Imagine if investors in Wal-Mart really cared about bribery at that company's overseas operations or safety standards at its overseas manufacturing plants. If investors pulled their capital, corporate leaders would have to respond.

Jimmy Carter laid out policies that we now look back at and say, 'Gee, that actually made sense.' But you also need to explain it and convey and communicate in a way that provides that tableau, that understanding.

The irony is that it was tougher to rent a car from Cerberus when it owned Alamo than to buy a semi-automatic. To rent a car, one had to provide ID, a drivers' license, and get insurance coverage. To buy a gun? Cash and carry, from the back of a station wagon at a gun show. No concerns about downstream liability or risk.

When you're in office, there are tangible moments when you can see tangible successes.

Some say that I should settle down, go slower and not push so hard, so quickly for such transformational change. To them, I say that you misunderstand the size of the problems we face, the strength of the status quo and the urgency of the people's desire for change.

I stand before you today because this vision of government as the engine of opportunity is what I believe in.

The big lie out there, the big lie that the Republicans propagate day after day, is that cutting marginal rates for those at the top is going to create jobs. It's simply not true.