We've got to make sure that we rebuild the infrastructure in America, because we used to be - have the best bridges, the best roads, the best airports. And now, when you go to China or you go to Europe, you see that they are outstripping us in terms of infrastructure. And if we put people back to work, that would be good not only in the short term, but it would also lay the foundation, the framework for long-term economic and job growth.
Barack ObamaThe problem is that the way [President] Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion dollars for the first 42 presidents - number 43 added $4 trillion dollars by his lonesome - so that we now have over $9 trillion dollars of debt that we are going to have to pay back. [That's] $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic.
Barack ObamaLet's say hypothetically, knowing what we know now about public policy, that we could close the education gap so that it was only a couple percentage points, and we could make sure that hiring barriers and educational barriers had been leveled down, and unemployment among African Americans right now instead of being double was only 10 percent higher than white unemployment - if we got to that point , America as a whole would be a lot richer.
Barack ObamaOne of the things you discover about being president is that there are all these rules and norms and laws and you got to pay attention to them.
Barack ObamaEvery president who has tried to bring about big changes I think elicits the most passionate responses.
Barack Obama