President Barack Obama
DNC Event
St. Regis
Washington, D.C.
May 16, 2011
6:59 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, everybody. Thank you.
(Applause.) Well,
it is wonderful to see so many old friends and a few new friends
here.
Let me, first of all, say that you don't have to sleep my campaign, but
the eating and breathing part I agree with. (Laughter.)
Let
me tell you, I feel extraordinarily confident, in part because of the
great friends here who -- some of you have been with me since 2007,
when nobody could pronounce my name. (Laughter.) I also
feel enormous
confidence because we have an extraordinarily dynamic new DNC chair in
Debbie Wasserman Schultz. And I think she is going to do an
outstanding job. (Applause.) So we are very proud of her.
I want to spend most of my time just having a conversation with
you.
But I thought maybe I'd tell you a little bit about the trip that I
took today. I went to Memphis, Tennessee. And some of you
may know
Memphis has gone through some tough times. They had flooding that
had
displaced about 1,500 people. And so we had a chance to meet with
some
folks whose homes had been overrun with water. And they
described,
apparently with water comes frogs and snakes. I didn’t realize
the
snake part. Michelle would not have been happy -- (laughter) --
to
know that there were snakes along with this water.
But what was remarkable was how the community had come together and
they had organized over a hundred churches to help take people
in. And
we met with some of the first responders, some of whom were
volunteers. And it was an extraordinary testimony to the American
spirit.
And then
I gave a commencement address at Booker T. Washington High
School.
Now, Booker T. Washington has some very prominent alumni and has been
an institution in Memphis for quite some time. But the community
surrounding Booker T. had fallen on hard times -- in south
Memphis.
And just a few years ago they had a 50-percent graduation rate.
Half
the kids dropped out of school. This is one of the toughest
neighborhoods in the country; I think has the highest poverty rate of
anyplace just about in Tennessee; one of the highest crime rates in the
nation.
And
every kid that you met had some extraordinary story. The young
man who
introduced me -- his father had been killed when he was four years old
after getting shot 22 times. He was born with a hole in his heart
and
had to have it repaired over a lengthy period of time when he was very
young.
And
every young person you met -- single mom, struggled, lived in housing
projects in Memphis. But because of a dynamic principal, because
of
some of the reforms that had been initiated in Tennessee, supported by
the work we’re doing at the federal government, they had now lifted
their graduation rate to 90 percent.
They
had started organizing AP courses in math and science in the
school.
And I will tell you, I could not have been more moved or prouder to see
these young people receive their diplomas, because you knew how hard
they had worked and how much they had overcome to get to where they
were.
And
it speaks to something that Debbie mentioned, which is what our vision
of the country is. I gave a budget speech a while back, and I
made the
point that the budget debates that we’re having right now are not just
about numbers. It’s about deficit; it’s about debt; it’s about
how we
organize a government that lives within its means. And that’s
absolutely critical. It’s, by the way, as critical for
progressives as
it is for anybody -- because if we want to have a strong foundation for
us to provide opportunity in the future, we’ve got to make sure that we
got our deficit and our debt under control.
But
part of what this budget debate is also about is what’s our vision for
America. Who are we as a people? Who are we as a
nation? And what I
explained was, is that in the America that I want to see 20 years from,
30 years from now, 40 years from now, we are building on the basic
precept that anybody in this country can make it if they try.
That
Malia and Sasha will make it, but those kids that I spoke to today,
they’ll make it, too. That your children will make it, but those
kids
in Anacostia will also have a chance.
And
in order for us to make sure that that opportunity is available to
everyone, it means we’re going to have to make ourselves more
competitive, because we now face a 21st century economy that is not
like the economy that we grew up in. And it means we’re going to
have
to make investments in education and step up our game, and increase our
college graduation rates. It means we’ve got to rebuild our
infrastructure. We used to have the best infrastructure in the
world,
and we no longer do. And that will put us over the long term at a
competitive disadvantage. And, by the way, we can put a lot of
people
to work, doing the work that America needs done -- rebuilding roads and
bridges, but also broadband lines and a smart grid and high-speed rail.
It
means that we’ve got to make sure that we are investing in basic
science and research to maintain our competitive edge over the long
term. It means that we have a safety net that is smart and lean
and
efficient, but is there for people, so that if they’ve worked hard all
their lives, by the time they arrive at their golden years they know
that they’ve got health care that they can count on, and they know that
they’ve got a basic floor that Social Security provides.
It
means that we have an energy policy so that our economy is not subject
to the whims of the spot oil market. It means we’ve got an
immigration
system that works for all of America, one that observes our tradition
as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants.
Now, we’ve made extraordinary strides over the last two years in moving
the country in that direction. We averted a Great Depression
because
of the actions we took. We made sure that we have an auto
industry
that has now turned a profit -- all three Big 3 automakers -- and hired
back workers that nobody thought was possible. We have made
extraordinary progress in investing in clean energy -- largest
investment in clean energy in our history.
We’ve
made the largest investment in education in our history. We
haven’t
just put more money into our education system, but we’ve demanded
accountability and reform, and in some cases broken some china within
the Democratic Party, saying that this is too important for us to be
held back by dogma and ideology.
We’ve removed 100,000 troops from Iraq and made sure that we’ve got a
strategy in Afghanistan that will allow us to transition to Afghan
lead, and that means then that we can focus not only on the
extraordinary opportunities that present themselves in the Middle East
but also focus on rebuilding here at home.
And along the way we’ve made sure that you can serve in our military
regardless of who you love, and made sure that we had two strong women
on the Supreme Court -- because you can never have enough women on the
Supreme Court. (Applause.)
So I’m extraordinarily proud of what we’ve accomplished. But
we’ve got
more work to do. Even on the things that we’ve already
accomplished --
like financial regulatory reform, to make sure that we don’t have the
kind of financial meltdown that we almost experienced in 2008 -- we’ve
got to implement that law.
On health care, we achieved what had eluded this country for a hundred
years -- putting in place a structure so that nobody will go bankrupt
when they get sick; everybody has access to affordable health
care.
But we’ve got to make sure that it gets implemented and that we follow
through.
And so,
when I spoke at Grant Park back in what seems a long time ago --
(laughter) -- I had no gray hair back then -- (laughter) -- I told
everybody that wasn’t the end, that was the beginning. We’re just
a
quarter of the way through and we’ve got to make sure that we finish
our task. (Applause.)
We’ve
got to make sure that when we talk to our kids and when we talk to our
grandkids, we can say, you know what, we ran the race, we finished the
job. And we won’t have solved every problem in this country and
we can
rest assured that that next generation will have challenges that we
can’t even imagine yet, but we will be able to say to them with
conviction that we are passing on to them an America that is stronger
and more vibrant, that is as compassionate and generous, and can still
do big things -- the kind of America that all of us imagine.
And
that’s worth working for. That’s worth fighting for. And
I’m ready to
fight alongside with you. Thank you very much, everybody.
Thank you.
(Applause.)
END
7:09
P.M. EDT