they drilled wells, brought the water up, bottled it and sold it and created a process of a few hundred jobs at the time. a business unlike a business in any other state. i we had five consecutive years where the unemployment rate was under the national average and we got 4% for a while and for 25 years prior to becoming governor, it had never been below the national average, but we had a period where there was job growth and job creation, and a lot of governmental reform, and i think it's interesting to note to the caller's question and there was no sale for $100, but nestle was a company in michigan that created jobs. she raises the point that i'll make that today, if you look across america it's interesting to me how different the performance is over how much difference is the performance

among states and there clearly are states that have sort of got it together and are making a lot of progress and there are places where they're really struggling, and i think there are lessons to be learned when one looks at that approach and the other point about states is i think in washington is everybody understands how states do compete whether it's a nestle plant or any other plant or headquarters and location. what is so clearly understood today is the competition has become global and nations are now competing the way states used to compete, and i would argue that in this competition the united states is poorly positioned. we don't have a mind set that we need to compete and we're not really organized in such a way to compete and that's one of the reasons the roundtable's been so adamant that we have to get our tax structure in order and the

rate ought to come down a competitive, global way to tax revenues earned overseas and these kinds of things. they all help get the playing field more level. they're still not, even with that, a strategy saying the u.s. can compete more effectively against other nations. >> and we're going to leave this portion of this morning's "washington journal" to go to a live event. president obama taking the stage in cleveland, ohio. this is live coverage on c-span3. [ cheering ] thank you. >> thank you very much. thank you so much. well, good afternoon, everybody. it is great to be back in

cleveland. it is great to be back here at cuyahoga community college! i want to, first of all, thank angela for her introduction and sharing her story. i know her daughter's very proud of her. i know her daughter is here today so give her a big round of applause. i want to thank the president, dr. jerry sue thornton. and i want to thank members of congress who are here today representative marcia fudge, representative betty sutton, and representative marcy captor. those of you who have a seat, feel free to sit down.

so ohio, over the next five months, this election will take many twists and many turns. polls will go up and polls will go down, there will be no shortage of gaps and controversies that give both busy and give something to write

about. you may have heard i recently made my own unique contribution to that process. it wasn't the first time and it won't be the last. and in the coming weeks, governor romney and i will spend time debating our records and our experience as we should but we will have many differences over the course of this campaign. there's one place where i stand in complete agreement with my opponent. this election is about our economic future. [ applause ] yes, foreign policy matters, social issues matter, but more than anything else, this election presents a choice between two fundamentally

different visions of how to create strong, sustained growth. how to pay down our long-term debt, and most of all, how to generate good, middle-class jobs so people can have confidence that if they work hard they can get ahead. [ applause ] this isn't some abstract debate. this is not another trivial washington argument. i have said that this is the defining issue of our time, and i mean it. i said this is a make or break moment for the middle class and i believe it. the decisions we make in the next few years and everything from debt to taxes to energy and education will have an enormous impact on this country, and on the country we pass on to our

children. now these challenges are not new. we've been wrestling with these issues for a long time. the problems we're facing right now have been more than a decade in the making and what is holding us back is not a lack of big ideas it isn't a matter of finding the right technical solution and both parties laid it out on the table for all to see. what's holding us back is a stalemate in washington between two fundamentally different views of which direction america should take and this election is your chance to break that stalemate. [ applause ]

that stake is not simply a choice between two candidates and two political party, but between two paths for our country and while there are many things to discuss in this campaign, nothing is more important than an honest debate about where these two paths would lead us. that debate has an understanding of where we are and how we got here. long before the economic crisis of 2008. the basic bargain at the heart of this country has begun to erode. for more than a decade, it had become harder to find a job that paid the bills. harder to save, harder to retire. harder to keep up with rising costs of gas and health care and college tuitions.

you know that. you lived it. during that decade, was there a specific theory in washington about how to meet this challenge. we were told that huge tax cuts, especially for the wealthiest americans would lead to faster job growth. we were told that fewer regulations especially for big financial institutions and corporations would bring about widespread prosperity. we were told that it was okay to put two words on the nation's credit card, that tax cuts would create enough growth to pay for themselves. that's what we were told. so how did this economic theory work out?

for the wealthiest americans it worked out pretty well. the top 1% grew by 275% to an average of $1.3 million a year. big financial institutions corporations and corporations saw the profits sold. the prosperity never trickled down to the middle class. from 2001 to 2008 we had the slowest job growth in half a century. the typical families saw their incomes fall. the failure to pay for the tax cuts and the wars took us from record surpluses under president bill clinton to record deficits, and it left us unprepared to deal with the retirement of an aging population that's placing a bigger strain on programs like health care and social security.

without strong enough regulations families were enticed and sometimes tricked into buying homes they couldn't afford. banks and investors were allowed to have risky mortgagees and they were made with other people's money on the line and too many from wall street to washington simply looked the other way. for a while, credit cards and credit loans papered over the reality of this new economy. people borrowed money to keep up, but the growth that took place during this time period turned out to be a house of cards and in the fall of 2008 it all came tumbling down with the financial crisis that plunged the world into the worst economic crisis since the great depression. here in america, family's wealth declined at a rate seven times

faster than when the market crashed in 1929. millions of homes were foreclosed and our deficits soared and 9 million of our citizens lost their jobs. 9 million, hard-working americans who had met their responsibilities, but were forced to pay for the irresponsibility of others. in other words, this was not your normal recession. throughout history it has typically taken companies up to ten years to recover from financial crises of this magnitude. today the economy's many european countries still aren't growi growing, and their unemployment rate averages among 11%, but here in the united states, americans showed their grit and

showed their determination. we acted fast. our economy started growing again six months after i took office and it has continued to grow for the last three years. [ applause ] our businesses have gone back to basics and created over 4 million jobs in the last 27 months more private sector jobs than were created during the entire seven years before this crisis in a little over two years. manufactures have started investing in america again including right here in ohio and across america we've seen them create almost 500,000 jobs in the last 27 months. the strongest period of

manufacturing job growth since 1995. when my opponents and others were arguing that we should let detroit go bankrupt we have the ingenuity and the auto industry is back on top of the world. [ applause ] >> but let's be clear, not only are we digging out of a hole that is 9 million jobs deep, we're digging up from an entire decade where 6 million manufacturing jobs left our

shores, and incomes and wages didn't and where the middle class fell further and further behind. so recovering from the crisis of 2008 has always been the first and most urgent order of business, but it's not enough. our economy won't be truly healthy until we reverse that much longer and profound erosion of middle class jobs and middle class incomes. so the debate in this election is not about whether we need to grow faster or whether we need to create more jobs or whether we need to pay down our debt. of course, the economy isn't where it needs to be. of course, we have a lot more work to do. everybody knows that. the debate in this election is about how we grow faster and how we create more jobs and how we pay down our debt.

that's the question facing the american voter. >> and in this election you have two very different visions to choose from. governor romney believe deeply in the theory we tried in the last decade, the theory that the best way to grow the economy is from the top down. so they maintain that if we eliminate most regulations, if we cut taxes by trillions of dollars, if we strip down government to national security and a few other basic functions then the power of businesses to

create jobs and prosperity will be unleashed and that will automatically benefit us all. that's what they believe. this is their economic plan. it has been placed before congress. governor romney has given speeches about it and it's on his website. so if they win the election, their agenda will be simple and straightforward. they promise to roll back regulations on backs and polluters and insurance companies and oil companies. they'll roll back regulations designed to protect consumers and workers. they promise to not only keep all of the bush tax cuts in place, but add another

this is not political spin. this is precisely what they have proposed. your next question will be how do you spend $5 trillion on a tax cut and still bring down the deficit? well, they tell us they'll start by cutting $1 trillion from the part of our budget that includes everything from education to job training to medical research and clean energy. now i want to be very fair here. i want to be clear. they haven't specified exactly

where the knife would fall, but here's some of what would happen if that cut that they've proposed would spread evenly across the budget. 10 million college students would lose an average of $1,000 each on financial aid. 200,000 children would lose the chance to get an early education in the headstart program. there would be 1600 fewer medical research grants for things like alzheimer's and cancer and aids. 4,000 fewer scientific research grants eliminating support for 48,000 researchers, students and teachers. now again, they have not specified which of these cuts they choose from, but if they want to make smaller cuts to areas like science or medical research then they'd have to cut things like financial aid or

education even further, but either way the cuts to this part of the budget would be deeper than anything we've ever seen in modern times. not only does their plan eliminate health insurance for 33 million americans by repealing the affordable care act -- according to the independent kaiser family foundation it would also take away coverage from another 19 million americans who rely on medicaid including millions of nursing home patients and families who have children with autism and other disabilities. and they proposed turning medicare into a voucher program which would shift more costs to seniors and eventually end the program as we know it. but it doesn't stop there. even if you make all of the cuts that they've proposed, the math still doesn't allow you to pay

for a new $5 trillion tax cut and bring down the deficit at the same time. so, mr. romney and his allies have told us we can get the rest of the way there by reforming the tax code and taking away certain tax breaks and deductions that they haven't named them, but they said they couldn't do it. here's the problem. the only tax breaks and deductions that get you any place close to $5 trillion are those that help middle-class families afford health care and college and retirement and homeownership. without those tax benefits, tens of millions of middle class families will end up paying higher taxes. many of you would end up paying higher taxes to pay for this other tax cut and keep in mind that all of this is just to pay for their new $5 trillion tax cut. if you want to close the deficit left by the bush tax cuts, we'd

have to make deeper cuts or raise middle class taxes even more. this is not spin. this is not my opinion. these are facts. this is what they're presenting as their plan. this is their vision? there is nothing new. just what bill clinton said they tried before on steroids. [ applause ] >> i understand i've got a lot of supporters here, but i want to speak to everybody who is watching who may not be a supporter and may be undecided and are thinking of voting me out of the way. if you agree with the vote i just described. if you want to give the policies of the last decade another try, then you should vote for mr.

romney. like i said, i know i've got supporters here. . no, you should vote for his allies and you should take them for their word and they will take america down this path and mr. romney has promised to deliver on that plan. >> no, he is. >> i am giving you an honest presentation of what he's proposing. i'm looking forward to the press following up and making sure that you know i'm not exaggerating. i believe their approach is wrong and i'm not alone, and i have not seen a single

independent analysis that says my opponent's economic plan would actually reduce the deficit. not one. even analysts who may agree with parts of his economic theory don't believe that his plan would create more jobs in the short term. they don't claim that their plan will help right now, one economist for moody's said the following about mr. romney's plan and i'm quoting here, on net, all of these policies would do more harm in the short term. if we implemented all of his policies it would push us deeper into recession and make the recovery slower. that's not my spin. that's not my opinion. that's what independent,

economic analysis says. as for the long term, remember that the economic vision of mr. romney and his allies in congress was tested just a few years ago. we tried this. their policies did not grow the economy. they did not grow the middle class. they did not reduce our debt. why would we think that they would work better this time? >> we can't afford to jeopardize our future by repealing the mistakes of the past? not now. not when there's so much at stake. i've got a different vision for america. >> i believe that you can't bring down the debt without a strong and growing economy, and i believe that you can't have a strong and growing economy

without a strong and growing middle class. [ applause ] >> this has to be our start. an economy that is built not from the top down, but from a growing middle class. it provides ladders of opportunity for folks who aren't yet in the middle class. you see, we'll never be able to compete with some countries when it comes to paying workers' lower wages or letting companies do more polluting. that's a race to the bottom that we should not want to win because those countries don't have a strong middle class. they don't have our standard of living. the race i want us to win and the race i know we can win is the race to the top. i see an america with the best educated and best trained workers in the world and an america with the commitment to

research and development that is second to none especially when it comes to new sources of energy and high-tech manufacturing. i see a country that offers businesses the fastest and most reliable transportation and communication systems of anywhere on earth. i see a future where we pay down our deficit in a way that is balanced. by placing the and asking the wealthiest americans to contribute their fair share. that's my vision for america. education, energy, innovation, infrastructure and a tax code focused on american job creation and balanced deficit reduction. this is the vision behind the

jobs plan i sent congress back in september. a bill filled with bipartisan ideas that with independent economists will create up to $1 million additional jobs if passed today. this is the vision behind the deficit plan i sent to congress back in september. a detailed proposal that would reduce our deficit by $4 trillion through shared sacrifice and shared responsibility. this is the vision i intend to pursue in my second term as president because i believe -- [ applause ]

>> because i believe if we do these things, if we do these things more companies will stay here and hire here and more americans will be able to find jobs that support a middle class lifestyle. understand, despite what you hear from my opponent, this has never been a vision about how government creates jobs or has the answers to all our problems. over the last three years, i've cut taxes for the typical working family by $3600. [ applause ] i've cut taxes for small businesses 18 times. i have approved fewer regulations in the first three years of my presidency than my republican predecessor did