Doolittle Park
Las Vegas, Nevada
9:35 P.M. PDT
THE PRESIDENT: Hello, Nevada! (Applause.) Are you fired up? (Applause.) Are you ready to go? (Applause.)
AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years!
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Well, this is an unbelievable crowd. First of all, can everybody please give a huge round of applause to Michael for his service to our country. We are proud of him. (Applause.)
We’ve got here your Congresswoman and next United States Senator, Shelley Berkley in the house. (Applause.) Some outstanding Nevadans who are running for Congress: Steven Horsford — (applause) — John Oceguera — (applause) — and Dina Titus. (Applause.)
I am so grateful to Katy Perry for the unbelievable performance. (Applause.) Katy! I’m getting to know Katy. She’s just a wonderful young lady, and I can tell that part of it is because of her outstanding grandma, Ann, a 50-year resident of Nevada. So give her a big round of applause. (Applause.) That’s right. The only thing I have to say is Ann got some lipstick on me when she kissed me. (Laughter.) So fortunately somebody wiped it off before Michelle saw it. (Laughter.) I’m just telling you, you might get me in trouble. (Laughter.)
AUDIENCE MEMBER: We love you, Obama!
THE PRESIDENT: I love you back! (Applause.)
Now, it is great to see all of you. This is the third stop on our 24-hour [sic] campaign extravaganza fly-around of America. (Applause.) We are pulling an all-nighter. No sleep. And if you’re not going to sleep, you might as well be in Vegas, right? (Applause.) Might as well be in Vegas. We’ve come from Colorado. We were in Iowa. I stopped by to do Leno in L.A. Right after this, we’re going to fly to Florida, Virginia, Ohio. (Applause.) I’m going to stop in Chicago to vote. (Applause.) I can’t tell you who I’m voting for because it’s a secret ballot. (Laughter.) But Michelle told me she voted for me. (Laughter.)
See, we can vote early in Illinois, just like you can vote early here in Nevada. And I’ve come to Nevada to ask you for your vote. (Applause.) I’ve come to ask you to help me keep America moving forward. (Applause.)
Now, you now have seen three debates, months of campaigning, way too many TV commercials. You’ve heard Governor Romney’s sales pitch.
AUDIENCE: Booo —
THE PRESIDENT: Wait, wait. Wait, don’t boo — vote. Vote. (Applause.) But —
AUDIENCE: Vote! Vote! Vote!
THE PRESIDENT: Vote! Vote! Vote!
AUDIENCE: Vote! Vote! Vote!
THE PRESIDENT: This is a feisty crew behind me here. (Applause.) All right, so you’ve seen all the commercials. You now have seen Governor Romney’s sales pitch. He’s been running around saying he’s got a five-point plan for the economy, except it turns out it’s a one-point plan. Folks at the top play by a different set of rules than you do. They get to pay a lower tax rate. They get to outsource more jobs. They want to see Wall Street run wild again.
That was his philosophy in the boardroom. That was his philosophy as Governor. And if it sounds familiar, it’s because that was the philosophy that we tried in the decade before I took office, and it led to falling incomes, and the slowest job growth in half a century, and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. And we’ve been working for four years to clean up the mess they left behind. (Applause.)
Governor Romney knows this. He knows his plan isn’t any different than the policies that led to our recession, so in the final weeks of this election, he has been counting on you to forget. He’s hoping you come down with — what?
AUDIENCE: Romnesia!
THE PRESIDENT: He’s hoping you come down with what we call “Romnesia.” (Laughter.) He’s hoping you won’t remember that his economic plan is more likely to create jobs in China than here in America, because it rewards companies that move jobs and profits overseas. He’s hoping that you won’t remember that he wants to give millionaires and billionaires a $250,000 tax cut, because the only way he can pay for it is either blowing up the deficit or asking you to pay higher taxes. He’s hoping you will come down with a severe case of Romnesia before you cast your ballot.
But, Las Vegas, I want you all to know this: If you feel any symptoms coming on — (laughter) — fever, a ringing in your ears, blurred vision, not being able to remember what you said just last week — if it’s coming on, the good news is we can fix you up. Obamacare covers preexisting conditions. We can make you well. (Applause.) There’s a cure, Nevada — all you’ve got to do is vote! (Applause.) We could cure this thing.
AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years!
THE PRESIDENT: Now, listen, I want to get serious for a second. We joke about Romnesia, but the reason I bring this up is because it speaks to something serious and that is the issue of trust. When you elect a President, you don’t know exactly what’s going to be coming up in the future. You don’t know what kind of crisis may arise. You don’t know what kind of decisions the President may have to make.
But there’s no more serious issue in the presidential campaign than who can you trust. Trust matters. Who’s going to look out for you? And here’s the thing — Nevada, you know me by now. (Applause.) You know I say what I mean, and I mean what I say.
We haven’t finished everything we set out to do in 2008, but you know that every single day that I set foot in that office, I am thinking about you. (Applause.) I am fighting for your families. And with your help, I’ve been keeping the commitments that I made. (Applause.)
I told you I’d end the war in Iraq — and I ended the war in Iraq. I said we’d the end the war in Afghanistan — we are transitioning as we speak. I said we’d refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11 — and we have, and there’s a new tower rising above the New York skyline. Al Qaeda is on the path to defeat. Osama bin Laden is dead. (Applause.) Our heroes, like Michael, are coming home. I have kept those promises.
I promised to cut taxes for middle-class families and small businesses — and I have. I promised to end taxpayer-funded Wall Street bailouts for good — and we have. I promised to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell,” because anybody who loves this country should be able to serve in our military regardless of who they love. (Applause.)
I bet on American workers and American ingenuity, and we saved a dying auto industry that’s back on top of the world. On issue after issue, we are moving forward.
After losing 9 million jobs in the Great Recession, our businesses have added more than 5 million new jobs in the past two and a half years. The unemployment rate is falling. Home values and home sales are rising. Our assembly lines are humming. We’ve got a long way to go, Nevada, but we’ve come too far to go back now. (Applause.) We cannot afford to go backwards to the policies that got us into this mess. We’ve got to go forward. And that’s why I’m running for a second term as President of the United States. (Applause.) That’s why I need your vote.
AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years!
THE PRESIDENT: Now — hold on. Hold on a second. Hold on.
AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years!
THE PRESIDENT: All right, hold on, hold on, hold on — I got a little more on my plate here. (Laughter.) I got a little more to my agenda.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: We love you, Obama!
THE PRESIDENT: I love you back. (Applause.) But this is about the future. And I have a plan that will actually create jobs and create middle-class security. And unlike Mitt Romney, I’m proud to talk about what’s in my plan. (Applause.)
I’m not going to pretend what’s in my plan is not in my plan. I’m not going to conveniently forget what I said last week about my plan. And the good news is that the math in my plan actually adds up. (Applause.)
If you want to take a look, you can go to BarackObama.com/plans. You can share it with your friends and neighbors and co-workers, because there are still people out there who are trying to make up their minds. Some of you here may have just come to hear Katy Perry and still don’t know who to vote for. (Laughter.) I’m just saying it’s possible.
Some of you might have been dragged here by your girlfriend or boyfriend. They said, you know what, you have to come to the rally and you didn’t feel like coming. But now that you’re here, I want you to compare my plans to Governor Romney’s plans. See which plan is better for you. See which plan is better for Nevada. See which plan is better for America’s future. (Applause.)
Now, the first thing I want to do — end tax breaks for companies that are shipping jobs overseas, reward small businesses and manufacturers who create jobs right here in the United States. (Applause.)
The second thing I want to do is cut our oil imports in half by 2020 so we control our own energy. And that also means making sure that we are creating cars and trucks that have higher gas mileage; making sure that we’re developing solar and wind and biofuels — the energy sources of the future. We are less dependent on foreign oil than at any time in the last two decades because of the steps we’ve taken.
But we’ve got more to do. I want to build on that progress. I don’t want fuel-efficient cars or solar panels made in China — I want them made here in Nevada. (Applause.) I want them made here in America with American workers. And we can do it. And, by the way, it will help our environment as well as our economy and our national security. (Applause.)
Number three, we’re going to make it a national mission to educate our kids and train our workers better than anybody else in the world. (Applause.) I want to recruit 100,000 math and science teachers, train 2 million workers at our community colleges to get the skills they need for the jobs that are hiring right now. I want to keep college tuition low so our young people aren’t burdened with debt. (Applause.) We can do that.
I want us to reduce our deficit by $4 trillion, but do it in a balanced way. We’ll cut out spending we don’t need, but I’m also going to ask the wealthiest to pay a little bit more in taxes, including me — (applause) — so we can invest in research and technology, and provide young people with the support they need for their college educations. Those things will keep new jobs and businesses coming to America.
And I’m not going to reduce the deficit by turning Medicare into a voucher — because no American should spend their golden years at the mercy of insurance companies. (Applause.)
And finally, I want to use the savings from ending the war in Iraq and Afghanistan to put our people back to work doing some nation-building here at home — (applause) — building roads and bridges and schools, sending broadband lines into rural communities.
When our veterans come home, I want to serve them as well as they’ve served us. (Applause.) I want to help them find jobs as police officers and firefighters and first responders. No one who fights for this country should have to fight for a job, or a roof over their heads, or the care they need when they come home. (Applause.)
So that’s the plan, Nevada. That’s how you build a strong, sustainable economy that has good middle-class jobs. That’s how you encourage new businesses to stay here. That’s how you increase take-home pay — not by talking about it, but by implementing plans that do it. That’s how you build an economy where everybody who works hard has a chance to get ahead.
That’s what we can do together. And now it’s up to you. Nevada, right here, right now, today, you have the chance to choose the path we go from here. It’s up to the young people here to choose the future that you believe in, that you want to see. It’s up to you and the not-so-young people here, like me, to choose the future we want to leave for the next generation. You can choose the top-down policies that got us into this mess, or you can choose the policies that are getting us out. (Applause.)
You can choose a foreign policy that’s reckless and all over the map, or you can choose one that is steady and strong. You can choose to turn the clock back 50 years for women and immigrants and gays, or in this election you can stand up for the principle that America includes everybody. We’re all created equal — (applause) — Black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, abled, disabled — no matter who you are, no matter what you look like, no matter where you come from or who you love, in America you can make it if you try. (Applause.) That’s what you believe in.
Nevada, we’ve been through tough times before. We have been through tough times before. But the American people are always tough. We always come out on top because we pull together, because we look after one another, because we leave nobody behind — we pull folks up. We don’t turn backwards. We look forward. (Applause.) We look forward. We look forward to the distant horizon — (applause) — to new possibilities, to new frontiers. That’s what we believe and that’s who we are.
Our destiny is not written for us, it’s written by us. And we can write the next chapter, together, right now. That’s why I’m asking for your vote. (Applause.) And if you give me your vote, I promise you I will always hear your voices. (Applause.) I will always fight for your families. I will spend every waking hour trying to make your lives a little bit better. (Applause.)
I believe in you. I need you to keep believing in me. (Applause.) And if you’ll stand with me, and work with me, and knock on some doors with me, make some calls for me, we’ll win Clark County again. (Applause.) We’ll win Nevada again. (Applause.) We’ll win this election. We’ll finish what we started. We’ll remind the world why the United States of America is the greatest nation on Earth. (Applause.)
Thank you, Nevada. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)
END
10:12 P.M. PDT