TRANSCRIPT: Obama's Remarks at Indiana Town Hall Meeting

Feb. 9, 2009 -- The following is a transcript of President Barack Obama's remarks as prepared for delivery at a town hall meeting in Elkhardt, Indiana on Feb. 9, 2009.

I want to start by thanking Ed for coming here today and sharing his family's story with all of us.

You know, we tend to take the measure of the economic crisis we face in numbers and statistics. But when we say we've lost 3.6 million jobs since this recession began – nearly 600,000 in the past month alone; when we say that this area has lost jobs faster than anywhere else in America, with an unemployment rate over 15 percent; when we talk about layoffs at companies like Monaco Coach, Keystone RV, and Pilgrim International – companies that have sustained this community for years – we're talking about Ed Neufeldt and people like him all across this country.

We're talking about folks who've lost their livelihood and don't know what will take its place. Parents who've lost their health care and lie awake nights praying the kids don't get sick. Families who've lost the home that was their corner of the American dream. Young people who put that college acceptance letter back in the envelope because they just can't afford it.

That's what those numbers and statistics mean. That is the true measure of this economic crisis. Those are the stories I heard when I came here to Elkhart six months ago and that I have carried with me every day since.

I promised you back then that if elected President, I would do everything I could to help this community recover. And that's why I've come back today – to tell you how I intend to keep that promise.

The situation we face could not be more serious. We have inherited an economic crisis as deep and as dire as any since the Great Depression. Economists from across the spectrum have warned that if we don't act immediately, millions more jobs will be lost, and national unemployment rates will approach double digits. More people will lose their homes and their health care. And our nation will sink into a crisis that, at some point, we may be unable to reverse.

So we can no longer afford to wait and see and hope for the best. We can no longer posture and bicker and resort to the same failed ideas that got us into this mess in the first place – and that the American people rejected at the polls this past November. You didn't send us to Washington because you were hoping for more of the same. You sent us there with a mandate for change, and the expectation that we would act quickly and boldly to carry it out – and that is exactly what I intend to do as President of the United States.