And I had faith that you believed that too "" that you were ready for something different; that you were hungry for something new. You don't have to wait for all the economists and politicians to agree on what is or is not a recession to know that our economy is in serious trouble. |
You can feel it in your own lives. And I hear it everywhere I go. Like the woman from Anderson who just lost her job, and her pension, and her insurance when the Delphi plant closed down "" even while the top executives walked away with multi-million-dollar bonuses. Or the families across this country who will sit around the kitchen table tonight and wonder whether next week's paycheck will be enough to cover next month's bills "" who will look at their children without knowing if they'll be able to give them the same chances that they had.
But here's what Washington and Wall Street don't get:
This economy doesn't just jeopardise our financial well-being, it offends the most basic values that have made this country what it is:
The idea that America is the place where you can make it if you try. It's the idea that while there are no guarantees in life, you should be able to count on a job that pays the bills; health care for when you get sick; a pension for when you retire; an education for your children that will allow them to fulfill their God-given potential. That's who we are as a country.
That's the America we know.
This is the country that made it possible for my mother "" a single parent who had to go on food stamps at one point "" to send my sister and me to the best schools in the country with the help of scholarships.
This is the country that allowed my father-in-law "" a city worker at a South Side water filtration plant "" to provide for his wife and two children on a single salary. This is a man who was diagnosed at age thirty with multiple sclerosis "" who relied on a walker to get himself to work. And yet, every day he went, and he laboured, and he sent my wife and her brother to one of the best colleges in the nation.
That job didn't just give him a paycheck, it gave him dignity and self-worth. It was an America that didn't just reward and honour wealth, but the work and the workers who helped create it.
And we are here today looking for the answer to the same question: Where is that America today?
How many veterans come home from this war without the care they need "" how many wander the streets of the richest country on Earth without a roof over their heads? How many workers have suffered the indignity of having to compete with their own children for a minimum wage job at McDonalds after they gave their lives to a company where the CEO just walked off with that multi-million-dollar bonus?
And most of all, how many years have we talked and talked and talked about these problems while Washington has done nothing, or tinkered, or made them worse.
There is no doubt that many of these challenges have to do with fundamental shifts in our economy that began decades ago "" changes that have torn down borders and barriers and allowed companies to send jobs wherever there's a cheap source of labour. And today, with countries like China and India educating their children longer and better, and revolutions in communication and technology, they can send the jobs wherever there's an internet connection.
I saw the beginnings of these changes up close when I moved to the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago to help neighbourhoods that were devastated when the local steel plant closed. I saw the indignity of joblessness and the hopelessness of lost opportunity.
But I also saw that we are not powerless in the face of these challenges. We don't have to sit here and watch our leaders do nothing. And that's why I'm running for president today. Politics didn't lead me to working people "" working people led me to politics.
Exceprts from Senator Barack Obama's speech in Indiana, May 3, 2008
