to the Superdome.  Two weeks ago, we welcomed the Saints to the White House as Super Bowl champions.  (Applause.)  There was also food associated with that.  (Laughter.)  We marked the occasion with a 30-foot po’boy made with shrimps and oysters from the Gulf.  (Applause.)  And you’ll be pleased to know there were no leftovers.  (Laughter.)

     Now, I don’t have to tell you that there are still too many vacant and overgrown lots.  There are still too many students attending classes in trailers.  There are still too many people unable to find work.  And there are still too many New Orleanians, folks who haven’t been able to come home.  So while an incredible amount of progress has been made, on this fifth anniversary, I wanted to come here and tell the people of this city directly:  My administration is going to stand with you -- and fight alongside you -- until the job is done.  (Applause.)  Until New Orleans is all the way back, all the way.  (Applause.)  

     When I took office, I directed my Cabinet to redouble our efforts, to put an end to the turf wars between agencies, to cut the red tape and cut the bureaucracy.  (Applause.)  I wanted to make sure that the federal government was a partner -- not an obstacle -- to recovery here in the Gulf Coast.  And members of my Cabinet -- including EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, who grew up in Pontchartrain Park -- (applause) -- they have come down here dozens of times.  Shaun Donovan has come down here dozens of times.  This is not just to make appearances.  It’s not just to get photo ops.  They came down here to listen and to learn and make real the changes that were necessary so that government was actually working for you. 

     So for example, efforts to rebuild schools and hospitals, to repair damaged roads and bridges, to get people back to their homes -- they were tied up for years in a tangle of disagreements and byzantine rules.  So when I took office, working with your outstanding delegation, particularly Senator Mary Landrieu, we put in place a new way of resolving disputes.  (Applause.)  We put in place a new way of resolving disputes so that funds set aside for rebuilding efforts actually went toward rebuilding efforts.  And as a result, more than 170 projects are getting underway -- work on firehouses, and police stations, and roads, and sewer systems, and health clinics, and libraries, and universities. 

     We’re tackling the corruption and inefficiency that has long plagued the New Orleans Housing Authority.  We’re helping homeowners rebuild and making it easier for renters to find affordable options.  And we’re helping people to move out of temporary homes.  You know, when I took office, more than three years after the storm, tens of thousands of families were still stuck in disaster housing -- many still living in small trailers that had been provided by FEMA.  We were spending huge sums of money on temporary shelters when we knew it would be better for families, and less costly for taxpayers, to help people get into affordable, stable, and more permanent housing.  So we’ve helped make it possible for people to find those homes, and we’ve dramatically reduced the number of families in emergency housing. 

     On the health care front, as a candidate for President, I pledged to make sure we were helping New Orleans recruit doctors and nurses, and rebuild medical facilities -- including a new veterans hospital.  (Applause.)  Well, we have resolved a long-standing dispute -- one that had tied up hundreds of millions of dollars -- to fund the replacement for Charity Hospital.  And in June, Veterans Secretary Ric Shinseki came to New Orleans for the groundbreaking of that new VA hospital. 
 
     In education, we’ve made strides as well.  As you know, schools in New Orleans were falling behind long before Katrina.  But in the years since the storm, a lot of public schools opened themselves up to innovation and to reform.  And as a result, we’re actually seeing rising achievement, and New Orleans is becoming a model of innovation for the nation.  This is yet another sign that you’re not just rebuilding -- you’re rebuilding stronger than before.  Just this Friday, my administration announced a final agreement on $1.8 billion dollars for Orleans Parish schools.  (Applause.)  This is money that had been locked up for years, but now it’s freed up so folks here can determine best how to restore the school system. 

     And in a city that’s known too much violence, that’s seen too many young people lost to drugs and criminal activity, we’ve got a Justice Department that's committed to working with New Orleans to fight the scourge of violent crime, and to weed out corruption in the police force, and to ensure the criminal justice system works for everyone in this city.  (Applause.)  And I want everybody to hear -- to know and to hear me thank Mitch Landrieu, your new mayor, for his commitment to that partnership.  (Applause.)  

     Now, even as we continue our recovery efforts, we’re also focusing on preparing for future threats so that there is never another disaster like Katrina.  The largest civil works project in American history is underway to build a fortified levee system.  And as I -- just as I pledged as a candidate, we’re going to finish this system by next year so that this city is protected against a 100-year storm.  We should not be playing Russian roulette every hurricane season.  (Applause.)  And we’re also working to restore protective wetlands and natural barriers that were not only damaged by Katrina -- were not just damaged by Katrina but had been rapidly disappearing for decades. 

     In Washington, we are restoring competence and accountability.  I am proud that my FEMA Director, Craig Fugate, has 25 years of experience in disaster management in Florida.  (Applause.)  He came from Florida, a state that has known its share of hurricanes.  We’ve put together a group led by Secretary Donovan and Secretary Napolitano to look at disaster recovery across the country.  We’re improving coordination on the ground, and modernizing emergency communications, helping families plan for a crisis.  And we’re putting in place reforms so that never again in America is somebody left behind in a disaster because they’re living with a disability or because they’re elderly or because they’re infirmed.  That will not happen again.  (Applause.)  

     Finally, even as you’ve been buffeted by Katrina and Rita, even as you’ve been impacted by the broader recession that has devastated communities across the country, in recent months the Gulf Coast has seen new hardship as a result of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  And just as we’ve sought to ensure that we are doing what it takes to recover from Katrina, my administration has worked hard to match our efforts on the spill to what you need on the ground.  And we’ve been in close consultation with your governor, your mayors, your parish presidents, your local government officials.

     And from the start, I promised you two things.  One is that we would see to it that the leak was stopped.  And it has been.  The second promise I made was that we would stick with our efforts, and stay on BP, until the damage to the Gulf and to the lives of the people in this region was reversed.  And this, too, is a promise that we will keep.  We are not going to forget.  We’re going to stay on it until this area is fully recovered.  (Applause.)  

     That’s why we rapidly launched the largest response to an environmental disaster in American history -- 47,000 people on the ground, 5,700 vessels on the water -- to contain and clean up the oil.  When BP was not moving fast enough on claims, we told BP to set aside $20 billion in a fund -- managed by an independent third party -- to help all those whose lives have been turned upside down by the spill. 

     And we will continue to rely on sound science, carefully monitoring waters and coastlines as well as the health of the people along the Gulf, to deal with any long-term effects of the oil spill.  We are going to stand with you until the oil is cleaned up, until the environment is restored, until polluters are held accountable, until communities are made whole, and until this region is all the way back on its feet.  (Applause.)  

     So that’s how we’re helping this city, and this state, and this region to recover from the worst natural disaster in our nation’s history.  We’re cutting through the red tape that has impeded rebuilding efforts for years.  We’re making government work better and smarter, in coordination with one of the most expansive non-profit efforts in American history.  We’re helping state and local leaders to address serious problems that had been neglected for decades -- problems that existed before the storm came, and have continued after the waters receded -- from the levee system to the justice system, from the health care system to the education system. 

     And together, we are helping to make New Orleans a place that stands for what we can do in America -- not just for what we can’t do.  Ultimately, that must be the legacy of Katrina:  not one of neglect, but of action; not one of indifference, but of empathy; not of abandonment, but of a community working together to meet shared challenges.  (Applause.) 

     The truth is, there are some wounds that have not yet healed.  And there are some losses that can’t be repaid.  And for many who lived through those harrowing days five years ago, there’s searing memories that time may not erase.  But even amid so much tragedy, we saw stirrings of a brighter day.  Five years ago we saw men and women risking their own safety to save strangers.  We saw nurses staying behind to care for the sick and the injured.  We saw families coming home to clean up and rebuild -- not just their own homes, but their neighbors’ homes, as well.  And we saw music and Mardi Gras and the vibrancy, the fun of this town undiminished.  And we’ve seen many return to their beloved city with a newfound sense of appreciation and obligation to this community. 

     And when I came here four years ago, one thing I found striking was all the greenery that had begun to come back.  And I was reminded of a passage from the book of Job.  “There is hope for a tree if it be cut down that it will sprout again, and that its tender branch will not cease.”  The work ahead will not be easy, and there will be setbacks.  There will be challenges along the way.  But thanks to you, thanks to the great people of this great city, New Orleans is blossoming again.

     Thank you, everybody.  God bless you.  And God bless the United States of America.  (Applause.)

END                 2:16 P.M. CDT

 

Remarks by the President at Florida Democratic Party Reception

Fontainebleau Hotel, Miami, Florida

5:35 P.M. EDT 

     THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, Miami!  (Applause.)  It is good to be back!  (Applause.)  It is good to be back in Miami.  I was just in Florida and it is true that Sasha outscored me on the first hole.  (Laughter.)  I took her, I think, on the third.  (Laughter.)  It was tight the whole way, though.  But it is wonderful to see all of you.  Looking out at this crowd, I know how many of you worked so hard on my campaign -- (applause) -- worked hard on behalf of Democrats for years here in Florida, and are going to be working hard on behalf of the great ticket that we're going to be having this year.  (Applause.) 

There are a number of people that I want to acknowledge.  Obviously, first of all, you have got a wonderful senior senator right here in Florida, who’s working hard every day -- give Bill Nelson a big round of applause.  (Applause.)  An outstanding congressional delegation, Ron Kline is here -- (applause) -- Alan Grayson is here -- (applause) -- Ted Deutch is here -- (applause) -- Debbie Wasserman Schultz is here.  (Applause.)  Soon-to-be member of Congress, Joe Garcia, running in Florida’s 25th.  (Applause.)  Running for Florida attorney general, Dan Gelber is here, state senator.  (Applause.)  Also running for Florida attorney general, Dave Aronberg, also state senator, is here.  (Applause.)  We've got Scott Maddox, who’s running for agricultural commissioner for the state.  (Applause.)  And we've got Matti Bower, mayor of Miami Beach, in the house.  (Applause.)

So, as I said, it’s just great to be with friends.  And you were with me when we were up, you were with me when we were down. If it weren’t for you, I would not be standing here as President of the United States.  (Applause.)  And as your President, it is my honor -- it is my honor to stand in support of the next governor of the great state of Florida, Alex Sink.  (Applause.) 

At a difficult time like this, you need somebody in Tallahassee like Alex.  She combines the sensibility of a successful businesswoman with the tenacity of a consumer watchdog –- which is what she’s been for the last four years as Florida’s CFO.  She’s cut waste, she’s eliminated unnecessary contracts, she’s saved the state tens of millions of dollars.  She’s protected countless seniors and homeowners from being taken advantage of by predatory lenders.  She’s put this state’s entire checkbook online, so that you know exactly how your tax dollars are being spent.  And now she’s running to be the economic ambassador for this state -– with a plan to attract new companies and new jobs and new opportunities to the Sunshine State.  (Applause.)   

So Alex knows what it takes to change business-as-usual in Tallahassee.  She’s not afraid to take on the status quo.  She’s done it before; she’s going to do it again.  So I want all of you to do me a favor.  I know everybody here, I'm preaching to the choir.  (Laughter.)  But I need you to talk to your friends, I need you to talk to your neighbors, I need you to send out email blasts, I need you to raise money, I need you to walk and knock on doors -- whatever it takes to make sure that Alex Sink is the next governor of Florida.  (Applause.)  We need to move forward in this state.  

Let me also say something about the next senator from the state of Florida -- Kendrick Meek.  (Applause.)  Kendrick has been a champion of middle-class families and somebody who has not been afraid to stand up to the status quo and special interests. So we need that kind of fighter in the United States Senate.  I need you to help him get there.  We need leaders like Alex and Kendrick in this country because we are facing an incredibly challenging time. 

Eighteen months ago, I took office after nearly a decade of economic policies that produced sluggish growth and falling incomes and falling wages, and took a record surplus to a record deficit.  And these policies culminated in the worst recession of our lifetimes.  In the last six months of 2008, three million Americans lost their jobs.  The month I was sworn in, 800,000 more Americans lost their jobs.  The month after that, 600,000; the month after that, 600,000.  Before we could even get our economic policies in place we had already seen devastation across this country. 

And behind these numbers, behind these statistics there’s a story of heartache and frustration.  A factory worker who was just a few years shy of retirement suddenly seeing his plant closed and not knowing where to turn.  Or a single mom who sends out application after application, but doesn’t get a call back and wonders how she’s going to pay the bills.  Or a college graduate who worked hard, got a degree, and all they’ve got to show for it is a mountain of debt.  And then some kids planning to go to college decided they couldn't afford it because their family needed their help.

I hear these stories every day.  I read them in letters every night.  The struggles and the hopes of these Americans are why I ran for office in the first place.  (Applause.)  That's why I am going to work as hard as I can for as long as it takes to turn this economy around.  That’s why I ran for office.  That's why Alex Sink is here.  That’s our goal.  (Applause.)   

Now, Florida, we’re not there yet.  We are not there yet.  We know that.  It took us close to a decade to dig ourselves into this hole; it’s going to take some time to dig ourselves.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Eight years?  (Laughter and applause.)

THE PRESIDENT:  It takes time to bring back eight million jobs.  That’s the hard truth.  Somebody tells you different they’re probably running for office.  (Laughter.)   

But here’s what I can tell you:  After 18 months, I have never been more confident that we are headed in the right direction.  We are doing what’s needed to move forward.  (Applause.)  We are rebuilding this economy not just for the short term.  We had to rescue the economy short term, but we're also building the economy for the the long run -– for our children and our grandchildren.   

We did not become the most prosperous country in the world by rewarding greed and recklessness of the sort that helped cause this financial crisis.  We did not come this far by letting special interests run wild in Washington, writing their own rules.  We did not get here by just looking after ourselves and not looking after our neighbors.  (Applause.)  We got here by rewarding the values of hard work and responsibility, and by investing in our people, and making sure that economic growth happened from the bottom up -- middle-class families and small business owners.  We did it by out-working and out-educating and out-competing every nation on Earth.  That's who we are.  That's who we need to be.  (Applause.)   

This is a serious time.  Right now, countries like China and India and South Korea, Germany, they are fighting as hard as they can for the jobs of the future.  They’re trying to out-compete us on things like clean energy.  They’re trying to out-compete us on education and how many engineers they produce.  And, frankly, in some cases, we've been slipping.  We used to be number one in the number of college graduates; we now rank number 12. 

Now, let me tell you, Florida, the United States of America, we do not play for second place.  We play for first place.  (Applause.)  We’ve got to rebuild this economy stronger than it was before.  And at the center of that agenda are three powerful words:  “Made In America.”  (Applause.)  We've got to start making things here in the United States.  Instead of giving tax breaks to companies that ship our jobs overseas, we’ve got to cut taxes for companies that create jobs right here in the United States of America.  (Applause.)  We’ve got to give tax cuts to small business owners, and tax cuts to clean energy companies, and tax cuts to middle-class families -– which is what we did.  Ninety-five percent of American workers got a tax cut under my administration.  That was the right thing to do.  (Applause.)    

And we've got to have an energy strategy in this country.  Instead of prolonging an addiction to oil that endangers everything from our security to our coastlines, we’re jumpstarting a homegrown, clean energy industry in this country. I don’t want to see solar panels and wind turbines and advanced batteries that go into electric cars -- I don't want them manufactured elsewhere.  I want them manufactured right here in the United States of America, by American workers.  (Applause.) 

We’ve got to invest in 21st century infrastructure.  That means new bridges and new roads, but it also means faster Internet, high-speed railroad –- projects that will lay the foundation for long-term economic growth but also produce hundreds of thousands of new, private sector jobs.  And we are helping old industries, like the American auto industry, get back on its feet and retool for the 21st century.  (Applause.)   

Now, you will remember a while back, this was an industry -- the auto industry -- that had lost hundreds of thousands of jobs in the year before I took office.  And we had to make a tough decision about whether to help them out or walk away, which might have cost another million jobs.  And a lot of folks said we should walk away.  We decided, no, we're going to take a different approach.  Instead of continuing to give bailouts to the auto companies and asking nothing in return, we said we are going to make sure you restructure so you can compete over the long haul.

And we got all the stakeholders together and worked hard, helped GM through bankruptcy; helped Chrysler through bankruptcy. And today all three automakers are operating at a profit for the first time in years.  They’ve had the strongest job growth in more than 10 years.  (Applause.)  GM just announced it’s going public again.  (Applause.)   

I visited a Chrysler plant in Detroit a few weeks back, and this was a plant that would have shut down had we not moved forward.  And now they’re producing these outstanding cars.  And 14 workers had just won the lottery at this plant.  (Laughter.)  Now, instead of cashing out, quitting their jobs, most of them stayed -– because they love their work.  They’re proud of what they do.  The guy who bought the winning ticket, he bought one of the cars that he helps assemble for his wife.  And then he bought flags for his hometown because he loves his country and he loves his workers, and he loves the company he works for.

And that symbolizes something.  It sends a message that sometimes the naysayers in Washington don't understand:  Do not bet against the American worker.  Do not bet against American businesses.  Do not bet against the American people.  Don’t bet against American ingenuity.  (Applause.)  We are coming back, and we're coming back strong.  (Applause.)   

But to come back strong, to rebuild for the long run, we've got work.  We've got to ensure that our workers can compete with any workers on Earth.  And that's why we’re reforming our education system based on what works for kids, not what works for the status quo.  We eliminated billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to the big banks that were acting as middlemen on the college loan program.  And as a consequence of this, we saved tens of billions of dollars that are now making college educations more affordable for millions of more students.  (Applause.)   

To lower the costs to families and businesses, we passed health insurance reform that will finally make coverage affordable and stop insurance companies from jacking up your premiums or refusing to cover you before you're sick -- because you’re sick.  (Applause.)   

To make sure that everybody is participating in our economy, I signed into law legislation that makes sure we've got equal pay for equal work, because we want our women getting paid just like men are getting paid on the workforce.  (Applause.)

To keep faith with the brave men and women who risk their lives for ours, and to help build the middle class like the Greatest Generation built itself up, we are increasing access to health care and benefits and education for our veterans and their families.  And we’re keeping the promise I made when I began campaigning for the presidency –- by the end of this month, we’ll have removed 100,000 troops from Iraq and our combat mission will be over.  (Applause.)   

To ensure that a financial crisis like the one doesn’t happen again, we passed financial reform that provides new accountability and tough oversight of Wall Street.  It’s going to stop credit card companies from charging hidden fees or unfair rate hikes.  (Applause.)  It’s going to end the era of Wall Street bailouts once and for all.  (Applause.)     

And these reforms, all these reforms taken together, are going to make America more competitive in the 21st century.  They move us forward.  And on each of these reforms, we reached out to Democrats and Republicans for ideas and for support.  But I have to tell you in just about every instance, almost every Republican in Congress said no.  No on help for small businesses.  No on middle-class tax cuts.  No on clean energy jobs.  No on making college more affordable.  No on Wall Street reform.

Remember our campaign slogan, “Yes we can”?  (Applause.)    This year, their campaign slogan is, “No, we can’t.”  (Laughter.) It’s pretty inspiring, huh?  (Laughter.)  You know, you wake up in the morning and you hear “No!” -- that just puts a little pep in your step.  (Laughter.)  

Why do they keep on saying no?  Well, part of it is, is that they just can't give up on the bankrupt economic policies that  they have been peddling for much of the last decade.  I mean, this agenda is pretty straightforward.  And I give them credit, you know, they keep on coming back with it:  You cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires, you cut rules for special interests, you cut working folks loose to fend for themselves.  So if you don't have a job, or you can't afford college, or you don't have health insurance, or you can't get health insurance for your kid, tough luck -- you’re on your own.

Now, the advantage of this economic philosophy is it’s simple.  (Laughter.)  The disadvantage of this philosophy is it doesn’t work out real well.  I mean, think about -- we tried this for eight years, and here’s what it gave us.  It gave us the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and it took us from record surpluses to record deficits.  

These guys now, they’re all running on, well, Democrats are the spending party.  Think about this.  We had record surpluses. When I arrived in the White House I had a $1.3 trillion deficit wrapped in a bow waiting for me.  (Laughter.)  So, yes, we had to spend money to get us out of what could have been a depression.  So we spent money on high-speed rail, and we spent money on clean energy, and we spent money making sure teachers and cops and firefighters weren’t laid off.  (Applause.)  What did they have to show for the $1.3 trillion deficit that they delivered to us?

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  War.

AUDIENCE MEMBERS:  Two wars.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Bad President.  (Laughter.) 

THE PRESIDENT:  We got a lot of options here.  (Laughter.)  But it’s not a real attractive list.  (Laughter.)  So when these guys get on their high horse about spending, it’s like, hold on a second.     

Now, I'm bringing this up not to re-litigate the past.  I just don’t want to relive the past.  (Laughter and applause.)  It was hard enough -- it’s been hard enough trying to rescue this economy the first time.  I don't want to have to do it a second time.  (Applause.)  I mean, it would be one thing if Republicans, they all said to themselves, gosh, you know, what we did really didn’t work out.  So let’s go off and let’s meditate a little bit -- (laughter) -- and see where we went wrong, come up with some new ideas, come up with a new philosophy, acknowledge the mistakes that we made, promise to do things differently.  If that was their message, that would be plausible. 

And I would embrace it.  I would say, great, you got new ideas?  Come on, let’s work together.  Let’s figure out how we can move the country forward.  But that’s not what they’re saying.  One of their leaders was asked what would he do if they took over Congress again, and he said -- I'm quoting here -- we're going to pursue “the exact same agenda” as before Obama took office.  The exact same agenda. 

So basically, what they’re really betting on -- I mean, their whole campaign strategy is that all of you have come down with a case of amnesia.  (Laughter.)  They are banking on the fact that you’ll forget what their agenda did to this country over eight years. 

Imagine the economy is a car.  And they’re driving along -- and I don't know what they’re doing.  They’re not paying much attention to the road.  Maybe they’re on their BlackBerry.  I don't know.  They’re talking on the phone.  (Laughter.)  Something.  But they drive the economy into the ditch.  And so now, me and Bill Nelson, and the congressional delegation here, and all of us, we got to put on our boots and we climb down into the ditch, and it’s muddy down there and hot, bugs.  (Laughter.) We're pushing, we're shoving, trying to get this car out of the ditch.  Republicans, they’re standing there, watching us.  (Laughter.)  Sipping on a Slurpee, or something.  (Laughter.) 

They’re like -- we say, you guys want to come down and help push?  “No, no, that's okay.  Push harder, though.”  (Laughter.) “You're not pushing right.”  “If we were pushing we’d be doing it differently.”  (Laughter.)

Finally, finally after all this work, we get the car back up on level ground.  We're ready to move forward.  Some of these guys tap us on the shoulder.  We turn around -- they say, “We want the keys back.”  (Laughter.)  You can't have the keys back! You don't know how to drive!  (Applause.)  We don't want to go back into the ditch!  (Applause.)

I don't know if any of you have thought of this, but when you want your car going forward, what do you do?  You put it into “D.”  When you want to go reverse what do you do?  Put it into “R.”  We don't want to go backwards, we want to go forwards.  That's why we're going to vote for Alex Sink.  (Applause.)  We need to go forward.  (Applause.) 

That's what this election is about -- moving forward. America always moves forward.      

If you want to know what will happen if the other party takes over Congress, all you’ve got to do is take a look at what they’ve done the last 18 months.  On issue after issue, they’ve sided with special interests over the middle-class families.  They voted to give tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas.  They voted to give insurance companies the power to deny you coverage if you’ve had a preexisting condition.  The top Republican on the Energy Committee, the guy who would be in charge of energy policy in this country if they take over -- after the oil spill happened he apologized -- not to the people of Florida, he apologized to BP; said he was so sorry that the President forced them to put a $20 billion trust fund together so that fishermen and small business owners and hotel owners would be compensated.  Called it a shakedown.  Called it a “Chicago shakedown.”  (Laughter.)  Are you serious?  (Laughter.)

On Wall Street reform -- I mean, think about this -- the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and they want to go back to doing the same -- the same things.  How can that be?  How can that be?  The economy was almost brought to its knees.  And we put together a very sensible, mainstream approach for making sure we wouldn't have taxpayer bailouts, making sure that consumers were protected.  We kept on reaching out to them: Work with us.  Wouldn't do it -- because the special interests in Washington didn’t want them to do it.  

That's what’s at stake in this election.  If we give them the keys back, they will drive this economy right back into the ditch.  And riding shotgun will be every special interest under the sun. 

And let me be clear about how we're going to move our economy forward.  The key to moving this economy forward is going to be the private sector.  Government is not going to be the primary driver of job creation in this country.  We want businesses to succeed.  The free market is the greatest instrument of wealth production in our history.  (Applause.)  But -- so if you’re a responsible business owner, I want to do everything I can to help you grow and prosper and hire more employees.  But I don’t think it’s anti-business to say we should make sure an oil rig is safe before you start drilling.  I don’t think it’s anti-business to say Wall Street banks should play by the same rules as everybody else.  I don’t think it’s anti-business to say that insurance companies should deny people care just because they get sick -- to make sure that we say to insurance companies, you got to treat people fairly -- that's not being anti-business.  That's just being -- common sense. 

We can’t go back to an attitude where whatever is good for me is good enough.  We got to start asking what’s good for America?  What’s best for all our businesses?  What’s best for all our people?  What’s best for the next generation, not just the next election?  How do we move this country forward as one people, and as one nation.  (Applause.)  

So, Florida, I know times are tough.  When times are tough, it can be easy to give in to cynicism, it can be easy to give in to fear.  Sometimes we set our sights lower, we settle for the status quo.  That’s what the other side is counting on in this election.  They’re not offering new plans.  They’re not offering new ideas.  They’re offering cynicism and they’re offering fear. They’re offering distractions and wedge issues.

You know, during the course of the last 18 months there have been times where I've taken positions that surprise people in Washington.  All the pundits, they say, boy, you know, what he’s doing, it doesn’t poll well.  (Laughter.)  I know it doesn’t poll well.  I've got pollsters.  (Laughter.)  But you didn’t send me to Washington to do what was popular.  You sent me to do what was right.  (Applause.)  That's who we are as a country.  We are Americans.  We do not give up.  We do not quit.  We do not fear the future -– we shape the future.  (Applause.) 

And if you’ll join Alex Sink, and if you’ll join Kendrick Meek, and you join me to build a future where all our kids are getting educated, and small businesses are flourishing because of their ideas and their ingenuity, and we're creating clean energy jobs all across America -- if you’ll join me in building a future that thinks about more than just politics, thinks about how are we going to meet this solemn obligation we have to those who ae coming after us -- I'm absolutely positive that the 21st century is going to be the American Century, just like the 20th.

Thank you very much, everybody.  God bless you.  God bless the United States of America.  Thank you.  (Applause.) 

                                    END              6:05 P.M. EDT

Remarks by the President at a Discussion with Ohio Families on the Economy

Private Residence

Columbus, Ohio

10:47 A.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I am -- I'm just thrilled to be here. And I want to thank Joe and Rhonda and the entire family for being such great hosts.  And I want to thank all of you for taking the time to be here. 

I see the mayor of Columbus is here, a great friend.  Somebody who’s going to be running and I hope winning for the U.S. Senate, Lee Fisher is here.  And Mary Jo Kilroy is here.  We've got one of the best senators I believe in the United States Senate in Sherrod Brown -- is here.  And one of the finest governors in the country, Ted Strickland, is here.  So give those folks a big round of applause.  (Applause.) 

Should we tell them to take off their jackets, too?  (Laughter.)  Take off your jackets, guys.  Lighten up a little bit.  Sheesh!  (Laughter.) 

This is just a great opportunity for me to have a conversation with you.  And I don't want this to be too formal.  What I want to do is have a chance to listen to you and also answer your questions.  What we've tried to do whenever we are in a setting like this is to talk about the things that folks are going through day to day -- because, look, I'll be honest with you, sometimes when you're in Washington you get caught up with the particular legislative battles or the media spin on certain issues, and sometimes you lose touch in terms of what folks are talking about around the kitchen table.

One of the ways that I stay in touch is through events like this, as well as reading letters from constituents and voters all across the country every night.  And obviously what’s on a lot of people’s minds right now is the economy. 

We went through the worst recession that we've had since the Great Depression.  And when I was sworn in about 18 months ago, we had already lost several million jobs and we were about to lose several million more.  We lost 800,000 jobs the month I was sworn in.  And so we had to act fast and take some emergency steps to prevent the economy from going back into what could have been a Great Depression. 

And we were successful in doing so.  We stabilized the economy; we stabilized the financial system.  We didn’t have a complete meltdown.  And whereas we were losing jobs in the private sector when I was first sworn in, we're now gaining jobs, and we've gained jobs seven consecutive months in the private sector.  The economy was shrinking about 6 percent; the economy is now growing.  So we've made progress.  But let’s face it, the progress hasn’t been fast enough. 

And Joe, Rhonda and I were just talking about the challenges that they’ve had to go through when Rhonda got laid off -- and, by the way, also lost her health insurance in the process, at a time when her son was going through some significant medical needs.  So, in addition to trying to stop the crisis, what we also wanted to do was make sure that we were helping people get back on their feet.  So something that I'm very pleased with is that Rhonda was able to use the provisions that we passed to help her get COBRA so that she had health insurance, could keep her health insurance, at a time when the family was very much in need.  And millions of people across the country have been able to keep their health insurance.

We’ve also been trying to help our state and local governments so that they’re not having to lay off as many teachers and firefighters and police officers, and I know that -- I think the mayor and the governor would acknowledge that the help that we provided them has really helped to plug some big budget holes.

And, in addition, what we’ve been trying to do is to build infrastructure that puts people back to work but also improves the quality of life in communities like Columbus.  So Joe is an architect and he’s now working on a new police station that was funded in part with Recovery Act funds.

So all these things have made a difference.  But we still have got a long way to go.  And so a couple of things that we’re focused on right now is, number one, making sure that small businesses are getting help, because small businesses like Joe’s architectural firm are really the key to our economy.  They create two out of every three jobs.  And so we want to make sure that they’re getting financing.  We want to make sure that we are cutting their taxes in certain key areas.  One of the things that we’ve done, for example, is propose that we eliminate capital gains taxes on small businesses so that when they’re starting up and they don't have a lot of cash flow, that's exactly the time when they should get a break and they should get some help.

We’re focusing, as well, on trying to figure out can we build more infrastructure here in Ohio and all across the country that puts people back to work, not just building roads and bridges, but also building things like high-speed rail, or building broadband lines that could connect communities and give people access to the Internet at a time when that's going to be critical in terms of long-term economic development.

We’re also going to have to look at how do we, over the long term, get control of our deficit.  And that's obviously something that a lot of people have on their minds.  The key is to make sure that we do so in a way that doesn’t impede recovery, but rather gives people confidence over the medium and the long term. And I’m going to be happy to talk about what we’re doing in terms of spending. 

But overall, the main message that I want to deliver before I start taking questions -- and I said this to Joe and Rhonda -- is slowly, but surely, we are moving in the right direction.  We’re on the right track.  The economy is getting stronger, but it really suffered a big trauma.  And we’re not going to get all 8 million jobs that were lost back overnight.  It’s going to take some time.  And businesses are still trying to get more confident out there before they start hiring.  And people -- consumers -- are not going to start spending until they feel a little more confident that the economy is getting stronger.

And so what we’re trying to do is create sort of a virtuous cycle where people start feeling better and better about the economy.  And a lot of it is sort of like recovering from an illness; you get a little bit stronger each day and you take a few more steps each day.  And that’s where our economy is at right now.

What we can’t afford to do is to start going backwards and doing some of the same things that got us into trouble in the first place.  This is why it’s been so important for us, for example, to pass something like Wall Street reform to make sure that we’re not creating the same kinds of financial bubbles and the massive leverage and the reckless risks that helped to create this problem in the first place.

And I am very proud that we’ve got somebody like a Sherrod Brown or a Mary Jo, who worked really tirelessly with us in Congress to make sure that we don’t have a situation where we’ve got to bail out banks that have taken reckless risks; that we are monitoring what’s happening in the financial system a lot more carefully, making sure people aren’t cheated when it comes to their mortgages, or that there are a bunch of hidden fees in their credit cards that helped to create some of the problems that we’ve seen in the financial systems.

We can’t go back to doing things the way we were doing them before.  We’ve got to go forward.  That’s what we’re trying to do.  And hopefully as we continue over the next several months and the next several years, we’re going to see a Columbus and an Ohio and a United States of America that is going to be stronger than it was before this crisis struck.  I am absolutely confident of that.  But we’ve got more work to do.

All right.  So, with that, what I want to do is I just want to open it up and you guys can ask me questions about anything -- and just ignore all these cameras who are here.  (Laughter.)   Pretend they’re not there.  The only thing I would ask is introduce yourselves so that I get a chance to know you.  Or if you haven’t met one of your neighbors, this is a good chance for you to do so. 

Why don't we start with this gentleman right here.  And we’ve got some mics -- the only reason -- the main reason we’re using mics is so that these folks behind us can hear you.  This gentleman right here.

Q    Hi, President Obama.  I hope I don't pass out while I’m asking this question, so -- my question is actually about health care.  My brother is disabled.  And he’s definitely what I would consider one of the working poor.  He will not mature any more as far as mindset of a 12-year-old.  Right now he works washing dishes at a local restaurant and, unfortunately, because the employer does not offer health care insurance, one whole check, which is two weeks’ worth of work, has to actually go towards him just paying for COBRA, which is obviously well out of his budget. But he has to, simply because of various illnesses that he suffers from.

My question is, unfortunately, I’m not able to sit down and read a 2,000-page bill or law that -- with all the reform that happened with health care.  With the present reforms that went into place, how will that help him?  And if it doesn’t, then how will -- I know that you’re not done with health care -- how will your -- the latest changes that you want to happen with health care, how will that help him?

And thank you for doing such a wonderful job.

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, thank you.  Here’s how specifically health reform should help your brother.  Number one, it gives an incentive to his employer to provide health insurance -- because one of the key components of health care reform was providing employers a 35 percent tax break on the premiums they pay for their employees, all right?  So basically it’s cutting his potential costs -- the employer’s potential costs for providing your brother with health insurance, it’s cutting it by a third.  That's step number one.

And there are going to be companies out there that say, you know what, we want to provide health insurance, but we just couldn’t afford to do it, but now that it’s costing us up to a third less, saving us thousands of dollars, maybe we should go ahead and provide coverage for that.  Okay, so that is step number one. 

Step number two is if the employer still doesn’t provide coverage, over the next couple of years your brother is going to be able to join a pool -- what we’re calling an exchange -- where he can basically buy the same kind of insurance that these members of Congress are buying.  And the advantage that he’s going to have is that now he’s part of a pool of millions of people who are buying it all at the same time, which means they’ve got leverage.  The same way big companies are able to lower their costs per employee because the insurance company really wants their business, well, now your brother could be part of the same pool that these guys are and that’s going to give leverage, which will lower his rates.

And the final part of it is, if even with these lower rates, this better deal, he still can’t afford it, then we’re going to provide some subsidies to help him.  So all those things combined should help make sure that your brother is getting health insurance.

Now, one of the things that I think people may not be aware of is that although this exchange isn’t going to be set up until 2014 -- because it takes a while, we’ve got to set it up right -- there’s some immediate things that are helping right now.  If your child has a preexisting condition, insurance companies, starting this year, will not be able to deny those children coverage.  And that’s a big deal for a lot of folks whose children may have diabetes or some other illness and right now can’t get insurance.  Insurance companies are going to have to provide them insurance.  That’s number one.

Number two, how many people here have kids who are college-age, about to go to college?  All right.  Well, one of the things you’re going to be able to do is when those kids get out of college, if they don’t get insurance right away, they’re going to be able to stay on your insurance until they’re 26 years old.  That's a big deal because a lot of times that first job or those first couple of jobs out of college are the ones that don’t provide health insurance.

So there are a number of changes that are being made right now that will make those of you who have health insurance more secure with the insurance they have.  We’re eliminating lifetime limits.  There’s a bunch of fine print on the insurance forms that sometimes have ended up creating real problems for people.  Your insurance company decides to drop you right when you get sick, just when you need it most.  Those kinds of practices are over now. 

And the final aspect of health reform that's important is, is that by changing the incentives for how doctors get paid under Medicare and under Medicaid, we’re actually encouraging doctors to become more efficient so that over time health care costs actually start leveling out a little bit instead of skyrocketing each and every year.  Because everybody here who’s got health insurance, what’s been happening?  Your premiums have been going up; co-payments, deductibles, all that stuff has been going up.  So we’ve got to actually try to control the costs of it, and part of it is just a matter of making sure that we get a better bang for our health care dollar.

So, for example, when you go to a doctor, we’re still filling out forms in triplicate on paper.  It’s the only business there is where you still have a whole bunch of paperwork.  And what we’re trying to do is to encourage information technologies so that when you go into a doctor, they can already pull down your medical records electronically.  If you take a test, then it’s sent to all the specialists who are involved so you don't end up having to take four or five tests, and pay for four or five tests, when all you needed was just one.

Those are the kinds of things that will take a little bit longer to actually take into effect, but hopefully over time they’re actually going to lower cost.

All right.  I'm going to go boy, girl here to make sure it’s fair.  (Laughter.)  Right here.  Absolutely.

Q    Mr. President, I'm concerned about the furor lately that's been -- it’s similar to what’s happened in the past but it’s reemerging, mostly from the Republican Party, but some Democrats -- that Social Security needs to be privatized because it’s losing money, and we're all going to -- and it’s going to go broke, and that sort of thing.  How would you comment on that?

THE PRESIDENT:  I have been adamant in saying that Social Security should not be privatized and it will not be privatized as long as I'm President.  (Applause.)  And here’s the reason.  I was opposed to it before the financial crisis.  And what I said was the purpose of Social Security is to have that floor, that solid -- rock-solid security, so that no matter what else happens you’ve always got some income to support you in your retirement. And I've got no problem with people investing in their 401(k)s, and we want to encourage people to invest in private savings accounts.  But Social Security has to be separate from that. 

Now, imagine if Social Security, if a portion of that had been in the stock market back in 2006 and 2007.  I mean, you saw what happened with your 401(k)s -- you lost 20, 30, 40 percent of it.  Now, we've recovered -- in part because of the policies that we put into place to stabilize the situation, the stock market has recovered 60-70 percent of its value from its peak.  But if you were really in need last year or the year before, and suddenly you see your assets drop by 40 percent, and that's all you're relying on, it would have been a disaster.

So here’s the thing.  Social Security is not in crisis.  What is happening is, is that the population is getting older, which means we've got more retirees per worker than we used to.  We're going to have to make some modest adjustments in order to strengthen it.  There are some fairly modest changes that could be made without resorting to any newfangled schemes that would continue Social Security for another 75 years, where everybody would get the benefits that they deserve.  And what we've done is we've created a fiscal commission of Democrats and Republicans to come up with what would be the best combination to help stabilize Social Security for not just this generation, but the next generation. 

I'm absolutely convinced it can be done.  And as I said, I want to encourage people to save more on their own, but I don't want them taking money out of Social Security so that people are putting that into the stock market.  There are other ways of doing this. 

For example, it turns out that if you set up a system with your employer where the employer automatically deducts some of your paycheck and puts it into your 401(k) account, unless you say you don't want it done, it turns out people save more just naturally.  I mean, it’s just kind of a psychological thing.  If they take it out of your paycheck, and they automatically take it out, unless you affirmatively say, don't take it out, you’ll save more than if they ask you, do you want to save, and then you say, nah, I’m going to keep the money.  And then you save less.

So that's just a small change.  It’s voluntary, but that in and of itself could end up boosting savings rates significantly. So there are a bunch of ways that we can do -- make sure that retirement is more secure.  But we’ve got to make sure that Social Security is there not just for this generation but for the next one.  Okay?

All right, gentleman’s turn.  And by the way, I know that some folks may be hot, and if they are, you guys can always move into the shade.

Q    Mr. President, sir, I was born and raised in a good blue-collar town in Toledo, Ohio.  I grew up in a union family and I work now for a significant number of pension assets in the labor union market with an investment firm.  I think the question I have that most bothers me is what’s important to my people out there that I talk to, and those two things are, the first, what’s going to happen with their pensions, especially those, as you know, in the red and the yellow.  The PPA has not exactly been that favorable to them.  And the PBGC is not a very good option. My father had to take early retirement.  He’s not receiving the maximum amount after decades of hard work and service that he had anticipated.

The second part is I’m not naïve enough to think that just the pensions alone can help save workers.  We’ve got 9.5 percent unemployment in this country, at least at last release, and I’m sure as you know, that’s even more -- it’s larger than that for the manufacturing industry and us in the Rust Belt -- Toledo, Detroit, Cleveland.  Obviously we need to put those guys back to work; they need to have man-hours out there.  How can we create a sustainable, competitive product at an advantage to make us another leader in the manufacturing and labor force industry going forward, not just to get them back to work for a year or two, sir, but to get to work for the long term so they can grow the market on their own with their own product and their own work?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, look, this is a great question and it goes to the heart of what our economic strategy has to be.  And Senator Brown and Congresswoman Kilroy and others, I know this is their number one concern each and every day.  And certainly this is your governor’s number one concern each and every day, is how do we make sure that we’re creating a competitive America in which we aren’t just buying things from other countries, we’re selling things to other countries, and we’re making things here in the United States of America.

Let me give you a couple of examples of areas that I think have enormous promise.  Number one is the whole clean energy industry -- and Toledo actually is becoming a leader in this, creating good jobs, in areas like solar -- building solar panels, wind turbines, advanced battery manufacturing.  There is a whole series of huge potential manufacturing industries in which we end up being world leaders and, as a bonus, end up creating a more energy-efficient economy that is also good for the environment.

Now, we made, at the beginning of my term, the largest investment in clean energy in our history.  And so there are plants that are opening up all across the country, creating products made in America that are now being shipped overseas.  I'll give you one example, and that's the advanced battery manufacturing industry.  These are the batteries that go into electric cars, or the batteries that are ending up helping to make sure that if you get solar power or wind power, that it can be transmitted in an efficient way. 

We have 2 percent of the entire market -- 2 percent.  By 2015, in five years, we’re going to have 40 percent of that market because of the investments that we made.  So one of the advanced battery manufacturing plants that we helped get going with some key loans and support and tax breaks, they’re now putting those batteries into the Chevy Volt.  And you combine it then with an entire new U.S. auto industry that is cleaner and smarter and has better designs and is making better products -- those are potentially thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of manufacturing jobs.  And the Midwest is really poised to get a lot of those jobs.  In a town like Toledo where you’ve still got a lot of skilled workers, they are poised to be able to take off on that.  But we’ve got to continue to support it.

The other area that I’ve already mentioned is infrastructure.  We’ve got about $2 trillion worth of infrastructure improvements that need to be made all across the country -- roads, bridges, sewer lines, water mains.  It’s crumbling.  The previous generation made all these investments that not only put people to work right away but also laid the foundation then for economic growth in the future. 

And we used to always have the best infrastructure worldwide.  Now, if it comes to rail, we certainly don't have the best rail system in the world.  Our roads in a lot of places aren’t the best.  Our airports aren’t the best.  Somebody is laughing -- they just got -- obviously, went through an airport. So we’ve got a lot of work to do on infrastructure.  And this is an area where I hope we can get some bipartisan agreement.

It’s hard to get bipartisan agreement these days.  But I think the notion that we can put people to work rebuilding America, investing in making stuff here in the United States that -- by the way, every time you build a road, that's not just putting people to work on the actual construction; all those supplies that go into road building, all those supplies that go into a bridge, all those supplies that go into rail, that's creating a ripple effect all throughout the economy.  So I think that's a second area of great potential.

Last point you made was -- had to do with pensions.  Look, the truth be told, the way we were handling pensions both in private companies and among public employees, a lot of it wasn’t that different from some of the stuff that was going on in Wall Street, because what happened was -- is that these pensions weren’t adequately funded.  Some of these companies would underfund it, and then say, well, we’re going to get an 8 percent return or 10 percent return on our pension funds, to make it look like they were adequately funded when they weren’t.  That contributed to pension funds chasing a lot of risky investments that promised these high returns that, in fact, were built on a house of cards.  So you’re going to see a number of pensions in a number of companies that are under-funded.

Now, we’ve got a mechanism at the federal level that provides a certain percentage backup or guarantee for these pension funds if they fail.  But we’re going to have to, I think, work with these private sector companies so that -- right now, they’ve become very profitable.  Companies are making money right now.  We were talking earlier about the economy and how it’s moving slow.  Well, corporate profits are doing just fine.  They're holding onto a whole bunch of cash -- they're kind of sitting on it, waiting to see if they can make more money and more opportunity, but they haven’t started hiring yet.  One of the things they need to be doing with some of this cash is shoring up their pension funds that are currently under-funded.

It’s a girl’s turn.  Yes, right there.

Q    Mr. President, tied in with the jobs situation I think is the education system.  And it seems to be in a crisis now, and people are not being educated to take these jobs that are going to be created.  And I wondered what sort of plans you might have for that.

THE PRESIDENT:  That’s a great question.  Are you in education?

Q    No.

THE PRESIDENT:  No?

Q    I’m a nurse.

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, that’s important, too.

Q    Yes. 

THE PRESIDENT:  Thanks for the care you give to people all day long.  I’m a big fan of nurses. 

The thing that will probably most determine our success in the 21st century is going to be our education system.  I’ll just give you a quick statistic.  A generation ago, we ranked number one in the number of college graduates.  We’ve now slipped to number 12 in the number of college graduates.  That’s just in one generation.  That is putting us at a huge competitive disadvantage.  Because, look, companies these days, they can locate anywhere.  You’ve got an Internet line, you can set your company up in India, you can set up your company in the Czech Republic -- it doesn’t really matter where you are.

And so what that means is a lot of companies are going to look for where can they find the best workforce.  And we have to make sure that that is in Columbus, Ohio.  We’ve got to make sure that that’s in Toledo.  We’ve got to make sure that that’s in the United States of America.

Now, we still have the best universities and the best colleges on Earth.  But there are a couple of problems that have come up.  First of all, our education starts at K-12.  And we’re not doing a good enough job at the K-12 level making sure that all our kids are proficient in math, in science, in reading and writing. 

And what we’ve done is we’ve set up something called the Race to the Top, where, although a lot of federal money still flows to schools just based on a formula and based on need, we’ve taken a certain amount of money and we’ve said, you know what, you’ve got to compete for this money.  And you’ve got to show us that you’ve got a plan to improve the education system, to fix low-performing schools, to improve how you train teachers -- because teachers are the single most important ingredient in the education system -- to collect data to show that you’re improving how these kids are learning. 

And what’s happened is, is that states all across the country have actually responded really well, and we’ve seen the majority of states change their laws to start doing this bottom-up, grassroots reform of the K-12 system.  That’s critical.  That’s number one.

The second thing that we’ve got to solve is that college became unaffordable for a lot of people.  And Joe and Rhonda, we were just talking -- we’re about the same age and we got married I think the same year.  Our kids are about the same age.  So we’ve kind of gone through the same stuff.  And Michelle and I -- I don't know about you guys -- we didn’t talk about this -- but Michelle and I, we had a lot of debt when we finished school.  It was really expensive.  And neither of us came from wealthy families, so we just had to take out a bunch of student loans.  It took us about 10 years to pay off our student loans.  It was actually higher than our mortgage for most of the time.

And I don’t want that burden to be placed on kids right now. Because a lot of them, as a consequence, maybe they decide not to go to college, or, if they do, they end up getting off to a really tough start because their pay just is not going to support the amount of debt that they’ve got.

So here’s what we did.  Working with Sherrod, working with Mary Jo, Democrats in Congress -- this didn’t get a lot of attention, but we actually completely transformed how the government student loan program works.  Originally what was happening was all those loans were going through banks and financial intermediaries.  And even though the loans were guaranteed by the government so the banks weren’t taking any risks, they were skimming off billions of dollars in profits. 

And we said, well, that doesn't make any sense.  If we’re guaranteeing it, why don't we just give the loans directly to the students, and we’ll take all that extra billions of dollars that were going to the banks as profits, and we’ll give more loans.  And as a consequence, what we’ve been able to do is to provide millions more students additional loans and make college more affordable over time.  That's the second thing.

Third thing we’ve got to do is we’ve got to focus on community colleges, which are a wonderful asset.  Not everybody is going to go to a four-year college.  And even if you go to a four-year college, you may need to go back and retrain two years -- for a year or two, even while you’re working, to keep up, keep pace with new technologies and new developments in your industry. So what we’ve really tried to do is to partner with community colleges, figure out how we can strengthen them, put more resources into them, and link them up to businesses who are actually hiring so that they’re training people for the jobs that exist, as opposed to the jobs that don’t.

One of the problems we’ve had for a lot of young people is they go to college, training for a job, thinking that their job  -- or thinking there’s a job out there, and actually the economy has moved on.  And what we need to do is tailor people’s education so that they are linked up with businesses who say, we need this many engineers, or we need this kind of technical training, and we’ll help design what that training is -- so that when that person goes to college and they’re taking out some of those loans to go to college, they know at the end of the road there’s actually going to be a job available to them.

Last thing -- math, science, we’ve really got to emphasize those.  That's an area where we’ve really fallen far behind, and our technological competitiveness is going to depend on how well we do in math and science.

Okay.  Yes, sir.

Q    Mr. President, I am a proud firefighter for the great city of Columbus here in Ohio.  (Applause.)  Thank you. 

THE PRESIDENT:  Joe, did you use to play for Ohio State, man?

Q    I must correct you.  I was actually part of the National Championship team for Eastern Kentucky University.

THE PRESIDENT:  Oh, okay, all right.

Q    For the national champion, no less.  (Laughter.) 

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, there you go, okay.  But you look like you could -- we could put you on the line right now.

Q    Oh, that's what they all say.  (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT:  Anyway.

Q    But, Mr. President, I wanted to talk to you about a couple of things as it pertains to the safety and security of our firefighters.  I want to share with you some good news as it pertains to the stimulus and the SAFER Act for which you championed and signed off on. 

Locally and from the state standpoint, we had some firefighter jobs that were in jeopardy, up in the hundreds.  The stimulus package -- I know the state was strapped with its commitment and what it had to with those monies.  Some of those areas we weren’t able to be supported in.  But because of your administration signing off on the SAFER Act, which is staffing adequate fire and emergency response, you provided over $300 million last year and upped that to over $400 million this year  -- that had allowed for the jobs in Ohio to come back -- the firefighters rather who had jobs to come back and get their jobs back.

In addition to that, the fire act has provided safer equipment for us.  We -- don't want to sound cliché, but I’m just your average Joe.  But what we do as firefighters, we want to make a significant difference to our citizens here in our community, as well as our lives.  That SAFER Act and that fire act has provided us significant equipment -- money, funding rather for significant equipment -- face pieces, self-contained breathing apparatus, things of those nature.  So we come to say how proud we are to be able to afford that opportunity to secure our firefighters. 

The international president has sent a appreciative thank you and we would hope that you would find -- I know your busy schedule -- somewhere around this country -- Cincinnati, Akron, Elyria, Niles -- have brought back firefighters because of the SAFER Act.  And if anywhere along your schedule you have the opportunity, as a symbolic gesture of support, to stop in to those stations, thank those firefighters, we would greatly appreciate that.

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, thank you.  And as I said, you guys put your lives on the line each and every day.  We wanted to make sure that public safety was not being threatened as a consequence of the recession.  We’ve done that.  We’ve helped to support not just firefighters but also police officers, teachers, other vital services.  We’re going to continue to support you.  And again, we’re very grateful for everything you do. 

And if this is your lovely wife here, we’re grateful to her too because she’s got to -- she’s got to put up with you -- (laughter) -- running off into fires and putting yourself in danger.  And I’m sure that makes her a little bit stressed once in a while, but I’m sure she’s very proud of you.

Q    Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT:  Okay. 

Anybody else?  Yes, go ahead.  Here, we’ve got a microphone.

Q    Hi, Mr. President.  I was actually recently laid off of a position working at our local community college, helping dislocated workers get back and get retrained.  But the position was funded on workforce investment dollars and the funding ended. As I look for a new position in social services, one of my concerns is I’m having trouble finding a position that pays enough so that I can pay my bills and also send my daughter to quality childcare.  So I was wondering if there’s anything that’s been done to reduce childcare costs.

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, we have a childcare credit in place. We’d like to make it stronger.  This is one of those back-and-forths we’ve been having with the Republicans, because we actually think it is a good idea and they don’t.  But I think that giving families support who have to work each and every day is absolutely critical. 

Now, there’s some companies that are starting to get smart about providing childcare on site for their employees, which makes a huge difference.  It’s a huge relief.  But those are usually bigger companies.  And some of the smaller companies or small businesses don’t have that capacity.

Bottom line is we just got to make sure that we’re providing you more support, primarily through a tax credit mechanism.  This is something that we have incorporated in the past in our budget; we haven’t got everything that we’d like done on it.  It will be something that we continue to try to work on a bipartisan basis to get the cost of childcare down.   There’s another component of this, though, and that’s also boosting the quality of childcare. 
Kids learn more from the age of zero to three than they do probably for the rest of their lives -- and this goes to the earlier question about education.  We want to get them off to a good start knowing their colors and their numbers and their letters and just knowing how to sit still.  And a high quality childcare environment can help on that front.  But that means that childcare workers, for example, have to be paid a decent wage and get decent training. 

And we’ve been working -- we set up actually a task force that is trying to lift up the best practices, who is really doing a great job in creating high quality health care -- or childcare at an affordable rate, and then trying to teach other states and other cities and other communities how to replicate some of that great progress that’s been made.  There are some terrific programs out there, but they’re still too far and few between.

All right, I’ve got time for two more questions.  Yes, sir, right here. 

Q    I work for a company who is benefiting from some stimulus money here in Columbus.  And it’s keeping me and my crews afloat for a while.  But what we really need is a stronger housing market here in Columbus.  We need to be building new roads and making houses affordable for people.  They need to get out there buying.  They need to be able to get the loans.  And what’s up with that?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, remember I told you that it’s going to take some time for this economy to come back.  One of the reasons it’s going to take time for this economy to come back is the housing market is still a big drag on the economy as a whole.  And the reason the housing market is still a big drag on the economy as a whole is we built a lot of homes over the previous five, seven, 10 years.  Every year, about 1.4 million families are formed that are ready to buy a new house, or need some place to live. 

And what happened over the previous four, five, seven years during this housing bubble was we were building 2 million homes a year when only 1.4 [million] were being absorbed.  And then the bubble burst, and now we’re only building 400,000. 

And all that inventory that happened during the housing bubble, it’s still out there.  So some states are worse than others.  You go to places like Nevada or Arizona or Florida, California, their inventory of unsold homes was so high that it is just going to take a whole bunch of years to absorb all that housing stock.

Now, what we can do is to help people who are currently in their homes stay in their homes.  We can strengthen the economy overall so that that new family that just formed, they feel confident enough to say, you know what, it’s time, honey, for us to go out and take the plunge and start looking.  And right now they’re kind of holding back, the way a lot of people are still holding back, because there’s uncertainty in the market.  And we’ve initiated, through the Treasury Department, a number of programs like that to help support the housing market generally.

But I want to be honest with you.  It is going to take some time for us to absorb this inventory that was just too high.  And there’s no really quick way to do it, because we’re talking about a $5 trillion market.  And we can’t plug that big hole in terms of all the housing that needs to be absorbed.  We’re not going to be able subsidize all that over-capacity right now.

What we can do is just stabilize it and then improve the economy overall.  What we’re going to do is get back to the point where we’re building 1.4 million homes a year, instead of 400,000 -- and that's a huge difference.  So the industry is going to come back.  The question is can we just nudge it a little bit more.  And the most important thing we can do now is to improve the economy overall so that people start feeling a little more confidence.

All right?  I’ve got time for one more?  You’ve got a question?  Here you can use mine.

Q    Thank you.  I’m the practice manager at an ophthalmology practice at the Eye Center of Columbus, downtown.  It is a great facility that the city of Columbus helped us get in place.  There are over 30 ophthalmologists providing specialty care in separate practices, a state-of-the-art ambulatory surgery center.  We see tens of thousands of patients a year.  And I think we do a very efficient job of providing quality care, over 300 people employed.  So I’m kind of on both sides of health care.

And when I started working for this practice 25 years ago, we are now getting reimbursed one-third of what we got paid for  -- I’m just going to pick cataract surgery -- yet our operating costs continue to go up.  My boss is kind enough to provide health care costs entirely for all of his employees.  How does he continue to do that when Medicare continues to reduce what they're paying, and there’s the threat of more cuts coming and the private insurance companies follow suit? 

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, it’s a great question.  And let me talk about Medicare generally.  Medicare I think is one of the cornerstones of our social safety net.  The basic idea is, you’ve been working all your life, you retire; just like you’ve got Social Security that you can count on, you’ve also got health care that you can count on and you’re not going to go bankrupt just because you get sick.

But in the same way that Social Security has to be tweaked because the population is getting older, we’ve got to refresh and renew Medicare to make sure that it’s going to be there for the next generation, as well.  And the key problems are not just that more people as they retire are going to be part of Medicare.  The big problem is just health care inflation generally.  The costs of health care keep on skyrocketing.

Now, the way we’ve been dealing with it, which I think is the wrong way to deal with, is basically under-reimbursing our providers.  The right way to deal with it is to work with the providers to figure out how can we make the system less wasteful, more efficient overall.  And that way we’re paying -- your boss, if he’s spending a dollar on care, he’s getting reimbursed a dollar.  But we’re also making sure that the care he’s providing is exactly what the person needs, and high quality for a better price.

And that’s part of what health care reform was all about.  I’ll just give you a couple examples.  One of the things that we were doing in Medicare was we were giving tens of billions of dollars of subsidies to insurance companies under the Medicare Advantage plan, even though that plan wasn’t shown to make seniors any healthier than regular old Medicare.

So we said, all right, we’re not going to end Medicare Advantage, but we are going to have some competitive bidding and we’re going to force the insurance companies to show us, well, what exactly -- what value are you adding?  How are you helping to make these seniors healthier?  And if you’re not helping, then you shouldn’t be getting paid.  We should be giving that money to the doctor and the nurse and the other people who are actually providing care, not the insurance companies.

Well, there was a lot of hue and cry about this, but it was absolutely the right thing to do -- because now we just found out -- the actuaries for Medicare said the changes we’ve already made have extended the life of the Medicare trust fund for another 12 years -- which is, by the way, the longest it’s ever been extended as a consequence of a reform effort.

So we’ve made Medicare stronger just with some of the changes that we’ve already made.  But you’re absolutely right that we’re going to have to keep on making these changes to continue to make it stronger.  And that will affect not just Medicare; it will affect the entire health care system. 

Because there’s no doctor out there who doesn’t see Medicare as the $800 gorilla.  If Medicare is saying you’ve got to improve your quality and efficiency, then they will because they’ve got a lot of Medicare patients.  But they also have a lot of regular patients.  So hospitals, doctors, everybody starts getting more efficient as Medicare gets more efficient.  The key is making sure that we’re not just cutting benefits.

And, frankly, this is an argument that I have with my friends in the Republican Party sometimes.  One big change that some of them have advocated is to voucherize the Medicare system. You basically -- instead of once you have Medicare, you knowing that you can take that and go get care anywhere you want, we would just give you -- all right, here is whatever it is, $6,000 or $7,000 or whatever.  You go shop and figure out what kind of best deal you can get. 

The problem is, is that if Medicare costs -- if health care costs keep on going up but your voucher doesn’t keep on going up, you’re going to be in trouble.  And suddenly, you’ve got seniors who find themselves way short of what they need in terms of providing care. 

We’ve got to change how the health care system actually operates.  And that means more prevention -- more preventive care.  It means better -- that we reimburse people for checkups. It means we reimburse doctors when they’re consulting with people on things like smoking cessation and weight control and exercise.
There are a whole bunch of things that can make us healthier, reduce our costs overall.  But unfortunately, the system doesn’t incentivize them right now.  We need to change that.

Anybody have any last burning question?  That was technically the last question.  But this has to be like one that you’re just, man, I really need an answer for.

Q    I've got a very general question.

THE PRESIDENT:  Okay, go ahead.

Q      It’s a very general question, here.  I work on Wall Street.  I was wondering what kind of changes we can expect to see in the reform in the next couple years.

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, here’s the essential components of Wall Street reform that we set up.  Number one is that we got a  -- we had a system in which there was huge amounts of leverage that banks could take.  And what leverage means is, if they got a dollar in deposits, they were making a $40 bet using that one dollar -- which when times are good means you’re making a lot of money, right?  You’re putting one dollar down of your own money, and you got $40, and when the market is going up, you’re making out like a bandit.  But when the market goes down, when it starts de-leveraging, you’re in trouble.  And that's basically what happened with Lehman’s and a lot of these other companies.

So one thing that we’ve said is that we’ve got to have -- for big firms that are what we call “systemic,” that if they go down, the whole system could go down with them -- we’ve got to have a better check and say, you know what, you’ve got to control a little bit how you work in terms of leverage.  You’ve got to have enough capital, actual money, to cover the bets that you’re placing so that you’re not putting the whole system at risk.  That's number one.

Number two, there’s a whole derivatives market out there, which, frankly, even the bankers don't completely understand.  But you’ve got trillions of dollars -- and if you work on Wall Street you’re familiar obviously with the derivatives market.  I mean, you’ve got trillions of dollars that are basically outside of the regulated banking system, and people didn't know who’s making bets on what.  And what we said was that derivatives market, it needs -- it can continue, but it’s got to be in an open, transparent marketplace so that everybody knows who is betting on what. 

And we’re very clear about who the various parties are in these complex derivatives transactions.  That means the regulators can follow it a little more closely.  That's number two.

The third thing that we did is we made sure that we don't have taxpayer bailouts again.  So we’ve set up a system whereby if a big firm gets in trouble, we’re able to essentially quarantine it, separate it out from the rest of the pack, liquidate it without it spilling over into the system as a whole. That’s the third thing.

And the fourth thing is having a consumer financial protection agency that is really going to do a good job making sure that consumers know what they’re getting when it comes to financial products.  I mean, when you buy a toaster, there has been some assurance provided that that toaster will not explode in your face -- right?  There are a whole bunch of laws in there, people have to do tests on the toasters to make sure that nothing happens.  But if you buy a mortgage that explodes in your face because you didn’t know what was going on, everybody acts like, well, that’s your problem. 

Well, no, it’s actually all of our problem, because part of the reason we had this financial crisis was because people did not always understand the financial instruments that they were purchasing.  A lot of these subprime loans that were being given out, a lot of these no-interest -- you can buy your house, you don’t put any money down, you don’t pay any interest, you got this beautiful house -- and naturally people were thinking, well, this sounds great.  But what they weren’t looking at was, okay, there’s a balloon payment five years down.  This is only going to work if your housing -- the value of your house keeps on appreciating.  And if it stops appreciating, suddenly it’s not going to work anymore.  People hadn’t thought through all those ramifications.  And that had an effect on the whole system.

So what we’ve said is we’re going to have a strong consumer finance protection agency whose only job is to look after you when it comes to financial products.  And Joe and Rhonda and I were just talking about how it was only seven, eight years ago when Michelle and I were trying to figure out our student loans, how were we going to invest for the kids’ college education.  We had -- at the end of the month, I’d be getting my credit card bills, and I’m a pretty smart guy, but you open up some of those credit card bills -- you don't know what’s going on.  You don't read all that fine print.  You just look at the statement.

Well, as an example of the kinds of things that this new agency are going to be enforcing, we’ve already passed a law -- thanks again to Mary Jo and Sherrod -- we’ve already passed a law that says a credit card company can’t raise the interest rates on existing balances.  So it can’t attract you with a zero percent interest, you run up a $3,000 balance, and then suddenly they send you your next statement and it says, oh, your interest went up to 29 percent.  You can’t do that.  I mean, they’ll still be able to say, we’re going to raise your interest rate to 29 percent, but that can only be the balances going forward.  It can’t be on the money that you borrowed where you thought it was a zero percent.

Well, that's an example of straightforward, honest dealing that we’re going to be expecting.  We think the financial markets will still make money, the banks can still make money, but they got to make money the old-fashioned way, which is loan money to small businesses who are providing services to the community.  Loan money to Joe for his architectural firm, and he’s going to make sure you pay him back.  Loan people for mortgages, but make sure that you’ve done the due diligence so that you’re not tricking them into something they can’t afford.  Make sure that it’s something that you can afford -- right? 

They’re just a bunch of basic, common-sense reforms that we’re putting in place that will allow the market to function. Because the free market is the best system ever devised for creating wealth, but there have got to be some rules in the road so that you’re making money not by gaming the system, but by providing a better product or a better service.  All right?

Well, listen, I want to thank all of you for spending the time.  I know it got a little warm, and you guys just hung in there like troopers.  I want to make sure that I thank, once again, Ted Strickland, Sherrod Brown, Mayor Michael Coleman, your lieutenant governor, and I believe the next United States senator, Lee Fisher, and Mary Jo Kilroy for being here.  And obviously, I want to thank Joe and Rhonda Weithman and the whole Weithman family for sharing their backyard. 

And we’re going to have to make sure that we’re helping their lawn here.  It got trampled on a little bit.  I hope you guys are not stepping in the corn.  (Laughter.)  Michelle, by the way, would be very proud to see that you’ve got the vegetable garden working.  All right?  Give them a big round of applause, everybody.  (Applause.)   

Thank you very much.  Thank you.  (Applause.) 

Oh, and by the way, I just want you to know that the Weithmans made me the “O” in O-h-i-o.  It’s on tape.  It’s on tape somewhere.  (Applause.)

END
11:46 A.M. EDT
 

Remarks by the President at Luncheon for Senator Patty Murray

The Westin Seattle, Seattle, Washington

 1:03 P.M. PDT 

     THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you!  It is good to be in Washington! (Applause.)  It is good to be in Washington -- it is good to be in Seattle.  Seattle just looks terrific.  (Applause.)  I just want to go take a stroll.  But Secret Service said no.  (Laughter.) 

     I am just thrilled to be here.  I want to acknowledge some of the folks who are here who are so important to the life of this state, but also to what’s taking place throughout the country:  First of all, your wonderful governor, Chris Gregoire  -- please give her a big round of applause.  (Applause.)  Your outstanding congressional delegation -- Jim McDermott is in the house.  (Applause.)  Norm Dicks is here.  (Applause.)  Jay Inslee is here.  (Applause.)  Rick Larsen is here.  (Applause.)  Brian Baird is here.  (Applause.) 

     To the mayor of Seattle, Mike McGinn, thank you so much.  (Applause.)  The King County executive, Dow Constantine is here.  (Applause.)  And to somebody who I just adore, who I just think is terrific -- your senior senator from the great state of Washington -- Patty Murray.  (Applause.) 

     As I look out on the crowd, I see a lot of people who helped so much during the course of the campaign.  You were with us when we were up and you were with us when we were down.  But you always were there, understanding that we were at a critical point in our history and we needed to make some fundamental changes in order to deliver that promise to the next generation.  And so, to everybody here who supported me during my campaign and helped me become the President, thank you so much for your outstanding efforts.  (Applause.) 

     I am here to say thank you not only for my own election but for having the wisdom to send Patty Murray to Washington.  (Applause.)  And when this state sent Patty to the Senate, she wasn’t one of these lifelong politicians who wanted the job or the position for a fancy title or a nice office.  She was a self-described mom in tennis shoes who was just looking to help a few people solve a few problems.  And all these years later, Patty is that same person -– except she’s helped a whole lot of people solve a whole lot of big problems. 

     When I was in the Senate, I sat next to Patty on the Veterans Affairs Committee.  And I can tell you there is no fiercer advocate for our veterans than Patty Murray.  Nobody.  (Applause.)  Whether it was keeping three VA hospitals open here in Washington, or helping a World War II veteran break through the bureaucracy so he could receive his Purple Heart, no problem is too big, no problem is too small for Patty to fight for you.   

     And the same is true when it comes to fighting for jobs and opportunity for the people of this state.  You’ve seen her go to bat to keep Boeing jobs and aerospace jobs right here in Washington.  You’ve seen her fight for clean energy jobs and new infrastructure jobs right here in Washington.  She’s a senator who still flies across the country every weekend to come home, to listen -- to listen to you, the cares and concerns of her constituents.  So this is -- this is the kind of person you want representing you.  Especially in a time like this, this is the kind of leader you need.  The country needs Patty. 

     So I want everybody to understand I’m asking you to cast a primary vote today -- I know she is unopposed, but it doesn’t hurt to practice.  (Laughter.)  And then, we need a whole bunch of votes in November, because we have to have a leader like Patty continuing to do battle on behalf of middle-class families, working families all across this country. 

     She is rooted here in Washington, but her concerns, her vision, her passion for people, that’s important for the country as a whole.  And I am proud to call her a friend.  And I can tell you we would not have been able to get some of the critical things we got done this year had it not been for her leadership. So make sure you send her back to Washington, please.  (Applause.)

     Now, look, this is obviously an incredibly challenging time for America.  Eighteen months ago I took office after nearly a decade of economic policies that had given us sluggish growth, sluggish job growth, falling incomes, falling wages and a record deficit.  And all those policies culminated in the worst recession in our lifetimes and, I think it’s fair to say, the worst crisis that we’ve had economically since the Great Depression.

     In the last six months of 2008, while I was still campaigning for the presidency, 3 million American jobs were lost.  The month I was sworn in, 800,000 jobs were lost.  Subsequent months -- 600,000; 600,000.  Eight million jobs were lost, all told.  And behind each of these numbers is a story of heartache and a story of frustration -- the factory worker who gets laid off just a couple of years before retirement; the single mom who has sent out job application after job application and doesn’t hear the phone ring day after day; a college graduate who thought that a degree would land her a good job with a decent paycheck, and instead has just gotten her a mountain of debt; or somebody who aspires to college and then discovered that they just wouldn’t be able to afford it because their family has fallen on tough times.

     I hear these stories every day.  I read them in letters each night.  The struggles and the hopes of the American people are why I ran for this office in the first place.  It’s the reason that Patty ran for the Senate in the first place.  And that's why we intend to keep fighting as hard as we can for as long as it takes to turn this economy around.  That’s why I’m here.  That’s why Patty is here.  And we are going to succeed.  (Applause.)

     Now, we’re not there yet.  We’ve got a lot more work to do. We know that.  The truth is it’s going to take a few years to fully dig ourselves out of this recession.  It’s going to take time to bring back 8 million jobs.  Anybody who tells you otherwise is just looking for your vote.  But here’s what I can tell you:  After 18 months, I have never been more confident that our nation is headed in the right direction.  We are doing what is needed to move forward.  (Applause.)  And we’re doing what’s necessary not just to rebuild the economy for the short term; we want to rebuild it for the long term –- for our children, for our grandchildren.   

     We did not become the most prosperous nation on Earth by rewarding greed and recklessness of the sort that helped cause this financial crisis.  We didn’t come this far by just allowing a handful of banks and insurance companies and special interests to run wild.  We did it by rewarding the values of hard work and responsibility.  We did it by investing in the people who have built this country from the ground up –- workers and families; and small business owners and responsible entrepreneurs.  We did it because we out-worked and we out-educated and out-competed other nations.

     That’s who we are.  That's who we need to be.  Because right now, countries like China and India and South Korea and Germany, they are fighting as hard as they can for the jobs of the future. They’re trying to out-compete us when it comes to clean energy.  They’re trying to out-compete us when it comes to producing engineers and scientists.  And frankly, in some cases, they’ve been catching up and even propelling forward ahead of us. 

     And I said this at the State of the Union a while back, and I will repeat it:  The United States does not play for second place.  We play for first.  We are going to rebuild this economy stronger than it was before.  (Applause.)  And at the heart of this rebuilding effort are three simple words:  Made In America. Made In America.  (Applause.) 

     Instead of giving tax breaks to companies that are shipping jobs overseas, we want to cut taxes for companies that create jobs right here in the United States of America.  (Applause.)  We want to give tax cuts to small business owners.  We want to give tax breaks to clean energy companies.  We also want to make sure that we keep taxes low for middle-class families, and that’s why we cut taxes for 95 percent of workers right at the beginning of my term -- because they had been going through a tough time and they needed to have a chance to deal with this economic crisis. 

     Instead of prolonging an addiction to oil that endangers everything from our security to our coastlines, we are jumpstarting a homegrown energy industry in this country.  I don’t want to see solar panels and wind turbines and advanced batteries and electric cars manufactured in Europe or Asia.  I want to see them made right here in the United States of America, by American workers.  (Applause.) 

     We need 21st century infrastructure -- not just roads and bridges, but faster Internet access and high-speed rail -- projects that can lead to hundreds of thousands of new, private sector jobs. 

     And we’re helping the U.S. auto industry get back on its feet and retool for the 21st century.  This was an industry that lost hundreds of thousands of jobs in the year before I took office -- and were getting bailouts but never asked to restructure to figure out how they could compete.  So we had to make some tough decisions about whether to help them out or walk away from possibly a million jobs.  And I decided we couldn’t walk away.  And, by the way, this was not very popular.  (Laughter.) 

     It’s interesting in Washington -- people keep asking me, gosh, why are you doing these things that don’t poll well?  (Laughter.)  And I have to keep on explaining, I have pollsters. (Laughter.)  I know when things don’t poll well.  But I wasn’t sent to Washington, you did not send me to the Oval Office, to just do what was popular, you sent me there to do what was right. That’s why you sent me.  (Applause.)  That’s why you sent me to Washington, to stand up for things that were right.  (Applause.)

     So it turns out, lo and behold, all three U.S. automakers are now operating at a profit for the first time in years.  (Applause.)  They’ve got the strongest job growth in more than a decade.  And when I visited -- I went to a Chrysler plant in Detroit.  This had been shut -- it was on the verge of being shut down.  And I had a chance to meet 14 workers who had just won the lottery.  (Laughter.)  Now, you would think they might want to retire.  But most of them had stayed on -– because they love their job and they’re proud of what they do. 

     In fact, one guy had used some of his winnings to buy a car -- a Jeep Grand Cherokee -- from the plant where he worked.  He had helped build that car.  He bought it for his wife, then bought a whole bunch of American flags for his hometown because he loves his country.  He loves his company and he loves his co-workers.  And it captured the essence of who we are, coming out of tough times.  Do not bet against the American worker.  Do not bet against American businesses.  Don't bet against American ingenuity.   (Applause.)

     That's the message that he was sending, and that's the message I want to send to you.  We can compete.  But we’re going to have to take some steps to deal with longstanding problems -- not ignore them, not pretend that they don't exist, to confront them.

     We’ve got to make sure that our workers can compete on -- with any other workers on Earth.  And that's why we’re also reforming our education system based on what works for our children, not on what works for the status quo.  We’ve eliminated billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to the big banks that provide college loans so that all those billions of dollars can go to make a college education more affordable for millions of students.  Patty was one of the people who took the lead in that critical change.  (Applause.)

     To lower costs for families and for businesses, we passed health insurance reform that will finally make coverage affordable, and stop insurance companies from jacking up your premiums or refusing to cover you just because you’re sick. 

     You just saw Marcelas Owens come up here.  What a wonderful young man with a powerful story.  And when he was standing next to me as we were signing that piece of legislation, I thought about his mom, and I thought about my mom -- a single mom who didn't always have the kind of job that provide health insurance.

     To ensure that a financial crisis like the one we just had doesn’t happen again, we passed Wall Street reform that demands new accountability and tough oversight; reform that will stop credit card companies from charging you hidden fees and unfair rate hikes and that ends the era of Wall Street bailouts once and for all. 

     Patty was in the lead on all these measures.  And all these reforms make America more competitive in the 21st century.  They move us forward.  And on each of these reforms, we reached out to Democrats and Republicans for ideas and support.  But in just about every instance -- I’m sure there’s an exception that's escaping my mind -- (laughter) -- in almost every instance, Republicans in Congress said no.  No on help for small businesses.  No on middle-class tax cuts.  No on clean energy jobs.  No on making college more affordable.  No on Wall Street reform. 

     You remember our slogan during the campaign, “Yes, we can”? Their slogan is, “No, we can’t.”  (Laughter.)  “No, we can’t.”  That’s really inspiring.  (Laughter and applause.)  This vision they have for the future -- (laughter) -- gives you a little pep in your step when you hear it, don’t you?  (Laughter.)  “No, we can’t.”  (Laughter.) 

     Let’s unpack why they’re doing this.  I mean, part of it is they refuse to give up on the economic philosophy that they’ve been peddling for much of the last decade.  And their agenda was pretty straightforward.  You remember it.  You voted against it. (Laughter.)  That's why I’m President.  (Laughter and applause.)

     Their basic philosophy goes something like this:  We’re going to cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires, folks who don't need it, weren’t even asking for it.  And we’re going to cut rules for special interests, gut regulations that protect clean air and clean water and things that most of us value.  And then you’re going to cut working folks loose to fend for themselves.  So if you can’t find a job or you can’t afford college or don’t have health insurance, tough luck -- you are on your own.  Now, if you’re a Wall Street bank or an insurance company or an oil company like BP, come on in, help us write the regulations.

     Now, I think you may have noticed that their philosophy didn’t work out too well.  It’s not like we didn’t test it, right?  (Laughter.)  No, we -- the American people tried it out. They said, all right, we’ll go with that for eight years.  And it didn’t work.  It gave us record deficits and ultimately led to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.  Remember that -- it gave us record deficits.  Remember when they came in with this theory, we had record surpluses.  You remember that, right?  Yes.  And at the end, wrapped up in a big bow for me when I arrived was a $1.3 trillion deficit.  (Laughter.) 

     So when these guys are going out talking about spending and deficits and debt, I’m thinking, well, what are you talking about?  (Laughter.) 

     Now, I bring all this stuff up not because I want to re-litigate the past.  I just don’t want to relive the past.  (Applause.)  I don't want to go through that again.  (Applause.) I mean, it would be one thing if the Republicans had gone through a period of soul-searching, right?  If they had said, boy, we really messed up, and had kind of gone off into the wilderness and thought long and hard about their economic approach, and then came back and said, you know what, we didn’t know what we were doing but now we’ve got some new ideas, we’ve got some new policies, we’ve learned from our mistakes, we’re going to do something different this time -- that would be a plausible argument.  But that’s not what they’re doing. 

     One of their leaders in Congress was asked what his party would do if they took over Congress, he actually said they’d pursue “the exact same agenda” as before I took office.  That’s a quote -- “the exact same agenda” -- that didn’t work.

     So, basically, what this campaign is coming down to is that between now and November they’re betting that you will all come down with a case of amnesia.  (Laughter.)  They’re basically -- they’re counting on the fact that you don’t remember; that you’re going to forget what happened when they were in charge for the last -- for eight years. 

     They spent almost a decade driving the economy into a ditch. I mean, think about it if this -- if the economy was a car and they drove it into the ditch.  (Laughter.)  And so me and Patty, and a bunch of others, we go down there and we put on our boots and we’re pushing and shoving.  And it’s muddy and there are bugs and we’re sweating -- (laughter) -- and shoving, pushing hard.  And they’re all standing there sipping Slurpees -- (laughter) -- and watching and -- “you’re not pushing hard enough.”  “That’s not the right way to push.”  (Pretends to sip a Slurpee.)  (Laughter and applause.) 

     So finally, finally, Patty and I and everybody, we finally get the car up on level ground.  We’re about to go forward.  And these guys come and tap us on the shoulder, and they say, “We want the keys back.”  (Laughter.) 

     You can’t have the keys back.  You don’t know how to drive. (Applause.)  You don’t know how to drive.  (Applause.)  You can’t have them back.  (Applause.)  Can’t have them back.  You can’t have them back.  We are trying to go forward.  We do not want to go backwards -- into the ditch again. 

     You notice, when you want to move forward in your car, what do you do?  You put your car in “D.”  (Applause.)  When you want to go backwards, you put it in “R” -- (applause) --  back into the ditch.  Keep that in mind in November.  (Applause.)  That’s not a coincidence.  (Laughter.) 

     So that’s the choice in this election –- do we go back to the policies that got us into this mess, or do we keep moving forward?  I believe we move forward.  America always moves forward.      

     Do you want to know what will happen if the other party takes control of Congress in November?  All you have to do is look what they’ve done over the last 18 months.  I mean, they -- one thing I will give them credit for, they have not been bashful.  Right?  On issue after issue, they have sided with special interests over middle-class families. 

     Name me an issue.  They voted to keep giving tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas.  They voted to give insurance companies the power to keep denying coverage to people who are sick.  The top Republican on the Energy Committee actually apologized to BP for us making sure the $20 billion was secured to help fishermen and small businesspeople in the Gulf whose livelihoods were almost decimated.  This guy called it a shakedown -- I think he said “Chicago shakedown,” just to kind of underscore it.  (Applause.)  Apologized to BP. 

     They voted en masse against Wall Street reform –- and now Patty Murray’s opponent has earned the distinction of being the first candidate in the country to call for repeal of Wall Street reform.  Think about this.  He wants to go back to the old rules and the lack of oversight that caused the worst crisis since the Great Depression.  That is -- don't you think that's strange?  (Laughter.)

     I mean, I could see him saying, well, here are certain provisions I might modify.  But to just say we didn't need it when we almost had a complete financial meltdown -- he’s counting on amnesia.

     So this is what’s at stake in this election.  If we give them the keys back, they will drive us right back into the ditch. And riding shotgun will be every other special interest group under the sun.  And I want to be clear -- because I just -- Patty and I just had a wonderful meeting with three small business people, local folks right here, over at Grand Central Bakery.  (Applause.)  It was very good.  They had this turkey sandwich -- very tasty.  (Laughter.) 

     So I want businesses in this country to succeed.  If you are a responsible business owner, I will do everything I can to help you grow and prosper and hire more employees -- and Patty doing the same thing -- helping to open up credit.  (Applause.)  Help to keep your taxes low. 

     But I don't -- it’s not anti-business to say that we should make sure an oil rig is safe before we start drilling.  (Laughter.)  It’s not anti-business to say that Wall Street banks should play by the same rules as everybody else.  It’s not anti-business to say insurance companies shouldn’t be able to deny care to people just because they get sick.  We can’t go back to an attitude of what’s good enough for me is just good enough.  We’ve got to be asking, what’s good for America?  (Applause.)    What’s good for the people of Washington?  What’s good for Marcelas?  What’s good for the next generation?  (Applause.)

What’s good for America? 

     That's what we do in this country.  That's how we’ve always moved forward, as one people and as one nation.  So, Washington, I want everybody to know -- look, I know times are tough.  And when times are tough, it can be easy to give in to cynicism and to fear; to set our sights lower, to settle for the status quo, to try to make us afraid of each other, drive wedges.  That's -- we’ve all seen that movie before.  And that's what the other side is counting on in this election.  They're not offering new plans. They're not offering new ideas.  They're offering cynicism and they're offering fear.

     That’s not who we are.  That’s not the country I know.  We are Americans.  We don’t give in to fear.  We do not give up.  We do not quit.  We don’t shy away from the future.  We don’t look backwards.  We shape the future.  We seize our own destiny.

     So I need you to join me, and I need you to join Patty, in building a future where our small businesses flourish on the power of their ideas and ingenuity.  A future where clean energy powers not just America, but powers the world, produced in the fields and factories of the United States.  A future where our children get the education and training they need to compete with anyone and anywhere.  I want to build a future where we recapture a sense of optimism and confidence -- hope that’s made America a beacon to the world. 

     That’s how we built the last American Century.  That is how we are going to build the next American Century.  The American people don’t believe in “No, we can’t.”  In times of great challenge, we push forward with the unyielding faith that we can.

     Thank you, everybody.  God bless you.  And God bless the United States of America.  (Applause.)

                              END               1:34 P.M. PDT