America is not perfect. It took a bloody civil war to free over 4 million African Americans who lived enslaved. It took another hundred years after that before they achieved full equality under the law.

Poverty does not create our social problems...our social problems create our poverty.

I'm going to be working the next 25 or 30 years. People like me, if we want, number one, for no benefit reductions for our parents and our grandparents, number two, for the system to survive and exist for us, and, more importantly, number three, for the system to exist for us children, we are going to have to make reforms to that system.

You have got to know what you're doing on your very first day there. So, look, this is not an attack or anything of that nature. It's just a very simple observation. If you want to be president, you have to start detailing some specific public policy. And I don't think from this point forward in the campaign, voters are going to be as tolerant of the lack of that as they have been up to now.

America is not perfect. It took a bloody civil war to free over 4 million African Americans who lived enslaved. It took another hundred years after that before they achieved full equality under the law.

But here's what I would tell people of my generation. I turn 40 this year. There isn't going to be a Social Security. There isn't going to be a Medicare when you retire. Forget about what your benefit is going to look like. There isn't going to be one if we don't make some reforms to save that program now.

I have no intention of being vice president. I have said it clearly.