2012 Democratic National Convention

I’ve signed trade agreements that are helping our companies sell more goods to millions of new customers — goods that are stamped with three proud words: Made in America.

Over and over, we have been told by our opponents that bigger tax cuts and fewer regulations are the only way, that since government can’t do everything, it should do almost nothing. If you can’t afford health insurance, hope that you don’t get sick. If a company releases toxic pollution into the air your children breathe, well, that’s the price of progress.

We don’t think government can solve all our problems. But we don’t think that the government is the source of all our problems — any more than are welfare recipients, or corporations, or unions, or immigrants, or gays, or any other group we’re told to blame for our troubles.

You know, in a world of new threats and new challenges, you can choose leadership that has been tested and proven. Four years ago, I promised to end the war in Iraq. We did. I promised to refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11. And we have. We’ve blunted the Taliban’s momentum in Afghanistan, and in 2014, our longest war will be over.

No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. I want to get this done and we can get it done. But when Governor Romney and his friends in Congress tell us we can somehow lower our deficit by spending trillions more on new tax breaks for the wealthy — well, what did Bill Clinton call it? You do the arithmetic. You do the math. I refuse to go along with that.

My opponent and his running mate are new to foreign policy, but from all that we’ve seen and heard, they want to take us back to an era of blustering and blundering that cost America so dearly. After all, you don’t call Russia our number one enemy — not al Qaeda, Russia — unless you’re still stuck in a Cold War mind warp.