Barack Obama

But he told us that of everything that's out there, his biggest dream is to someday stand in the front yard of his own home with his wife and kids, who will hug him and say, 'I love you, Daddy.'

And instead of waiting every ten years for Congress to fight over raising the minimum wage, I will finally make the minimum wage a living wage by permanently indexing it to inflation so that it actually pays the bills.

We know that to fill these jobs, we'll also have to get serious about educating our workforce for the 21st century.

Providing these families with the same chances that previous generations have had is a daunting challenge, but it is certainly one we can meet.

And of course, though I did not know him well, every year around Father's Day I think of my own father. He and my mother divorced when I was only two years old, and for most of my life I knew him only through the letters he sent and the…

There are fewer and fewer families who can tell this story today.

I think about my grandfather, who first became a father when my mother was born on a Kansas army base at the outset of World War II. He left to fight fascism in Europe while my grandmother stayed behind and pitched in on a bomber assembly…

The second step we'll take to strengthen families is to ensure that working Americans are not impoverished Americans.

Parents will need to make sure their kids turn off the TV once in a while, and put away the video games, and start hitting the books.

Over the last few decades, fundamental changes in the way we work and live have trapped too many American families between an economy that's gone global and a government that's gone AWOL.

But just as we have individual responsibilities, at the dawn of the 21st century we also have a collective responsibility to strengthen that safety net, put the rungs back on that ladder to the middle-class, and give every family the…

In the last six years, over 300,000 black males have lost jobs in the manufacturing sector - the highest rate of any ethnic group.

Each year at this time we honor and think about the fathers who've been a part of our lives - the examples they've set, the sacrifices they've made, their successes and their struggles.

It's a plan that would remove some of the financial penalties the government currently imposes on married couples, cut out the red tape to ensure that every dime of child support goes directly to children instead of bureaucrats, and…

And when we get distracted by those kinds of question, I think we do a disservice to the American people.

I am my brother's keeper. I am my sister's keeper.

And nothing really changes except the news coverage quiets down and Anderson Cooper is on to something else.

We can diminish poverty if we approach it in two ways: by taking mutual responsibility for each other as a society, and also by asking for some more individual responsibility to strengthen our families.

The leaders in Washington have forgotten President Kennedy's call to remember that 'here on Earth God's work must truly be our own.'

This journey teaches us that they are going to keep driving that wedge; they are going to keep the distraction going.

We understand it because we get the sense today that politics has become a business and not a mission.

And I promise you this—this health care plan will be signed into law by the end of my first term in office as President.

In the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it. With a uniting faith, with a God powerful enough to empower us—we can take the bullets out.

Our God is calling on us to do that.

Our God is big enough for that.