A stronger middle class is not the consequence of economic growth. A stronger middle class is the cause of economic growth.

Our parents and grandparents understood this truth deeply. They believed - as we do - that to create jobs, a modern economy requires modern investments: educating, innovating and rebuilding for our children's future. Building an economy to last, from the middle class up, not from the billionaires down.

Facts are facts: No president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the Great Depression inherited a worse economy, bigger job losses or deeper problems from his predecessor. But President Obama is moving America forward, not back.

To those who say climate change is not caused by human activity or that addressing it will harm the economy, let's encourage them to go to college, too, and to study physics and to study economics, but for the rest of us, let's get to work.

An election is an opportunity for a new consensus.

We have now under President Obama's leadership had 29 months in a row of private sector job growth. That stretch of positive private sector job growth hasn't happened since 2005. We still have a long way to go, but we are moving in the right direction.

Progress is a choice. Job creation is a choice. Whether we give our children a future of more or a future of less - this, too, is a choice.