Thank you. Thank you so much. Well, let's -- everybody can have a seat. Make yourselves comfortable -- we're going to be here a while. (Applause.)
It is good to be back in Elkhart. (Applause.) And it's good to be back in Indiana. You know, the last event we had on the campaign was Indiana. And the first time that I'm traveling outside of the White House to talk about the economy is back in Indiana. (Applause.)
And I want to start by thanking Ed for coming here today and sharing his family's story with all of us. Ed was terrific -- give him a big round of applause. (Applause.)
There are a few other special guests that I just want to acknowledge very quickly. First of all, your own senator, my former colleague, a outstanding legislator and public servant, former governor here in Indiana -- give it up for Senator Evan Bayh. Where is he? Where's Evan? There he is. (Applause.)
A guy you may be familiar with, your own member of Congress, Joe Donnelly. (Applause.) We brought a few other members of Congress here to get in on the fun: Representative Baron Hill. (Applause.) Representative Brad Ellsworth. (Applause.) Representative Fred Upton. (Applause.) Representative André Carson. (Applause.) Former Representative Tim Roemer. (Applause.) Former Representative Lee Hamilton. (Applause.) We've got Mayor Dick Moore of Elkhart. (Applause.) And we've got the new Secretary of Transportation, a former member of Congress from my own home state of Illinois, Ray LaHood. (Applause.)
I don't know if you guys have been noticing, but we've had a little debate in Washington -- (laughter) -- over the last week or two about the economy. You know, we tend to take the measure of the economic crisis we face in numbers and statistics. But when we say that we've lost 3.6 million jobs since this recession began, nearly 600,000 in the past month alone; when we say that this area has lost jobs faster than anywhere else in the United States of America, with an unemployment rate of over 15 percent, when it was 4.7 percent just last year; when we talk about layoffs at companies like Monaco Coach, and Keystone RV, and Pilgrim International -- companies that have sustained this community for years -- we're not just talking numbers, we're talking about Ed. We're talking about people in the audience here today. People not just in Elkhart, but all across this country. We're talking about people who have lost their livelihood and don't know what will take its place.
We're talking about parents who've lost their health care and lie away at night, praying their kids don't get sick. We're talking about families who've lost the home that was the corner -- their foundation for their American Dream. Young people who put that college acceptance letter back in the envelope because they just can't afford it. That's what those numbers and statistics mean. That is the true measure of this economic crisis.
Those are the stories I heard when I came to Elkhart six months ago, and those are the stories that I carried with me to the White House. I have not forgotten them. And I promised you back then that if elected -- (applause) -- I'd do everything I could to help this community recover, and that's why I came back today, because I intend to keep my promise. (Applause.)
I intend to keep my promise. But you know, the work is going to be hard. I don't want to lie to people -- that's why we're having a town hall meeting -- because the situation we face could not be more serious. We have inherited an economic crisis as deep and as dire as any since the Great Depression.
Economists from across the spectrum have warned that if we don't act immediately, millions of more jobs will be lost. The national unemployment rates will approach double digits not just here in Elkhart, all across the country. More people will lose their homes and their health care. And our nation will sink into a crisis that at some point we may be unable to reverse.
So we can't afford to wait. We can't wait and see and hope for the best. We can't posture and bicker and resort to the same failed ideas that got us into this mess in the first place. (Applause.) That was what this election was all about -- the American people rejected those ideas because they hadn't worked. (Applause.) You didn't send us to Washington because you were hoping for more of the same; you sent us there to change things -- (applause) -- the expectation that we would act quickly and boldly to carry out change. And that's exactly what I intend to do as President of the United States of America. (Applause.)