Thank you all. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you all very much. You know, I always feel welcome at Miami-Dade College. This is a place that welcomes everyone with their hearts set on the future – a place where hope leads to achievement, and striving leads to success. For all of us, it is just the place to be in the campaign that begins today.
We are 17 months from the time for choosing. The stakes for America's future are about asgreat as they come. Our prosperity and our security are in the balance. So is opportunity, inthis nation where every life matters and everyone has the right to rise.
Already, the choice is taking shape. The party now in the White House is planning a no-suspense primary, for a no-change election. To hold onto power. To slog on with the sameagenda under another name: That's our opponents' call to action this time around. That's allthey've got left.
And you and I know that America deserves better.
They have offered a progressive agenda that includes everything but progress. They areresponsible for the slowest economic recovery ever, the biggest debt increases ever, amassive tax increase on the middle class, the relentless buildup of the regulatory state, andthe swift, mindless drawdown of a military that was generations in the making.
I, for one, am not eager to see what another four years would look like under that kind ofleadership.
The presidency should not be passed on from one liberal to the next.
So, here's what it comes down to. Our country is on a very bad course. And the question is:What are we going to do about it?
The question for me is: What am I going to do about it?
And I have decided.
I am a candidate for President of the United States of America.
We will take command of our future once again in this country.
We will lift our sights again, make opportunity common again, get events in the world movingour way again.
We will take Washington – the static capital of this dynamic country – and turn it out of thebusiness of causing problems.
And we will get back on the side of free enterprise and free people.
I know we can fix this because I've done it.
Here, in this great and diverse state that looks so much like America.