In Obama's Words

Obama's Press Conference

The most critical part of our strategy is to ensure that we do not return to an economic cycle of bubble and bust in this country.”

• Other issues:Economy, Government and Politics, Health Care

Obama holds news conference on debt ceiling negotiations

Look, what we've been obsessing over the last couple of weeks about raising the debt ceiling and reducing the debt and deficit -- I tell you what the American people are obsessing about right now is that unemployment is still way too high and too many folks' homes are still underwater, and prices of things that they need, not just that they want, are going up a lot faster than their paychecks are if they've got a job.”

• Other issues:Economy

Obama holds news conference on debt ceiling negotiations

So this is not a right or left, conservative-liberal situation. This is how do we operate in a smart way, understanding that we've got some short-term challenges and some long-term challenges. If we can solve some of those long-term challenges, that frees up some of our energies to be able to deal with some of these short-term ones as well.”

• Other issues:Economy, Government and Politics

Obama Holds Town Hall in Arnold, Mo.

Today, on my 100th day in office, I've come back to report to you, the American people, that we have begun to pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off, and we've begun the work of remaking America.”

• Other issues:Economy, Government and Politics

Obama holds a town hall meeting in Cannon Falls, Minn.

You are following through on your responsibilities, and that's true all across the country. People are doing the right thing. Well, if you can do the right thing, then folks in Washington have to do the right thing.”

• Other issues:Economy

Obama holds a town hall meeting at UMd.

So when we changed, for example, the student loan program to take billions of dollars that were going to the banks as middlemen in the student loan program and redirected them so that students -- millions more students would benefit from things like Pell Grants, you know, that was in pursuit of this larger goal that we have to once again be the nation that has the highest percentage of college graduates and that we have the best skilled workforce because that's what it's going to take to win the future. When we initiated health care reform it was based a long-term assessment that if we don't get control of our health care costs and stop sending people to the emergency room for very expensive care, but instead make sure they've got adequate coverage so that they are getting regular checkups and they are avoiding preventable diseases like diabetes, that unless we do that we're going to go broke just on health care spending.”

• Other issues:Economy, Government and Politics

Obama holds a news conference

I would love nothing more than to see Congress act so aggressively that I can't campaign against them as a do-nothing Congress.”

• Other issues:Economy

Obama participates in LinkedIn town hall meeting in Mountain View, Calif.

• Other issues:Government and Politics

Obama remarks at townhall meeting in Racine, Wisconsin

I mean, maybe I'm confused. Do you think that the financial crisis was an ant and we just needed a little ant swatter to fix this thing? Or do you think that we need to restructure how we regulate the financial system so you aren’t on the hook again and we don't have this kind of crisis again?”

• Other issues:Economy

Obama Holds a News Conference with Medvedev

The president and I agreed that the relationship between Russia and the United States has suffered from a sense of drift.”

• Other issues:Foreign Policy

Obama participates in CNBC town hall discussion on jobs

Well, I think it's premature to say that John Boehner is going to be speaker of the House.”

• Other issues:Economy

Obama meets with Fairfax family and delivers remarks on the economy

The body politic is like an individual in the sense that if they go through a really bad accident and you're in a cast and got a little whiplashed and bruised and battered, it takes some time to recover. And that's what happened to our economy. We went through a really bad accident.”

Obama delivers remarks and takes questions from the press

And I think we can all acknowledge there have been times in history when the government has overreached. But in this instance, the oil industry's cozy and sometimes corrupt relationship with government regulators meant little or no regulation at all”

• Other issues:Economy, Energy and Environment, Homeland Security

Obama holds a town hall meeting in Alpha, Ill.

There's nothing wrong with our country, but there's a lot wrong with our politics right now. And that's what I aim to fix. That's what we have to fix.”

• Other issues:Agriculture, Economy

Obama holds a town hall on debt reduction in Annandale, Va.

We can't just tell the wealthiest among us, you don't have to do a thing. You just sit there and relax, and everybody else, we're going to solve this problem. Especially when we know that the only way to pay for these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans is by asking seniors to pay thousands of dollars more for their health care, or cutting children out of Head Start, or doing away with health insurance for millions of Americans on Medicaid -- seniors in nursing homes, or poor children, or middle-class families who may have a disabled child, an autistic child.”

• Other issues:Economy, Government and Politics

Obama holds a news conference on his 2012 budget proposal

What we've done is we've taken a scalpel to the discretionary budget, rather than a machete.”

• Other issues:Economy, Foreign Policy, Government and Politics

Obama holds question and answer session with Senate Democrats

• Other issues:Government and Politics

Obama speaks at town hall meeting in Nashua, N.H.

So I won't walk away from these efforts. I won't walk away from these people. And I don't think Congress should either. I think we should keep working to get this done -- Democrats and Republicans together.”

• Other issues:Economy, Government and Politics, Health Care

Obama, Merkel Hold a Press Conference

This has been the most successful alliance in modern history, an alliance that was so effective that we never had to fight, and that kind of vision that was implemented, that kind of imagination, has to be adapted to the 21st century challenges that we face.”

• Other issues:Economy, Foreign Policy

Obama holds a town hall at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif.

The Republican budget that was put forward I would say is fairly radical. I wouldn't call it particularly courageous. I do think Mr. Ryan is sincere. I think he's a patriot. I think he wants to solve a real problem which is our long-term deficit. But I think that what he and the other Republicans in the House of Representatives also want to do is change our social compact in a pretty fundamental way.”

• Other issues:Economy, Government and Politics