Barack Obama

“ What's stopping us from taking these bullets out and rebuilding our families, our communities, our nation and our faith in one another? What's stopping us from seeing the light and the way and the faith that unites us? ”

“ Let's start with fighting poverty.
There are 37 million Americans who are poor. Most work. Most are single mothers and children. And most are forgotten by leaders in Washington. It's time to take the bullet out and lift the poor out of despair and into the middle class of America. ”

“ We know that three-quarters of welfare recipients live in areas that are poorly served by public transportation and low-income workers spend up to 36% of their incomes on transportation. That is why I will fight to ensure that the federal Jobs Access and Reverse Commute program provides grants to improve low-income access to transportation. And that additional federal public transportation dollars flow to the highest-need communities. No one should be denied work in this country because they can't find public transportation in their neighborhood. ”

“ I will create a prison-to-work incentive program, modeled on the successful Welfare-to-Work program. It would create strong ties with employers, job training agencies and ex-offenders to improve job retention rates. And I will reach out to all the Reverends and engage faith-based organizations to provide support for ex-offenders and their families, both during incarceration and after. We can do that for our families. Our God is a forgiving God. He's certainly big enough for that.
But we need to do a better job making sure that there are jobs in our communities. ”

“ And I want to tell you quickly about a few new ideas I have today.
We can diminish poverty if we approach it in two ways: by taking mutual responsibility for each other as a society, and also by asking for some more individual responsibility to strengthen our families. If we want to stop the cycle of poverty, then we need to start with our families.
We need to start supporting parents with young children. There is a pioneering Nurse-Family Partnership program right now that offers home visits by trained registered nurses to low-income mothers and mothers-to-be. ”

“ We have been told that our mounting debts don't matter, that the economy is doing great, and that people's anxieties about rising health care costs and disappearing pensions aren't a big deal. We've been told that climate change is a hoax, that our broken schools cannot be fixed, and that we are destined to send millions of dollars a day to Mideast dictators for their oil. ”

“ Right here in this room, we believe that God is big enough to overcome the smallness of our politics; that He is big enough to overcome our doubts and our cynicism and our worries; that He is big enough to love children of every color and creed and political label. ”

“ Ministers, it's time to unite behind our faith and help all of God's children around the world and here at home realize that we are all surgeons. Our faith, the word and his will are the instruments we need to take the bullets out. ”

“ We understand it because we get the sense today that politics has become a business and not a mission. The leaders in Washington have forgotten President Kennedy's call to remember that "here on Earth God's work must truly be our own." ”

“ In the last several years, we have seen Washington become a place where driving the wedge to further divide us and keeping score of who's up and who's down is more important than who's working on behalf of the sick and the hungry and the lonely. ”

“ I have a health care plan that will cover every American and cut the cost of every family's premiums by up to $2500 a year. If you don't have health care, this plan will offer you coverage that's similar to the kind federal employees and members of Congress give themselves. If you do have health care, it will bring down your premiums by investing in information technology, and preventive care, and by stopping the drug companies from price-gouging when patients need their medicine. ”

“ We need to provide economic opportunity in every corner of our country if we want to take the bullet out.
We know that we have to invest in transitional jobs too. When there are people who are homeless, veterans struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder from this war in Iraq, and thousands of children aging out of foster care, we can't expect them to have all the skills they need for work. They may need help with basic skills-how to show up to work on time, wear the right clothes, and act appropriately in an office. ”

“ Despair takes hold and young people all across this country look at the way the world is and believe that things are never going to get any better. You tell yourself, my school will always be second rate. You tell yourself, there will never be a good job waiting for me to excel at. You tell yourself, I will never be able to afford a place that I can be proud of and call my home. That despair quietly simmers and makes it impossible to build strong communities and neighborhoods. ”

“ It nagged at me in that campaign because I did not respond with the full force of what I found that Sunday morning at United Church of Christ: that our faith can never be used as a driving force to divide us. That with a big God, with a loving and forceful God we need to unite in His name to finish His work on earth. ”

“ And so God is asking us today to remember that miracle of that baby. And He is asking us to take that bullet out once more.
If we have more black men in prison than are in our colleges and universities, then it's time to take the bullet out. If we have millions of people going to the emergency room for treatable illnesses like asthma; ”

“ But we should do just as much if not more to invest in minority-owned businesses in our neighborhoods so people don't need to travel miles away in the first place. Right now, less than one percent of the $250 billion in venture capital dollars that we invest nationwide each year has been directed to the country's 4.4 million minority business owners. ”

“ Sixteen votes and we can start bringing our men and women home. Our God is big enough for that. Our God is calling on us to do that.
We all know that our faith will be tested and challenged. It happens to each and every one of us. ”

“ And when we try to have an honest debate about the crises we face, whether it's from the pulpit or the campaign trail, the pundits don't want us to find common ground, they want us to find someone to blame. ”

“ Those "quiet riots" that take place every day are born from the same place as the fires and the destruction and the police decked out in riot gear and the deaths. They happen when a sense of disconnect settles in and hope dissipates. ”

“ And when it comes to faith, we've been told that all that matters is what divides us - Evangelicals from Mainline Protestants, the Black church from the White church, Catholics from Protestants from Muslims from Jews. ”

“ But what good are these efforts if men and women can't afford the bus fare or the subway fare or the car insurance to get to the training center or new job. That is why, as president, I will invest in transportation. ”

“ This journey teaches us that they are going to keep driving that wedge; they are going to keep the distraction going. They are going to keep our faiths separate until we shout from the mountain top, "Our Father who art in heaven, we are going to take the bullets out. ”

“ That makes a difference in our families and can stop the cycle of poverty. That is why I will expand federal programs that help ex-offenders and sign the Second Chance Act into law.
As president, I will do more to strengthen support to state correctional systems so that ex-offenders can meet their parole requirements without worrying about losing their jobs. ”

“ They now pay forty percent of their income in health care premiums, they haven't been able to save a dime for their kids' college education, and they're having trouble paying for things like clothes and gas. ”