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THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Vice President
For Immediate Release August 23, 2012


REMARKS BY VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN
TO SUPPORTERS


Renaissance High School
Detroit, Michigan


3:22 P.M. EDT


THE VICE PRESIDENT: Hey, folks, isn't she amazing? (Applause.) I want to introduce another athlete -- not a gold medalist, but she's a heck of a lacrosse player and basketball. This is my granddaughter, going into eighth grade -- Finnegan Biden. (Applause.) And I think she came because Claressa was going to be here. (Laughter.)

It's so great to see you all. That is pretty impressive. That is pretty impressive. I want to tell you something -- watching you, Claressa, reminded me -- some of you have heard me say this before, from afar -- my dad had just one saying. I played sports -- nothing like this child, but I played sports, and it was the essence of what I thought was the most important thing in my life when I was in high school and college. And my dad used to have only one thing to say when he'd come watch me play football or baseball, from the time I started playing in fourth grade. He'd say, Joey, just get up. Get knocked down -- get up. Just get up.

Child, you know how to get up, man. You know how to get up. (Applause.) My dad used to say, the measure of a man or woman wasn't whether they got knocked down, but how quickly they got up. And guess what? Detroit is getting back up. Detroit is getting back up. (Applause.) And I tell you, in no small part because -- where is John Conyers? Hey, Big John. How are you, Mr. Chairman? (Applause.) John, thanks for the passport into the district. I know this is your district. John is one of my great friends from my whole career. It's great to see you, buddy, and congratulations. Congratulations. (Applause.)

Now, I understand that Hansen Clarke is -- Representative Clarke, where are you? (Applause.) Hey, Hansen, how are you doing, man? Now, the only thing I don't like about Hansen is he has all his hair and he's better looking than I am. (Laughter.) But other than that I like him a lot.

And a guy who has been my friend for a long time -- Sander Levin, one of the great, great congressmen ever. Sander, are you here? (Applause.) I know he's here somewhere.

Well, it's great to see you all. Thank you all for being here. For one congressman -- any congressman to come and hear a Vice President speak, that's like a bus driver going on a bus-driving holiday. I mean, it's like, you've done that before. (Laughter.)

But I want to also thank Anita Williams -- Anita, the principal of this great school. Anita? (Applause.) I got to see Anita a little bit earlier. She started off -- she said, welcome to the best high school in Detroit. (Applause.) And Coach Grice, where are you? Coach, how are you doing, man? I tell you what, I understand 40 of your ball players are here somewhere. Hey, guys. (Applause.) I understand you got a big game coming up. Well, go get them, guys. And I want to tell you, you guys owe me big. You know why you owe me big? If I wasn't here, you'd be out there smelling that grass, on your stomachs. (Laughter.) I used to love anybody getting me out of pre-season football practice, man. Any of you all ever played football, man, anybody tells you they like pre-season, they're nuts. They're crazy. Essential, but tough. Great to see you, Coach. I wish you the best of luck this year.

Well, look, folks, I'll try to get right to it. I'm impressed by the crowd here. Thank you all so much for coming out. And do you mind if I take my coat off here? (Applause.) I'm not ready to go a couple of rounds with Claressa, but I -- (laughter) -- but it's hot in here.

Look, folks, here what I want to say to you all, and I say it just to say it to you straight. Look, folks, this -- the country, come November, is going to face one of the starkest choices it's had in my memory. Because there's going to be no wondering who stands where. No wondering what direction this country is going to go depending who gets reelected, who gets elected. And now that Governor Romney -- who by the way is a decent man, a good family man --

AUDIENCE: Booo --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I disagree with him on almost everything politically, but he's a decent man. When he selected as his running mate -- when he selected his running mate, those stark differences even became more stark. (Applause.) Congressman Ryan, who is again a good man, a good family man, he is giving definition to Governor Romney's vague commitments, John, up to now. Now we know -- now we know Congressman Ryan and the members of the Republican Congressional Caucus, the Republicans in the Congress -- as one person said, they have already passed in the Republican House what Governor Romney is promising to pass for the whole nation.

So I say to my friends in Congress, it's a little bit like two incumbents running against one another in the sense there's no mystery here. You know exactly -- and they're straightforward about it. Coach, to use an old football metaphor, they're not hiding the ball. They're not hiding the ball. They're telling us exactly what they're going to do, and they've done it. They've done it in the House.

And, ladies and gentlemen, they call their new economic plan, what they're talking about -- they call their plan "new," they call it "bold," and they call it "gutsy." But in the neighborhood I come from, there's nothing gutsy about giving a millionaire another tax break. (Applause.) And there's nothing bold about cutting Medicare and Medicaid and education and research and development in order to pay for that tax cut. (Applause.) Not only is it not new, folks, it's not fair, it's not right, and the people who will pay the price are the working-class folks and the middle-class folks in this country. They're the ones who are going to pay the price. (Applause.)

And there's overwhelming evidence this policy will not grow the economy again. It will not grow it. It didn't before. We've seen this before. And it won't grow the economy now. Folks, we've seen this movie before. We've seen it; we know how it ends. It ends with the Great Recession of 2008, throwing millions of people out of work. It was a catastrophe for the middle class and the working class. Folks, we cannot go back to those days. We have to move forward.

Ladies and gentlemen, the President and I have a very different way forward than our Republican friends. We know the history of this country, and from our own experience we know you don't grow the economy of this great nation from billionaires down. You grow it from the middle out. That's how you grow it. (Applause.) Because, by the way, folks, when the middle class is growing, the poor have a way up and the very wealthy do very, very well. Everybody benefits.

Folks, what this is all about, when you cut it down to its core, it's about Americans having an opportunity to have a decent standard of living; a decent job; be able to own their home and not rent it; a place where hard work is rewarded and taking responsibility is expected.

Look, folks, my dad had an expression that I heard my whole life, from the time we had to move from Scranton, Pennsylvania to -- where he had to find a better job to take care of his family. That's how I got to Wilmington, Delaware. And here is what he'd say -- no joke. He'd say, Joey, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It's about your dignity. It's about respect. It really is. (Applause.) It's about your sense of yourself, your place in the community. It's about being able to turn to your child and say, Honey, it's going to be okay. I mean, that's all -- just, it's going to be okay, and believing it. Believing it.

Too many people -- where I come from, here in Detroit, around the country, too many people are not confident about being able to turn to their kids and say, Honey, it's going to be okay, because they've been battered. They've been banged. Americans, through no fault of their own, they've been stripped of their dignity. And millions more -- millions more who have jobs have had to live for the past five, six, seven years with stagnant wages, no increases, making it increasingly difficult to care for their families.

I talk about -- John has heard me say it -- I talk about the longest walk a parent can make. The longest walk a parent can make is up a short flight of stairs to their child's bedroom - and I mean this sincerely -- to say, Honey, I'm sorry, but daddy lost his job. Mommy lost her job, or the bank says we can't live here anymore. Honey, you can't play in that Little League team next year. You can't sing in the choir. We got to move, Honey. We got to move.

My dad made that walk when I was going from third grade to fourth grade. When he made the walk, he sat there and he said, but it's going to be okay. He said he was going to move 157 miles away to Wilmington, Delaware because that's where Uncle Frank was, and Uncle Frank had a good job. And when he got enough -- saved enough, he'd bring us all down. Well, a lot of you know people who have made that walk. And a lot of you know people who are going to bed tonight, going to be staring at the ceiling wondering whether or not am I going to be able to live in this house five months from now? Am I going to be here? Am I going to be okay? My kids going to be okay?

I wonder how many of you know somebody, a mom and dad sat at a kitchen table over the last couple of months and said, who's going to tell -- who's going to tell Sondra that she can't go back to school at the college or community college next semester? We just don't have the money. How are we going to tell her?

Well, folks, and I mean this sincerely, when the President and I ran the first time, we knew how tough it was going to be. We knew the devastation that had been visited upon this country by the Great Recession. Even we didn't know just how extensive it was, no one did at the time. But we ran determined -- determined to restore dignity and pride to hard-working American people, to provide them with the ability to care for their families. There are over 4.5 million people today I'm proud to say that are making a different walk, not up the stairs to their kids' bedroom, but a walk from a manufacturing plant where they're -- once again making the best automobiles in the world -- (applause) -- a walk from the assembly line to the parking lot to their car, being able to go home and say, Honey, I'm making a product the world wants to buy, and I'm proud of what I'm doing. (Applause.) A walk from the graduation stage at the community college or a four-year college to a high-tech company that just closed down its operations in China and came to Detroit or Michigan. (Applause.) A walk from a job back home to sit at the dinner table and say to the kids, Kids, mommy doesn't have to work two jobs any more. Dad's okay. I got a job again. That's what goes on. That's what's going on in the neighborhoods I come from. That's what people are looking for.

We got a long way to go. There's still an awful lot of people out there, an awful lot of people out there still hurting, but things are starting to come back.

Folks, we've been fighting to help keep -- help people keep their homes, help them keep their health care, keep their childcare so they can work and know someone is there to take care of their child, protect them -- protect them from predatory lending and Wall Street abuses; encourage -- encourage American companies to insource instead of outsource. (Applause.)

Sander and John and Hansen can tell you about a vote they had. They had a vote in the Congress -- a simple vote -- all we said was, look, we said instead of -- like we've been doing the last 30 years, instead of giving a company tax credits in the millions of dollars for going into a factory in Michigan or Delaware, unbolting the machinery, putting it in the belly of a ship or in the belly of a plane and taking it to China, instead of getting a tax credit for doing that, the cost of moving, we reward people for moving. We say, look, we can't tell them not to go, but here's what we can do -- we can stop giving them a break if they do go. (Applause.)

And we came along and we said -- John said these guys said, look, let's give that same tax break to somebody who unbolts a machine in Singapore and brings it back to Michigan. (Applause.) Give them the tax break. Kind of simple, right? I mean, not complicated, not complicated. They all voted no. They said no.

AUDIENCE: Booo --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: We should be discouraging outsourcing, not encouraging it like Governor Romney has done. As The Washington Post said, Romney and the companies he owned at Bain Capital "pioneered outsourcing." As the elected official would tell you to say, when I started harping on that about a month and a half ago, the Romney campaign said, Vice President Biden doesn't understand. (Laughter.) He doesn't understand the difference between outsourcing and offshoring. (Laughter and applause.)

Hey, can't you picture it now? Two people in the unemployment line, one turns to the other and says, Harry, were outsourced or offshored? (Laughter.) What difference does it make? You don't have a job. You don't have a job. (Applause.)

Man, like I said, these aren't -- these are good -- these aren't bad guys, they just don't get it. They don't get what happens on the street. They don't get what happens in the neighborhoods. They don't get what happens when people don't have these jobs. (Applause.)

Look, Republican obstructionism has slowed our progress, but it has not stopped it. (Applause.) In spite of them, in spite of Governor Romney's insistence that we "let Detroit go bankrupt," we rescued the automobile industry -- (applause) -- saving 1 million jobs.

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: With your help we will. Folks, look what's happened since they've come out of bankruptcy: 200,000 new jobs created -- a commitment -- and you're seeing it here in Detroit and in Michigan, of committing almost $30 billion to be reinvested in the United States, in plant and equipment, which will create another tens of thousands of jobs.

Folks, look, we passed the toughest Wall Street regulation in history, turning Wall Street back into what it was supposed to be -- an allocator of capital, not a casino. (Applause.)

Folks, we improved education, raising standards, demanding more of both teachers and students and everybody, demanding more of all of us. My mom used to have an expression -- I want every high school student to remember this here. My mom used to say, children tend to become that of what you expect of them. We expect a lot of you, because you're capable of a lot. (Applause.)

We did common-sense things that you would have thought they could be for. We took the $60 billion, that we were going to be paying banks over the next 10 years, to put through the loans for students to go to college, federal loans, and we said, hey, look, you guys are okay, but we're not going to pay; we're just going to take that $60 billion and put people into Pell grants and back to school. (Applause.)

The banks weren't doing anything wrong, but it was a waste of money. But guess what? In this neighborhood, every neighborhood across America, instead of 6 million kids in school because of Pell grants, there are 9 million kids in school because of Pell grants. (Applause.)

And, by the way, I've been in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan over 20 times. My son spent a year in Iraq as a captain. I've seen firsthand that, as my congressional friends have seen, the sacrifices this 9/11 Generation of warriors has made. Folks, maybe the most important thing we've done is we believe that the only truly sacred obligation our nation has is to care for those who we sent to war who come home injured and in need -- (applause) -- by guaranteeing them the health care they need for now and as long as they live, and giving them the opportunity for education that they are entitled to. (Applause.)

We even had to fight with these other guys over whether or not they would support giving businesses tax breaks if they hired veterans, and an $8,000 tax break of they hired a wounded warrior. It was a fight -- we shouldn't even be talking about that -- (applause) -- any more than we should be talking about whether we should re-pass my Violence Against Women bill. What are we talking about? (Applause.)

Look, folks, we've cut middle-class taxes every year we've been in office. Federal taxes for the middle-class families are currently nearly at their lowest levels since the Eisenhower administration. We cut small business taxes to help them grow. We helped millions of families modify their mortgages so they could stay in their homes. And we helped more than a million refinance their mortgages, saving 3,000 bucks a year, but guess what -- we could do it for another 12 million if the Republicans would just get out of the way -- just get out of the way. (Applause.) Right, just get out of the way. And it won't cost the government a penny.

Look, folks, I hope some of you guys graduating from this great school next year are going to go to a four-year college or a community college. My wife teaches full time at a community college as Second Lady. She says the best kept secret in America is our community colleges. (Applause.)

Well, here's what we did. Here's what we did with the help of our congressional delegation -- we went out there and we said, okay, do you realize there are 600,000 high-tech manufacturing jobs that are going unfilled in our local communities -- why? Because with all that outsourcing that happened over the years, we lost the tool and die makers. We lost a generation of specialists. We lost -- and these are new technologies.

All these people need is a certificate, a little training, so what do we do -- we partnered here in this state of Michigan with community colleges and companies who have jobs available to them and said to the companies, what training do you need? And they set the exact training up in the community college. So you graduate, get your certificate, you go right into the assembly line to a job, a manufacturing job, averaging $50,000 a year. (Applause.) The kind of jobs, I might add, that even Romney can't export.

Look, folks, the result: 29 straight months of private sector job growth -- 4.5 million private sector jobs. A half a million new manufacturing jobs, the fastest growth since 1980s. And by the way, it would have been another 1 to 2 million jobs created if they had supported our jobs bill. That's what experts say. (Applause.)

So folks, I know over the years, a lot of Democrats have said to Sander and to Hansen and to John and I, why is it that Republicans are able to reduce what they stand for to a bumper sticker? I mean, they're able to say, we're against taxes, for the military, whatever. Why can't we do that?

Well, folks, I've got a bumper sticker for you. (Applause.) Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. (Applause.) Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. (Applause.) You want a bumper sticker -- that sums it up, man. Tells you what this great President of ours has already done. He's guaranteed real, measurable progress -- not enough, not enough, but it's important progress.

Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan are running on a theme as well. Their theme is -- and I quote -- "Restore the dreams and greatness of this country." But what they're not telling you is that the very plans the Congressman voted for over the last 14 years, the very economic policy the Governor supported over this period of time as governor and as a businessman, they are the very same policies that put America's greatness in jeopardy. (Applause.)

I find it fascinating. Next time you see one of your Republican friends, well-intended telling you that, well, you know, we can do better -- say look, ask him the following question. Say I'm a little confused here. The Congressman and the Governor acknowledge that President Obama and Vice President Biden inherited a really difficult economic situation. That's what they say, right? What else could they say?

Now, ask your Republican friends, how do they think we got in this difficult situation? (Applause.)

I mean, what happened? What happened? How did this calamity land on America? We're just going along great one day and all of a sudden, bam! The Great Recession. Finnegan has a little cousin, my fourth granddaughter. Her name is Natalie. And if she were here she'd say, Pop, did Casper the friendly ghost do it? I mean, where did it come from? How did these bad things happen? What they didn't tell you was -- what they didn't tell you was, when Congressman Ryan was elected to the Congress in 1998 during a Democratic administration, we had a balanced budget and the middle class was thriving. (Applause.)

What they didn't say was that the day we were sworn in on January 20 of 2009, we inherited a deficit, a bill for $1 trillion before the President sat behind his desk and a middle class that was devastated. And now, it's amazing, they discovered the middle class and they care about it. (Laughter.) They're running to save the middle class.

My dad, God love him, used to have -- and John, you met my dad before. My dad was a high school educated, graceful, decent man. And my dad used to have an expression -- when someone would say to him -- his name was Joe. Joe, let me tell you what I value, my dad would go like this, he said, Charlie, don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I will tell you what you value. (Applause.) Show me your budget.

Well, folks, that's fair, right? I value women in the workforce. I don't employ any, but I value women in the workforce. (Laughter.) That person don't value women in the workforce if they don't have any women in the workforce.

So let's take a look, let's try to be objective about this, stand back, take a look at what these guys value. Let's look at what they're proposing. Let's look at their budget. Governor Romney says in the first hundred days if he's elected, he will repeal the Wall Street reform legislation that we passed and let the big banks once again write their own rules. That's number one.

He then says he wants to continue the very same policies that have encouraged the outsourcing over the past two decades. He wants to make massive cuts -- I mean massive cuts in education. Ask John or any of the congressmen because they voted against it to try to stop in the House. It's explicit and specific, massive cuts in college assistance and college education.

Barack, Michelle and Jill and I were literally waiting to into an event together, and all of a sudden, I think it was Michelle that said, you know, not a one of us -- and this is serious -- not a one of us -- my wife, Jill, who is a community college professor, me, Barack or Michelle, not one of us would be standing where we were, were it not for college assistance and scholarships. (Applause.) Not a one. Not a one. And these guys want to wipe it out.

They make massive cuts in Medicaid. Forgetting that a significant number of the people on Medicaid were thrown onto Medicaid because they lost their jobs through no fault of their own. If the budget that they support which passed the House and got defeated in the Senate, the one that Romney is pushing, if that were to become law, 19 million people on Medicaid today -- including 1 million seniors -- would be thrown off. Look, 75 percent of all the people in a -- in a home, getting care, they're there because of Medicare; 75 percent of them are women. Where are they going to go? I'm serious. Do these guys think about the consequences -- what is going to happen if that happens? Nineteen million.

Massive cuts proposed for future generations in Social Security. Romney put forward a detailed plan on Social Security. So if you're in your 20s by the time you're old enough for Social Security, you'll get $4,700 less than someone gets now. If you're in your 40s, you'll get $2,400 less -- and I can go through it all and bore you with the detail. But fundamental change. Massive changes in health care, allowing insurance companies once again to make the rules -- not a joke, literally; repeal "Obamacare" and guess what, no longer -- no longer does an insurance company have to keep you on the policy. They can tell you when you get sick, no, you lose your policy. They can tell you that, guess what, you've hit your limit. You've gone through chemo for eight months, we're not going to pay for it any more. That was before we passed Obamacare. Massive changes in Medicare.

Here's what they want to do. They say, well, it's not going to affect anybody who is -- which is not quite true, I won't going into the detail but -- under 55. But guess what is says, it says after that what you get to do is you get a voucher, meaning that they'll give you a set -- the government will give you a set amount of money to go out and find your own insurance policy. Right now it's guaranteed. If you have Medicare, you go to the doc, you pay a co-pay, the government pays the rest. Same with a hospital, you pay a co-pay, the -- no, no, no guarantee. Knowing that they limit it -- as John can tell you, they limit to a half percent increase, meaning that clearly the cost is going to outrun -- and what the experts have said, they've looked at it, totally nonpartisan group, they say, it would cost seniors an average of $6,400 a year more for their health care.

I had a great advantage like some of you have had -- it is an advantage -- when my dad was dying, for him to live with me, and my mom the last -- she died when she was 92, the last four years of her life, living with me. And toward the end, and you pay me a lot of money as the Vice President, and you paid me a good salary when I was a United States senator. And my brother Jimmy does well, and my sister does well. They have four kids who are successful. Guess what, it was still a struggle to make care of all my mom's bills. We were able to do it. No complaint. It was an honor. But you know what it did, we had to lie to my mom and tell her, no, Honey, this is all covered by your Medicare, and this is all covered by the sale of your home, which it wasn't because do you any parent who wants to be a burden for their children? Do you know anybody? I don't know any parent who wants to do that.

And, folks, they change the whole deal. And they do all this stuff and more I haven't mentioned all -- and then they kick 200,000 kids out of Head Start. I -- look, I could go down the list, but you're standing and I'm not going to take more of your time. Here's the deal, why are they doing all this? They're doing all this in the service of being able to provide these massive tax cuts for the very wealthy.

Now, look, I just want to put -- again, I go into a lot of detail that you already know in your gut, but let me give you two examples, when Romney and our Republican friends say they want to extend the Bush tax cut for the wealthy, let's just take one group of people, that whole tax cut will cost -- extending that a trillion dollars over the next 10 years. You know where $500 billion of that trillion goes -- you're going to think I'm making this up -- it goes to 120,000 families in America. You hear me now? That's not a joke. A half a trillion dollars, which means they got to cut the half a trillion dollar somewhere else or balloon the deficit. A half a trillion dollars goes to 120,000 families.

And on top of that, Governor Romney has been straightforward, not hiding the ball again, Coach. He came along and he said, and I want a new $1.6 trillion tax cut for people making a minimum of a million dollars. That means an average tax cut on top of that of another $250,000 a year -- five times the median income of the American people in one year, that's per year.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is not only -- has a gigantic price tag, it increases the deficit. And according to, and I'm going to sound like a policy guy here, and I apologize -- sound like a senator, which I was proud to be. (Laughter.) The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, this is one of these think tank groups that go and objectively look at all the proposals we come up with -- all of us come up with. They said if these tax cuts go through it will mean that the average middle-class family with a child, one or more children, will have their income taxes go up -- their taxes go up $2,000 a year. So we're going to raise $2,000 a year for middle-class families --

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: This is real. In order to give $500 billion to 120,000 families? And look, folks, this isn't class warfare. I come from the wealthy little state of Delaware, okay? Rich folks are just as patriotic as poor folks. The difference here is no one has asked anything of them. And they're not even asking for this. They're not even asking for it.

Folks, and Romney calls the President out of touch. (Laughter.) Out of touch -- Swiss bank account. (Laughter.) Untold millions in the Cayman Islands. Refusal to release your tax returns. (Applause.) They call my President out of touch? Come on, get real here. (Applause.)

Folks, this is not your father's Republican Party. And this is not even Mitt Romney's father's Republican Party. (Applause.) This is a different group of people. They have a very, fundamentally different vision for America -- one that is totally different than ours. Our vision rests upon a growing, prosperous middle class. We see a future where my granddaughter who you just met has every single, solitary opportunity my grandson has throughout her life. (Applause.) We see an America where women get equal pay for equal work. (Applause.) For real. Where getting ill does not risk bankruptcy. (Applause.) Where no millionaire pays at a lower rate than a middle-class family. (Applause.) Where we provide access to college to every qualified kid regardless of what neighborhood they come from. (Applause.) And not only where we bring back the automobile industry, but where we become once again the leading manufacturing country in the world. (Applause.)

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Where is it written that we cannot do that? An America where once again, instead of ranking 16th, we rank one in the world in the percentage of our population that graduates from college; where science is valued, innovation is encouraged. (Applause.) Ladies and gentlemen, we see an America where the middle class gets their taxes cut, not raised; where Social Security is protected; where Medicaid is expanded; where Medicare fulfills its original mission.

Folks, we see a future where we maintain our sacred obligation to keep faith with our veterans. As the President said, in the end -- in the end, he said, this is a make-or-break moment for the middle class. It really is. It really is. So much is at stake. And, folks, I haven't even talked about foreign policy. (Laughter.) I haven't even talked about what the Supreme Court would look like after four years of a Romney administration.

AUDIENCE: Booo --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Look, folks, I believe we're going to win. (Applause.) I believe -- and let me tell you why. I believe we're going to win because, in the end, throughout our history, every presidential election has come down to one fundamental look as it relates to the candidates: Who has the most character? Who has the character -- the conviction -- of their convictions, and who has the vision?

Folks, it will not surprise you, on that score I don't even think it's close. It's not even close. (Applause.) And I am absolutely convinced -- I am absolutely convinced the American people are seeing that. They're seeing my guy, our guy; he has a backbone like a ramrod. He does exactly what he says he's going to do. (Applause.) And as your congressional delegation here can tell you, I spent four to six hours a day with him, every single day since we got elected, with the exception of the last five weeks when we were both campaigning and we only meet twice a week now, two days a week because he's out on the road and I am.

But, folks, I can tell you -- and I've known eight Presidents; three of them intimately -- I have never, never once in all the time I've been with this President, including our private meetings, which we have once a week when we have lunch together -- I have never once, on the difficult decisions he's had to make, heard him ask me or anyone else, what are the politics in this for me? Not one single time. Not once. (Applause.)

Folks, I am absolutely certain we're going to rebuild this country -- stronger than it was before. I'm absolutely certain we're going to rebuild the middle class stronger than it was before. (Applause.) Because I know, as you know, that given even half a chance, the American people have never, never, never, ever let their country down. Not once. And I know, and I remind foreign leaders every day, that it's never been a good bet to bet against America. Never, never, never. (Applause.)

So, ladies and gentlemen, let's meet this moment. Let's meet this moment together. (Applause.) With your help, we will win Michigan and we will win this country.

Thank you and God bless you, and may God protect our troops. And, Claressa, thank you. Come here kid. This is what it's all about -- getting up, getting up. God love you, kid. Thank you all.

END 4:04 P.M. EDT