But when most people are working harder for
less, when others cannot work at all, when the cost of health care
devastates families and threatens to bankrupt our enterprises, great and
small; when the fear of crime robs law abiding citizens of their
freedom; and when millions of poor children cannot even imagine the
lives we are calling them to lead, we have not made change our friend.

We know we have to face hard truths and take strong steps, but we have
not done so. Instead we have drifted, and that drifting has eroded our
resources, fractured our economy, and shaken our confidence. Though our
challenges are fearsome, so are our strengths. Americans have ever been
a restless, questing, hopeful people, and we must bring to our task
today the vision and will of those who came before us. From our
Revolution to the Civil War, to the Great Depression, to the Civil
Rights movement, our people have always mustered the determination to
construct from these crises the pillars of our history. Thomas
Jefferson believed that to preserve the very foundations of our nation
we would need dramatic change from time to time. Well, my fellow
Americans, this is OUR time. Let us embrace it.

Our democracy must be not only the envy of the world but the engine of
our *own* renewal. There is nothing *wrong* with America that cannot be
cured by what is *right* with America.

And so today we pledge an end to the era of deadlock and drift, and a
new season of American renewal has begun.

To renew America we must be bold. We must do what no generation has had
to do before. We must invest more in our own people, in their jobs, and
in their future, and at the same time cut our massive debt...and we
must do so in a world in which we must compete for every opportunity. It
will not be easy. It will require sacrifice, but it can be done, and
done fairly. Not choosing sacrifice for its own sake, but for *our* own
sake. We must provide for our nation the way a family provides for its
children. Our founders saw themselves in the light of posterity. We can
do no less. Anyone who has ever watched a child's eyes wander into
sleep knows what posterity is. Posterity is the world to come, the
world for whom we hold our ideals, from whom we have borrowed our
planet, and to whom we bear sacred responsibilities. We must do what
America does best, offer more opportunity TO all and demand more
responsibility *from* all.

It is time to break the b