dr. joseph heymann, the chair of the board of trustees as well as dr. jeremy lazarists, speaker of the house of delegates, thanks to all of you for bringing me home, even if just for a day. from the moment i took office as president, the central challenge has been to lift ourselves out the worst recession since world war ii. we have kept extraordinary steps to repair the immediate damage to our economy, and to build a new foundation for lasting and sustained growth. we are here to create new jobs, not freeze our credit markets, stemming the loss of homes and the decline of home values. all of this is important. even as we have made progress, we know that the road to prosperity remains long and difficult. and we also know that one essential step on our journey is to control the spiraling cost of health care in america. in order to do that we need the help of the a am a. [applause] today, we are spending over $2 trillion a year on health care. almost 50% more on person than the next most costly nation. and yet, i think many of you are aware, for all of th

dr. joseph -- the chair of the board of trustees as well as dr. jeremy lazurus. thanks to all of you for bringing me home, even if it is just for a day. you know, from the moment i took office as president, this central challenge we've confronted as a nation has been the need to lift ourselves out of the worst recession since world war ii. and in recent months we've sake taken a series of extraordinary steps not just to repair the immediate damage to our economy but to build a new foundation for lasting and sustained growth. we're here to create new jobs. to unfreeze our credit markets. we're stemming the loss of homes and the decline of home balance. all this is is important. but even as we've made progress, we know that the road to pros parity remains long and remains difficult. and we also know that one essential step on our journey is to control the spiraling costs of health care in america and in order to do that, we're going to need the help of the a.m.a. [applause] today we are spending over $2 trillion a year on health care. almost 50% more per person tha

dr. session, dean broderick and especially my dear friend, wade henderson. the longtime president of the leadership conference and civil-rights and now the joseph brow junior professor of public interest law here. i have to do tell you wade and i have worked on so many things and it is kind of funny in the judiciary committee, you can see when the debates are going on i am ready to tear out what little hair i have left and i will look avert and weighed in the back kind of giving me a smile or a thumbs-up and say what the heck, let's keep this thing going, we are going to win eventually. the [laughter] and we usually do. so it is great to see the students here. you are going to law school as such an exciting time. you have a president who is committed to restoring their role of the united states around the world on such important issues as human rights and economic recovery. i think when he was asked by some students here, french and german students in europe, they said is there really change in america and use as i am a black man named barack hussain obama, how much more change to do you expect? [laughter] i say when i go abroad people coming up and want to shake my