DNC Day 2: Speeches
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Senator Hillary Clinton - New York
Governor Mark Warner - Virginia
Senator Robert Casey Jr. - Pennsylvania
I’m honored to stand before you as Governor Bob Casey’s son and a proud supporter of Barack Obama. Pennsylvania is home to some of the hardest-working, toughest, most decent people in America.
For eight years, the people of Pennsylvania have been hit hard by the Bush-Cheney economy, an economy that favors the powerful and leaves everyone else to fend for themselves. We’ve seen our jobs disappear overseas, our wages go down and the price we pay at the pump skyrocket to record highs. We’ve been hit hard, but we’re ready to fight back, and we’re ready for a president who will fight for us. That’s why I am proud to support Barack Obama for President of the United States.
In a time of danger around the world and economic trouble here at home, I know that Barack Obama will lead us, heal us and help us rebuild the country we love. I know this because I know Barack Obama. I have seen how he inspires people, including my four daughters, to believe that the failures of the past will soon give way to the change we need. I have seen his leadership up close in the Senate, bridging partisan divides and finding common ground. And I have seen him carry those same leadership skills off the floor of the Senate and into cities and towns all across Pennsylvania.
I traveled with Barack by bus and train across our state, from Pittsburgh to Paoli, from Johnstown to Downingtown. He was equally at home talking football with Jerome Bettis and Franco Harris as he was with talking jobs with the folks on the shop floor of the Erie Bolt Company, or talking sports with the guys at the bar at Sharky’s in Latrobe.
Everywhere Barack went, people who may have been asking who this guy was ended up seeing what I saw: a husband, a father of two daughters and a man of deep faith. Everywhere we went, the people of Pennsylvania gave him the highest praise they give anyone: He’s one of us too.
And Pennsylvania couldn’t be prouder of our native son, Joe Biden from Scranton. No one knows us better than Joe.
After eight years of a president who lets the oil companies and the Washington lobbyists call the shots, I say it’s about time we had a president and vice president who really know us. We are joined tonight by another great champion of working people, someone with whom I’ve worked on early childhood education; someone who conducted her campaign with rare grace under real pressure; a senator who has worked to bring our party and our country together: Hillary Rodham Clinton. When she endorsed Barack, Senator Clinton called upon us to “do all we can to help elect Barack Obama the next President of the United States.”
Traveling around Pennsylvania, and looking around this room, I have no doubt that is exactly what we’re going to do. So now let us work together, with a leader who, as Lincoln said, appeals to the better angels of our nature. Barack Obama and I have an honest disagreement on the issue of abortion. But the fact that I’m speaking here tonight is testament to Barack’s ability to show respect for the views of people who may disagree with him.
I know Barack Obama. And I believe that as president, he’ll pursue the common good by seeking common ground, rather than trying to divide us. We are strongest when we are together. And there has never been a more important time to devote ourselves to common purpose.
The people of Pennsylvania can’t afford four more years of Bush-Cheney economics, and with John McCain, that’s exactly what we’d get. John McCain calls himself a maverick, but he votes with George Bush 90 percent of the time. That’s not a maverick. That’s a sidekick.
The Bush-McCain Republicans inherited the strongest economy in history and drove it into a ditch. They cut taxes on the wealthiest of us and passed on the pain to the least of us. They ran up the debt, gave huge subsidies to big oil companies, and now they’re asking for four more years.
How ‘bout four more months? We can’t afford four more years of deficit and debt, drift and desperation. Not four more years. Four more months. And we can’t afford another president who will veto children’s health insurance for 10 million children, or who will keep senior citizens from seeing the doctors they trust. Not four more years. Four more months.
Governor Casey used to say that the ultimate question for those in public office is this: what did you do when you had the power? Barack Obama and Joe Biden will use that power to help the folks on the shop floor of the Erie Bolt Company, the guys at Sharky’s, and the millions of Americans just like them, struggling but ready to fight back. We know they will because as Pennsylvanians know, Joe Biden is one of us. And Barack Obama is one of us too.
Governor Ed Rendell - Pennsylvania
It was eight years ago that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney came to Philadelphia to accept their party’s nomination. Onstage at that convention, we heard lots of talk about energy. The Republican platform itself called for expanding the renewable energy tax credit. But once elected, they broke their energy promises to the American people and let big oil determine our national energy policy.
The results of the Republican energy policy are plain. Back then, the price of gas at the pump was about $1.50 a gallon. Today, it’s $4 a gallon. Back then, it cost about $900 to heat your home through the winter. This winter, it’s more likely to be $2,500. Meanwhile, ExxonMobil just announced the largest quarterly profit in history. That’s not just an outrage. It’s obscene.
This happened because for the last eight years, the Bush-Cheney team stonewalled the taxing of oil company profits and prevented efforts to promote alternative energy production. And guess who voted with President Bush 90 percent of the time? Senator John McCain.
Now, as another Republican convention approaches, we are hearing more of the same: John McCain talking about alternative energy, energy independence and wind power. But if you look past the speeches, here’s what you see. Many of John McCain’s top advisors have worked as lobbyists for oil and gas companies. I guess that explains why he wants to give $4 billion in tax breaks to oil companies.
And if you look past the speeches to his record, it’s clear: John McCain has never believed in renewable energy and he won’t make it part of America’s future. For all his talk, here’s the truth: John McCain voted against establishing a national renewable energy standard. He voted against tax incentives for renewable energy companies. And for all his talk of drilling, he refused to endorse a bipartisan effort to expand domestic oil production because that bipartisan proposal would end tax breaks for big oil.
It’s clear: the only thing green in John McCain’s energy plan is the billions of dollars he’s promising in tax cuts for oil companies. And the only thing he’ll recycle is the same failed Bush approach to energy policy. We can’t afford more of the same. We need a strategy that puts America on a path to end the age of oil once and for all.
Pennsylvania knows something about energy leadership. Back in 1886, there was a Pennsylvania town that helped lead America into a new energy future when it created the nation’s first successful electrified streetcar system. It earned that town a nickname, the “electrical city.” The real name of that town is Scranton.
Today, a son of Scranton, Joe Biden, and a friend of Pennsylvania, Barack Obama, offer the change America needs to create a future free of foreign oil. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are committed to producing enough homegrown fuel to replace every drop of the oil we import from the Middle East and Venezuela in just 10 years. An Obama administration will invest $4 billion to keep America in the car-making business and give you a tax cut so you can buy a fuel-efficient car or truck. And it will commit to getting 1 million 150-mile-per-gallon cars on our roads within six years, and make sure they are built right here in America.
It will require that within four years, at least 10 percent of our nation’s electricity comes from alternative energy, and by 2025 we hit 25 percent. It will move immediately to make the renewable energy tax credit permanent and double the amount of energy that comes from renewable sources over the next four years.
It will invest $150 billion over the next decade to grow our energy supply and put 5 million Americans to work building solar and wind farms, clean coal gasification and geothermal plants, the kind of jobs that can’t be outsourced to India or China. It will bring everyone to the table—business, government and the American people—to reduce our demand for electricity 15 percent by the end of next decade. That’s the kind of change we need.
One person who understands what this can mean is a Pennsylvanian named Troy Galloway. Troy is a 44-year-old steelworker who was laid off after working for 15 years for the same company. But today, Troy is working in Pennsylvania for one of the largest wind energy companies in the world, and he’s earning as much as he earned at the steel mill. Troy’s new employer has more than 1,000 Pennsylvanians working green-collar jobs that pay well and have a future.
Why? Because in 2004, Pennsylvania set a standard which will require utilities to produce 20 percent of their electricity from clean renewable sources.
That’s the kind of change we need. That is what the future could look like with Barack Obama as president. If we can do it in Pennsylvania, we can do it in Ohio and Florida and Texas and New York and California. We can. And with Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the White House, we will.
Senator Barbara Boxer - California
I’m Barbara Boxer and thanks to the great people of California who have elected me three times to the Senate, I now chair the Environment and Public Works Committee.
When I took the gavel from the former chairman, I told him that “elections have consequences.” When we win in November, we’ll prove it. Instead of protecting polluters, we’ll protect our families. Instead of ignoring the experts, we’ll fight global warming. Instead of facing Republican roadblocks, we’ll have a Democratic majority large enough to ensure healthy communities.
Remember: In the Senate, 60 is the new 50!
Instead of a president with an Exxon policy, we’ll have a president with an energy policy. This November, we can’t afford more of the same. Let’s elect Barack Obama so that the world’s economic and environmental leader will clearly be our nation—the United States of America.
Thank you.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich - Ohio
It’s Election Day 2008. We Democrats are giving America a wake-up call. Wake up, America. In 2001, the oil companies, the war contractors and the neo-con artists seized the economy and have added 4 trillion dollars of unproductive spending to the national debt. We now pay four times more for defense, three times more for gasoline and home heating oil and twice what we paid for health care.
Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, their homes, their health care, their pensions. Trillions of dollars for an unnecessary war paid with borrowed money. Tens of billions of dollars in cash and weapons disappeared into thin air, at the cost of the lives of our troops and innocent Iraqis, while all the president’s oilmen are maneuvering to grab Iraq’s oil.
Borrowed money to bomb bridges in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. No money to rebuild bridges in America. Money to start a hot war with Iran. Now we have another cold war with Russia, while the American economy has become a game of Russian roulette.
If there was an Olympics for misleading, mismanaging and misappropriating, this administration would take the gold. World records for violations of national and international laws. They want another four-year term to continue to alienate our allies, spend our children’s inheritance and hollow out our economy.
We can’t afford another Republican administration. Wake up, America. The insurance companies took over health care. Wake up, America. The pharmaceutical companies took over drug pricing.
Wake up, America. The speculators took over Wall Street. Wake up, America. They want to take your Social Security. Wake up, America. Multinational corporations took over our trade policies, factories are closing, good paying jobs lost.
Wake up, America. We went into Iraq for oil. The oil companies want more. War against Iran will mean $10-a-gallon gasoline. The oil administration wants to drill more, into your wallet. Wake up, America. Weapons contractors want more. An Iran war will cost 5 to 10 trillion dollars.
This administration can tap our phones. They can’t tap our creative spirit. They can open our mail. They can’t open economic opportunities. They can track our every move. They lost track of the economy while the cost of food, gasoline and electricity skyrockets. They skillfully played our post-9/11 fears and allowed the few to profit at the expense of the many. Every day we get the color orange, while the oil companies, the insurance companies, the speculators, the war contractors get the color green.
Wake up, America. This is not a call for you to take a new direction from right to left. This is call for you to go from down to up. Up with the rights of workers. Up with wages. Up with fair trade. Up with creating millions of good paying jobs, rebuilding our bridges, ports and water systems. Up with creating millions of sustainable energy jobs to lower the cost of energy, lower carbon emissions and protect the environment.
Up with health care for all. Up with education for all. Up with home ownership. Up with guaranteed retirement benefits. Up with peace. Up with prosperity. Up with the Democratic Party. Up with Obama-Biden.
Wake up, America. Wake up, America. Wake up, America.
Senator Patrick Leahy - Vermont
I’m Patrick Leahy. I live on a dirt road in a town of 1,800 in Vermont. I know rural America. Vermont is proud to be part of rural America, but like communities across the heartland, we are struggling from eight years of the Bush/Cheney economy. Rural communities face disproportionately high unemployment rates, violent crime is up, and no one is hurt by record high energy prices more than we are.
Finally, after eight years of failed policies and misplaced priorities, we can turn the page. Rural America can’t afford more of the same. Rural America needs the change Barack Obama offers. Our communities have suffered a 10 percent drop in household income, three times the national average. As jobs continue to disappear, 8 million rural Americans now live in poverty.
Through it all, George Bush and Dick Cheney have sided with big business and big oil and left the rest of us to fend for ourselves. As much as John McCain would like us to believe he’s different, his economic plan offers not a single new idea, just more of the same.
Barack Obama will give us the change we need. He will lift our economy immediately by taking some of big oil’s windfall profits and returning $1,000 to the pockets of working families. He will invest in what rural America needs most of all, good new jobs, with a clean energy initiative that will move us away from oil and put 5 million Americans to work. And unlike John McCain, for whom the internet is a mystery, Barack Obama understands that rural communities can’t be competitive until we have high-speed internet access across the heartland.
Now, as a former prosecutor, I know rural Americans value safe homes and secure communities. That’s why the rural spike in violent crimes is so disturbing to us. George Bush wants to cut funding from local law enforcement. Joe Biden and I worked together on the COPS Program that put 100,000 officers on the beat. Now, Barack Obama and Joe Biden have a plan to hire even more.
No one in America escapes the burden of gas prices that have nearly tripled during the Bush administration, but no one feels it worse than rural communities, where we travel the furthest distances to commute to work, take our children to school and buy groceries. Instead of helping us, George Bush heaps billion-dollar tax breaks on top of big oil’s multi-billion-dollar profits and, now, the very same oil companies that have called the shots in the Bush White House are doubling down on McCain.
Big oil knows McCain’s a sure bet to look out for them. We know Barack Obama will look out for us. Unlike Senator McCain, Senator Obama has a comprehensive and balanced energy plan to lower prices. He will stop speculators from bidding up prices; responsibly produce more oil here at home; and, most importantly, he’ll move us away from oil and towards clean, renewable fuels.
So, for rural America, this choice could not be clearer. John McCain offers four more years of the same Bush-Cheney policies that have failed us. Barack Obama is on our side and he’ll deliver the change we desperately need. After eight long years, now is our chance to get our country back on the right track. When Barack Obama is president, we can once again look with hope to a prosperous new day for our rural communities, from the Rocky Mountains of Colorado to the Green Mountains of Vermont.
Rep. Linda Chavez - CA
Good afternoon. I’m Congresswoman Linda Sanchez and I’d like to share a story with you. One day in the Capitol while going to vote, I threw my arm into the closing doors of an elevator to catch it. There were two older men standing inside, and one of them asked me, “So, whose office do you work in?” Dressed professionally and wearing my pin that identified me as a member of Congress, I was dismayed that these two assumed I was someone else’s staff. I politely smiled and responded, “Oh, I have my own office in this building.” Then the elevator doors opened, and they scurried out.
As a young Latina, most people may not think of me as a person they would go to in search of answers. But I’ll tell you someone who did: Barack Obama. He recognized that my background as a union member and organizer gave me a grasp of the difficulty families face trying to make ends meet. That’s why he picks up the phone to ask me about policies that impact working families.
With the soaring cost of energy, families today are paying more for basics like food and fuel and just about everything else. Rising health care costs mean that for many people, coverage is out of reach. With joblessness on the rise, hard-working families are being squeezed from all sides. They worry about their economic security and whether tomorrow will bring more hardship than happiness.
But Barack Obama knows what we need to get the American economy back on track. He’s restoring America’s promise that if you work hard and play by the rules, you won’t be left behind. Barack Obama understands what single-parent families confront every day, because he grew up in a single-parent home.
Barack Obama understands that we must preserve programs like low-interest student loans, because that’s how he was able to afford to go to college.
Barack Obama understands that as Americans, we can achieve economic success, but also lend a hand to help those who are struggling. He did just that when he became an advocate and organizer for communities that had been devastated by plant closures.
There are people listening to me right now who think that the outcome of this election won’t affect them. It will. It will determine whether you have a champion on your side, who will help you into the elevator, or whether you get more of the same failed leadership that has given hard-working families the shaft.
