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\f0\fs21 \cf0 Ask the family struggling to make ends meet if that extra few hundred dollars
in their mother's paycheck from the payroll tax cut we passed made a difference.
They'll tell you.
Ask them how much that Earned Income Tax Credit or that Child Tax Credit makes a difference
in paying the bills at the end of the month.\ When an army of lobbyists and special interests
spent millions to crush Wall Street reform, we stood up for what was right.
We said the time has come to protect homeowners from predatory mortgage lenders.
The time has come to protect consumers from credit card companies that jacked up rates
without warning.
(Applause.)
We signed the strongest consumer financial protection in history.
That's what we did together.
(Applause.)\ Remember how many years we tried to stop big
banks from collecting taxpayer subsidies for student loans while the cost of college kept
slipping out of reach?
Together, we put a stop to that once and for all.
We used those savings to make college more affordable.
We invested in early childhood education and community college and\'a0HBCUs.
Ask the engineering student at an\'a0HBCU\'a0who thought he might have to leave school if that
extra Pell Grant assistance mattered.
(Applause.)\ \
These Republicans in Congress like to talk about job creators.
How about doing something real for job creators?
Pass this jobs bill, and every small business owner in America, including 100,000 black-owned
businesses, will get a tax cut.
(Applause.)
You say you're the party of tax cuts.
Pass this jobs bill, and every worker in America, including nearly 20 million African American
workers, will get a tax cut.
(Applause.)
Pass this jobs bill, and prove you'll fight just as hard for a tax cut for ordinary folks
as you do for all your contributors.
(Applause.)\ \
more than a lot of other folks in this country, we know about hard.
The people in this room know about hard.
(Applause.)
And we don't give in to discouragement.\ Throughout our history, change has often come
slowly.
Progress often takes time.
We take a step forward, sometimes we take two steps back.
Sometimes we get two steps forward and one step back.
But it's never a straight line.
It's never easy.
And I never promised easy.
Easy has never been promised to us.
But we've had faith.
We have had faith.
We've had that good kind of crazy that says, you can't stop marching.
(Applause.)\ \
Even when folks are hitting you over the head, you can't stop marching.
Even when they're turning the hoses on you, you can't stop.
(Applause.)
Even when somebody fires you for speaking out, you can't stop.
(Applause.)
Even when it looks like there's no way, you find a way -- you can't stop.
(Applause.)
Through the mud and the muck and the driving rain, we don't stop.
Because we know the rightness of our cause -- widening the circle of opportunity, standing
up for everybody's opportunities, increasing each other's prosperity.
We know our cause is just.
It's a righteous cause.\ \
So in the face of troopers and teargas, folks stood unafraid.
Led somebody like John Lewis to wake up after getting beaten within an inch of his life
on Sunday -- he wakes up on Monday: We're going to go march.
(Applause.)\ Dr. King once said: "Before we reach the majestic
shores of the Promised Land, there is a frustrating and bewildering wilderness ahead.
We must still face prodigious hilltops of opposition and gigantic mountains of resistance.
But with patient and firm determination we will press on."
(Applause.)\ \
So I don't know about you,\'a0CBC,\'a0but the future rewards those who press on.
(Applause.)
With patient and firm determination, I am going to press on for jobs.
(Applause.)
I'm going to press on for equality.
(Applause.)
I'm going to press on for the sake of our children.
(Applause.)
I'm going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now.
I don't have time to feel sorry for myself.
I don't have time to complain.
I am going to press on.
(Applause.)\ \
}