Transcript: Obama Indiana Speech 4-11-08

This speech was giving in Columbus, Indiana at a high school. Some excerpts below or read the entire transcript:

So, I have been running for President for about 15 months now. This is a town hall meeting, but I'll make some remarks at the outset and then we'll and then we'll open it up to questions and comments from people.

I've been running for president for about 15 months now which means there are babies who've been born and are now walking and talking since I started running for president. When I started to run, some people asked me, "Barack, why are you running this time, you're a relatively young man, why are you running so soon?"

And I had to explain that I wasn't running because of some long-held ambition or because I thought it was somehow owed to me,

"I was running because of what Dr. King called the fierce urgency of now, the fierce urgency of now, because I believe there is such a thing as being too late, there's such a thing as being too late, and that hour is almost upon us.

We are at a defining moment in our history and I know there are a lot of young people here today and so I want to speak to them as well. There are moments in the life of every generation where we've got to stand up and be counted and I think this is one of those moments.

Our nation is involved in two wars, one war that we need to win in Afghanistan, against Al Qaeda, those who killed 3,000 Americans and have declared war on us.

Another war that I believe should have never been authorized and and should have never been waged, A war that has cost us billions of dollars and thousands of lives. And a war that has not made us more safe.

Meanwhile here at home our economy is struggling and after seven and a half years of George Bush's economic policies, we now realize that pain trickles up. Because for a long time it was only people on Main Street who were having a tough time.

The economy was growing, the stock market was doing great, corporate profits were up, but this was the first economic expansion in U.S. history where the wages and incomes of ordinary families actually declined during an economic expansion. Because this wasn't a balanced economy, it wasn't good for everybody.

And all across Indiana, people are working harder and harder just to get by. They haven't seen a raise, but their costs of everything from health care to college to gas at the pump have gone up, so it's harder to save and it's harder to retire. And now people are worried about losing their homes because of the home foreclosure crisis and even those with good credit are having trouble because the financial markets have frozen up.

You've got 47 million people without health insurance and if you've got health insurance you've seen your co-payments, deductibles and your premiums going up and up and up.

And despite the slogans, we've got millions of children who are being left behind, unable to compete in a global economy [skip] aren't providing them what they need.