Remarks
provided by Washington Post and below.
Thank you.
Now, Mr. Mayor, fellow Democrats, we
are here to nominate a president... and I’ve got one in mind.
I want to nominate a man whose own
life has known its fair share of adversity and uncertainty. I want to nominate
a man who ran for president to change the course of an already weak economy and
then, just six weeks before his election, saw it suffer the biggest collapse
since the Great Depression, a man who stopped the slide into depression and put
us on the long road to recovery, knowing all the while that no matter -- no
matter how many jobs that he saved or created, there’d still be millions more
waiting, worried about feeding their own kids, trying to keep their hopes
alive.
I want to nominate a man who’s cool
on the outside... but who burns for America on the inside.
I want -- I want a man who believes
with no doubt that we can build a new American dream economy, driven by
innovation and creativity, by education and, yes, by cooperation.
And by the way, after last night, I
want a man who had the good sense to marry Michelle Obama.
You
know... I -- I... I want -- I want Barack Obama to be the next president of the
United States. And... I proudly nominate him to be the standard bearer of the
Democratic Party.
Now,
folks, in Tampa a few days ago, we heard a lot of talk... all about how the
president and the Democrats don’t really believe in free enterprise and
individual initiative, how we want everybody to be dependent on the government,
how bad we are for the economy. This Republican narrative, this alternative
universe says that... every one of us in this room who amounts to anything,
we’re all completely self-made. One of the greatest chairmen the Democratic
Party ever had, Bob Strauss, used to say that every politician wants every
voter to believe he was born in a log cabin he built himself.
But, as Strauss then admitted, it
ain’t so.
We Democrats, we think the country
works better with a strong middle class, with real opportunities for poor folks
to work their way into it, with a relentless focus on the future, with business
and government actually working together to promote growth and broadly shared
prosperity. You see, we believe that “We’re all in this together” is a far
better philosophy than “You’re on your own.”
So who’s right? Well, since 1961, for
52 years now, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats
24. In those 52 years, our private economy has produced 66 million private-
sector jobs. So what’s the job score? Republicans: twenty-four million.
Democrats: forty-two.
Now, there’s -- there’s a reason for
this. It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is
both morally right and good economics. Why? Because poverty, discrimination,
and ignorance restrict growth.
When you stifle human potential, when
you don’t invest in new ideas, it doesn’t just cut off the people who are
affected. It hurts us all.
We know that investments in education
and infrastructure and scientific and technological research increase growth.
They increase good jobs, and they create new wealth for all the rest of us.
Now, there’s something I’ve noticed
lately. You probably have, too. And it’s this. Maybe just because I grew up in
a different time, but though I often disagree with Republicans, I actually
never learned to hate them the way the far right that now controls their party
seems to hate our president and a lot of other Democrats.
I -- that -- that would be impossible
for me, because President Eisenhower sent federal troops to my home state to
integrate Little Rock Central High School. President Eisenhower built the
interstate highway system. When I was a governor, I worked with President
Reagan in his White House on the first round of welfare reform and with
President George H.W. Bush on national education goals.
I’m actually very grateful to -- if
you saw from the film what I do today, I have to be grateful -- and you should
be, too -- that President George W. Bush supported PEPFAR. It saved the lives
of millions of people in poor countries. And... I have been honored to work
with both Presidents Bush on natural disasters in the aftermath of the South
Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the horrible earthquake in Haiti. Through my
foundation both in America and around the world, I’m working all the time with
Democrats, Republicans, and independents. Sometimes I couldn’t tell you for the
life who I’m working with because we focus on solving problems and seizing
opportunities and not fighting all the time.
And -- so here’s what I want to say
to you. And here’s what I want the people at home to think about. When times
are tough and people are frustrated and angry and hurting and uncertain, the
politics of constant conflict may be good, but what is good politics does not
necessarily work in the real world. What works in the real world is
cooperation.
What works in the real world is
cooperation, business and government, foundations and universities. Ask the
mayors who are here.
Los Angeles is getting green and
Chicago is getting an infrastructure bank because Republicans and Democrats are
working together to get it.
They didn’t check their brains at the
door. They didn’t stop disagreeing. But their purpose was to get something
done.
Now, why is this true? Why does
cooperation work better than constant conflict? Because nobody’s right all the
time, and a broken clock is right twice a day.
And every one of us -- every one of
us and every one of them, we’re compelled to spend our fleeting lives between
those two extremes, knowing we’re never going to be right all the time, and
hopefully we’re right more than twice a day.
Unfortunately, the faction that now
dominates the Republican Party doesn’t see it that way. They think government
is always the enemy, they’re always right, and compromise is weakness. Just in
the last couple of elections, they defeated two distinguished Republican
senators because they dared to cooperate with Democrats on issues important to
the future of the country, even national security.
They beat a Republican congressman
with almost 100 percent voting record on every conservative score because he
said he realized he did not have to hate the president to disagree with him.
Boy, that was a non-starter, and they threw him out.
One of the main reasons we ought to
re-elect President Obama is that he is still committed to constructive
cooperation.
Look at his record. Look at his
record. Look at his record. He appointed Republican secretaries of defense, the
Army, and transportation. He appointed a vice president who ran against him in
2008. And he trusted that vice president to oversee the successful end of the
war in Iraq and the implementation of the Recovery Act.
And Joe Biden -- Joe Biden did a
great job with both.
Now -- now, he -- President Obama --
President Obama appointed several members of his cabinet, even though they
supported Hillary in the primary. Heck, he even appointed Hillary.
Now, wait a minute. I am -- I am very
proud of her. I am proud of the job she and the national security team have
done for America.
I am grateful that they have worked
together to make it safer and stronger to build a world with more partners and
fewer enemies. I’m grateful for the relationship of respect and partnership she
and the president have enjoyed. And the signal that sends to the rest of the
world, that democracy does not have a -- have to be a blood sport, it can be an
honorable enterprise that advances the public interest.
Now, besides the national security
team, I am very grateful to the men and women who’ve served our country in
uniform through these perilous times.
And I am especially grateful to
Michelle Obama and to Jill Biden for supporting those military families while
their loved ones were overseas... and for supporting our veterans when they
came home, when they come home bearing the wounds of war or needing help to
find education or jobs or housing. President Obama’s whole record on national
security is a tribute to his strength, to his judgment, and to his preference
for inclusion and partnership over partisanship. We need more of it in
Washington, D.C.
We all know that he also tried to
work with congressional Republicans on health care, debt reduction, and new
jobs. And that didn’t work out so well.
But it could have been because, as
the Senate Republican leader said, in a remarkable moment of candor, two full
years before the election, their number-one priority was not to put America
back to work. It was to put the president out of work.
Well -- wait a minute. Senator, I
hate to break it to you, but we’re going to keep President Obama on the job.
Are you willing to work for it?
Wait a
minute.
(Audience Chanting: Four
more years! Four more years! Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!)
In
Tampa... In Tampa -- in Tampa, did y’all watch their convention? I did.
In Tampa, the Republican argument
against the president’s re- election was actually pretty simple, pretty snappy.
It went something like this: “We left him a total mess. He hasn’t cleaned it up
fast enough, so fire him and put us back in.”
Now -- but -- but they did it well.
They looked good, they sounded good. They convinced me... that they all love
their families and their children, and we’re grateful they’ve been born in
America, and all -- really, I’m not being -- they did.
And this is important. They convinced
me they were honorable people who believe what they’ve said and they’re going
to keep every commitment they’ve made. We’ve just got to make sure the American
people know what those commitments are.
Because -- because in order to look
like an acceptable, reasonable, moderate alternative to President Obama, they
just didn’t say very much about the ideas they’ve offered over the last two
years. They couldn’t, because they want to go back to the same, old policies
that got us in trouble in the first place.
They want to cut taxes for
high-income Americans even more than President Bush did. They want to get rid
of those pesky financial regulations designed to prevent another crash and
prohibit federal bailouts. They want to actually increase defense spending over
a decade $2 trillion more than the Pentagon has requested, without saying what
they’ll spend it on. And they want to make enormous cuts in the rest of budget,
especially programs that help the middle class and poor children. As another
president once said, there they go again.
Now, I like... I -- I like the
argument for President Obama’s re-election a lot better. Here it is. He
inherited a deeply damaged economy. He put a floor under the crash. He began
the long, hard road to recovery and laid the foundation for a modern, more
well-balanced economy that will produce millions of good, new jobs, vibrant new
businesses, and lots of new wealth for innovators.
Now, are we where we want to be
today? No. Is the president satisfied? Of course not. But are we better off
than we were when he took office?
Listen to this. Listen to this.
Everybody (inaudible)
Everybody (inaudible) when President
Barack Obama took office, the economy was in freefall. It had just shrunk 9
full percent of GDP. We were losing 750,000 jobs a month. Are we doing better
than that today?
The answer is yes. Now, look. Here’s
the challenge he faces and the challenge all of you who support him face. I get
it. I know it. I’ve been there. A lot of Americans are still angry and
frustrated about this economy. If you look at the numbers, you know employment
is growing, banks are beginning to lend again, and in a lot of places, housing
prices have even began to pick up.
But too
many people do not feel it yet. I had this same thing happen in 1994 and early
‘95. We could see that the policies were working, that the economy was growing,
but most people didn’t feel it yet. Thankfully, by 1996, the economy was
roaring, everybody felt it, and we were halfway through the longest peacetime
expansion in the history of the United States.
But... the difference this time is
purely in the circumstances. President Obama started with a much weaker economy
than I did. Listen to me now. No president, no president -- not me, not any of
my predecessors -- no one could have fully repaired all the damage that he
found in just four years.
Now -- but he has -- he has laid the
foundations for a new, modern, successful economy of shared prosperity. And if
you will renew the president’s contract, you will feel it. You will feel it.
Folks, whether the American people
believe what I just said or not may be the whole election. I just want you to
know that I believe it. With all my heart, I believe it.
Now, why do I believe it? I’m fixing
to tell you why. I believe it because President Obama’s approach embodies the
values, the ideas, and the direction America has to take to build a
21st-century version of the American dream, a nation of shared opportunities,
shared responsibilities, shared prosperity, a shared sense of community.
So let’s get back to the story. In
2010, as the president’s recovery program kicked in, the job losses stopped and
things began to turn around. The Recovery Act saved or created millions of jobs
and cut taxes -- let me say this again -- cut taxes for 95 percent of the
American people.
And in the last 29 months, our
economy has produced about 4.5 million private-sector jobs.
We could have done better, but last
year the Republicans blocked the president’s job plan, costing the economy more
than a million new jobs. So here’s another job score. President Obama: plus 4.5
million. Congressional Republicans: zero.
During this period -- during this
period, more than 500,000 manufacturing jobs have been created under President
Obama. That’s the first time manufacturing jobs have increased since the 1990s.
And I’ll tell you something else. The
auto industry restructuring worked. It saved... It saved more than a million
jobs, and not just at G.M., Chrysler, and their dealerships, but in auto parts
manufacturing all over the country. That’s why even the automakers who weren’t
part of the deal supported it. They needed to save those parts suppliers, too.
Like I said, we’re all in this together.
So what’s happened? There are now
250,000 more people working in the auto industry than on the day the companies
were restructured.
So -- now, we all know that Governor
Romney opposed the plan to save G.M. and Chrysler. So here’s another job score.
Are you listening in Michigan and Ohio and across the country?
Here -- here’s another job score.
Obama: 250,000. Romney: zero.
Now, the agreement the administration
made with the management, labor, and environmental groups to double car
mileage, that was a good deal, too. It will cut your gas prices in half, your
gas bill. No matter what the price is, if you double the mileage of your car,
your bill will be half what it would have been. It will make us more energy
independent. It will cut greenhouse gas emission. And according to several
analyses, over the next 20 years, it will bring us another 500,000 good, new
jobs into the American economy.
The president’s energy strategy,
which he calls all-of-the-above, is helping, too. The boom in oil and gas
production, combined with greater energy efficiency, has driven oil imports to
a near 20-year low and natural gas production to an all-time high. And
renewable energy production has doubled.
Of course, we need a lot more new
jobs, but there are already more than 3 million jobs open and unfilled in
America, mostly because the people who apply for them don’t yet have the
required skills to do them. So even as we get Americans more jobs, we have to
prepare more Americans for the new jobs that are actually going to be created.
The old economy is not coming back. We’ve got to build a new one and educate
people to do those jobs.
The president and his education
secretary have supported community colleges and employers in working together
to train people for jobs that are actually open in their communities. And even
more important, after a decade in which exploding college costs have increased
the dropout rate so much that the percentage of our young people with four-year
college degrees has gone down so much that we have dropped to 16th in the world
in the percentage of young people with college degrees.
So the president’s student loan
reform is more important than ever. Here’s what it does. Here’s what it does.
Here’s what it does.
You need to tell every voter where
you live about this. It lowers the cost of federal student loans. And even more
important, it gives students the right to repay those loans as a clear, fixed,
low percentage of their income for up to 20 years.
Now, what does this mean? What does
this mean? Think of it. It means no one will ever have to drop out of college
again for fear they can’t repay their debt.
And it
means -- it means that if someone wants to take a job with a modest income, a
teacher, a police officer, if they want to be a small-town doctor in a little
rural area, they won’t have to turn those jobs down because they don’t pay
enough to repay the debt. Their debt obligation will be determined by their
salary. This will change the future for young Americans.
I don’t
know about you, but all these issues, I know we’re better off because President
Obama made the decisions he did.
Now, that brings me to health care.
And the Republicans call it,
derisively, “Obamacare.” They say it’s a government takeover, a disaster, and
that if we’ll just elect them, they’ll repeal it. Well, are they right?
Let’s
take a look at what’s actually happened so far. First, individuals and
businesses have already gotten more than $1 billion in refunds from insurance
companies because the new law requires 80 percent to 85 percent of your premium
to go to your health care, not profits or promotion.
And... The gains are even greater
than that, because a bunch of insurance companies have applied to lower their
rates to comply with the requirement.
Second, more than 3 million young
people between 19 and 25 are insured for the first time because their parents’
policies can cover them.
Third, millions of seniors are
receiving preventive care, all the way from breast cancer screenings to test
for heart problems and scores of other things, and younger people are getting
them, too.
Fourth, soon the insurance companies
-- not the government, the insurance companies -- will have millions of new
customers, many of them middle-class people with pre-existing conditions who
never could get insurance before.
Now, finally, listen to this. For the
last two years, after going up at three times the rate of inflation for a
decade, for the last two years, health care costs have been under 4 percent in
both years for the first time in 50 years.
So let me
ask you something. Are we better off because President Obama fought for health
care reform?
You bet we are.
Now, there were two other attacks on
the president in Tampa I think deserve an answer. First, both Governor Romney
and Congressman Ryan attacked the president for allegedly “robbing Medicare” of
$716 billion. That’s the same attack they leveled against the Congress in 2010,
and they got a lot of votes on it. But it’s not true.
Look, here’s what really happened.
You be the judge. Here’s what really happened. There were no cuts to benefits
at all, none.
What the president did was to save
money by taking the recommendations of a commission of professionals to cut
unwarranted subsidies to providers and insurance companies that were not making
people healthier and were not necessary to get the providers to provide the
service.
And instead of raiding Medicare, he
used the savings to close the donut hole in the Medicare drug program.
And --
you all got to listen carefully to this. This is really important -- and to add
eight years to the life of the Medicare trust fund so it is solvent until 2024.
So... So President Obama and the
Democrats didn’t weaken Medicare. They strengthened Medicare.
Now, when Congressman Ryan looked
into that TV camera and attacked President Obama’s Medicare savings as, quote,
“the biggest, coldest power play,” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry...
because that $716 billion is exactly to the dollar the same amount of Medicare
savings that he has in his own budget!
You got to give one thing: It takes
some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did.
Now -- so -- wait a minute.
Now you’re having a good time, but
this is getting serious, and I want you to listen.
It’s important, because a lot of
people believe this stuff. Now, at least on this issue, on this one issue,
Governor Romney has been consistent. He... He attacked President Obama, too,
but he actually wants to repeal those savings and give the money back to the
insurance company.
He wants to go back to the old
system, which means we’ll reopen the donut hole and force seniors to pay more
for drugs, and we’ll reduce the life of the Medicare trust fund by eight full
years.
So if he’s elected, and if he does
what he promised to do, Medicare will now go broke in 2016. Think about that.
That means after all we won’t have to wait until their voucher program kicks
in, in 2023, to see the end of Medicare as we know it. They’re going to do it
to us sooner than we thought.
Now, folks, this is serious, because
it gets worse. And you won’t be laughing when I finish telling you this. They
also want to block grant Medicaid and cut it by a third over the coming 10
years. Of course, that’s going to really hurt a lot of poor kids.
But that’s not all. A lot of folks
don’t know it, but nearly two-thirds of Medicaid is spent on nursing home care
for Medicare seniors who are eligible for Medicaid.
It’s going to end Medicare as we know
it. And a lot of that money is also spent to help people with disabilities,
including... a lot of middle-class families whose kids have Down’s syndrome or
autism or other severe conditions.
And,
honestly, just think about it. If that happens, I don’t know what those
families are going to do. So I know what I’m going to do: I’m going to do
everything I can to see that it doesn’t happen. We can’t let it happen.
We can’t. Now, wait a minute. Let’s
look...
(Audience Chanting:
Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!)
Let’s look at the other big charge
the Republicans made. It’s a real doozy. They actually have charged and run ads
saying that President Obama wants to weaken the work requirements in the
welfare reform bill I signed that moved millions of people from welfare to
work. Wait. You need to know, here’s what happened.
Nobody
ever tells you what really happened. Here’s what happened. When some Republican
governors asked if they could have waivers to try new ways to put people on
welfare back to work, the Obama administration listened, because we all know
it’s hard for even people with good work histories to get jobs today, so moving
folks from welfare to work is a real challenge.
And the administration agreed to give
waivers to those governors and others only if they had a credible plan to
increase employment by 20 percent and they could keep the waivers only if they
did increase employment.
Now, did -- did I make myself clear?
The requirement was for more work, not less.
So this is personal to me. We moved
millions of people off welfare. It was one of the reasons that, in the eight
years I was president, we had 100 times as many people move out of poverty into
the middle class than happened under the previous 12 years, 100 times as many.
It’s a big deal.
But I am telling you, the claim that
President Obama weakened welfare reform’s work requirement is just not true.
But they keep on running ads claiming it.
You want to know why? Their campaign
pollster said, “We are not going to let our campaign be dictated by
fact-checkers.”
Now, finally I can say: That is true.
I -- I -- I couldn’t have said it
better myself.
And I hope you and every American
within the sound of my voice remembers it every time they see one of those ads,
and it turns into an ad to re-elect Barack Obama and keep the fundamental
principles of personal empowerment and moving everybody who can get a job into
work as soon as we can.
Now let’s talk about the debt. Today,
interest rates are low, lower than the rate of inflation. People are
practically paying us to borrow money, to hold their money for them. But it
will become a big problem when the economy grows and interest rates start to
rise. We’ve got to deal with this big long-term debt problem or it will deal
with us. It’ll gobble up a bigger and bigger percentage of the federal budget
we’d rather spend on education and health care and science and technology. It
-- we’ve got to deal with it.
Now, what has the president done? He
has offered a reasonable plan of $4 trillion in debt reduction over a decade,
with $2.5 trillion coming from -- for every $2.5 trillion in spending cuts, he
raises a dollar in new revenues, 2.5 to 1. And he has tight controls on future
spending. That’s the kind of balanced approach proposed by the Simpson-Bowles
commission, a bipartisan commission.
Now, I think this plan is way better
than Governor Romney’s plan. First, the Romney plan fails the first test of
fiscal responsibility: The numbers just don’t add up.
I mean, consider this. What would you
do if you had this problem? Somebody says, “Oh, we’ve got a big debt problem.
We’ve got to reduce the debt.” So what’s the first thing he says we’re going to
do? “Well, to reduce the debt, we’re going to have another $5 trillion in tax
cuts, heavily weighted to upper-income people. So we’ll make the debt hole
bigger before we start to get out of it.”
Now, when
you say, “What are you going to do about this $5 trillion you just added on?”
They say, “Oh, we’ll make it up by eliminating loopholes in the tax code.” So
then you ask, “Well, which loopholes? And how much?”
You know what they say? “See me about
that after the election.”
I’m not making it up. That’s their
position. “See me about that after the election.”
Now, people ask me all the time how
we got four surplus budgets in a row. What new ideas did we bring to
Washington? I always give a one-word answer: arithmetic.
If -- arithmetic.
If they stay with this $5 trillion
tax cut plan in a debt reduction plan, the arithmetic tells us, no matter what
they say, one of three things is about to happen. One, assuming they try to do
what they say they’ll do -- get rid of -- cover it by deductions, cutting those
deductions -- one, they’ll have to eliminate so many deductions, like the ones
for home mortgages and charitable giving, that middle- class families will see
their tax bills go up an average of $2,000, while anybody who makes $3 million
or more will see their tax bill go down $250,000.
Or, two, they’ll have to cut so much
spending that they’ll obliterate the budget for the national parks, for
ensuring clean air, clean water, safe food, safe air travel. They’ll cut way
back on Pell grants, college loans, early childhood education, child nutrition
programs, all the programs that help to empower middle-class families and help
poor kids. Oh, they’ll cut back on investments in roads and bridges and science
and technology and biomedical research. That’s what they’ll do. They’ll hurt
the middle class and the poor and put the future on hold to give tax cuts to
upper-income people who’ve been getting it all along.
Or, three, in spite of all the
rhetoric, they’ll just do what they’ve been doing for more than 30 years.
They’ll go and cut the taxes way more than they cut spending, especially with
that big defense increase, and they’ll just explode the debt and weaken the
economy, and they’ll destroy the federal government’s ability to help you by
letting interest gobble up all your tax payments.
Don’t you ever forget, when you hear
them talking about this, that Republican economic policies quadrupled the
national debt before I took office, in the 12 years before I took office... and
doubled the debt in the eight years after I left, because it defied arithmetic.
It was a highly inconvenient thing
for them in our debates that I was just a country boy from Arkansas and I came
from a place where people still thought two and two was four.
It’s arithmetic. We simply cannot
afford to give the reins of government to someone who will double-down on
trickle-down.
Now, think about this. President
Obama... President Obama’s plan cuts the debt, honors our values, brightens the
future of our children, our families, and our nation. It’s a heck of a lot
better. It passes the arithmetic test and, far more important, it passes the
values test.
My fellow Americans, all of us in
this grand hall and everybody watching at home, when we vote in this election,
we’ll be deciding what kind of country we want to live in. If you want a
winner-take- all, you’re-on-your-own society, you should support the Republican
ticket. But if you want a country of shared opportunities and shared
responsibility, a we’re-all-in-this-together society, you should vote for
Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
If you... If you want -- if you want
America -- if you want every American to vote and you think it is wrong to
change voting procedures... just -- just to reduce the turnout of younger,
poorer, minority, and disabled voters, you should support Barack Obama.
And if you think -- if you think the
president was right to open the doors of American opportunity to all those
young immigrants brought here when they were young so they can serve in the
military or go to college, you must vote for Barack Obama.
If -- if you want a future of shared
prosperity, where the middle class is growing and poverty’s declining, where
the American dream is really alive and well again, and where the United States
maintains its leadership as a force for peace and justice and prosperity in
this highly competitive world, you have to vote for Barack Obama.
Look, I love our country so much. And
I know we’re coming back. For more than 200 years, through every crisis, we’ve
always come back. People have predicted our demise ever since George Washington
was criticized for being a mediocre surveyor with a bad set of wooden, false
teeth. And so far every single person that’s bet against America has lost
money, because we always come back.
We’ve come through every fire a
little stronger and a little better. And we do it because, in the end, we
decide to champion the cause for which our founders pledged their lives, their
fortunes, their sacred honor, the cause of forming a more perfect union.
My fellow Americans, if that is what
you want, if that is what you believe, you must vote and you must re-elect
President Barack Obama.
God bless you. And God bless America.
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