Hello, everybody. In our house, everybody knows that President is only the third-most important job in the family.
大家好。在我家里，大家都知道總統(tǒng)是我第三重要的工作。
So this weekend, I’m going to take a little extra time to say thank you to Michelle for the remarkable way she does the most important job: being a mom.
And I’m going to give extra thanks to my mother-in-law for the role model she’s always been to Michelle and the countless selfless ways in which she’s helped Michelle and me raise Malia and Sasha.
I am incredibly lucky to have women who help me raise, love, and look after our girls.
我感到無比幸運(yùn)，能有這兩位女性來幫助我撫養(yǎng)、愛護(hù)、照看我們的女兒。
I hope you’ll also take a moment to say thank you to the women in your life who love you in that special way mothers do.
我希望你們也能花一點(diǎn)時(shí)間，去感謝那些在你們的生命中，像母親般愛著你們的女性。
Biological moms, adoptive moms, and foster moms; single moms, grandmoms and godmothers; aunts and mentors – whomever you think of when you think of Mother’s Day.
Or take a moment, like I will, to remember the moms who raised us, whose big hearts sustained us, and whom we miss every day, no matter how old we get.
Giving flowers is always a good idea. But I hope that on this Mother’s Day, we’ll recommit ourselves to doing more than that: Through deeds that match our words, let’s give mothers the respect they deserve, give all women the equality they deserve, and give all parents the support they need in their most important roles.
That includes paid maternity and paternity leave, sick leave, accommodations for workers who are pregnant, good health care, affordable child care, flexibility at work, equal pay, and a decent minimum wage.
After all, that’s what my mother taught me. I couldn’t just say I was going to do the right thing, or say I agreed with it on principle. I had to actually do it.
Great tragedy has come to us, and we are meeting it with the best that is in our country, with courage and concern for others. ?Because this is America. ?This is who we are. ?This is what our enemies hate and have attacked. ?And this is why we will prevail.
Today, we are called to remember not only the day our country was born – we are also called to remember the indomitable spirit of the first American citizens who made that day possible.
We are called to remember how unlikely it was that our American experiment would succeed at all; that a small band of patriots would declare independence from a powerful empire; and that they would form, in the new world, what the old world had never known – a government of, by, and for the people.
It is what has always led us, as a people, not to wilt or cower at a difficult moment, but to face down any trial and rise to any challenge, understanding that each of us has a hand in writing America’s destiny.
We are battling a deep recession. And our economy – and our nation itself – are endangered by festering problems we have kicked down the road for far too long: spiraling health care costs; inadequate schools; and a dependence on foreign oil.
Meeting these extraordinary challenges will require an extraordinary effort on the part of every American. And that is an effort we cannot defer any longer.
Now is the time to lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity. Now is the time to revamp our education system, demand more from teachers, parents, and students alike, and build schools that prepare every child in America to outcompete any worker in the world.
Now is the time to reform an unsustainable health care system that is imposing crushing costs on families, businesses, large and small, and state and federal budgets.
We need to protect what works, fix what’s broken, and bring down costs for all Americans. No more talk. No more delay. Health care reform must happen this year.
For the sake of our economy and our children, we must build on the historic bill passed by the House of Representatives, and make clean energy the profitable kind of energy so that we can end our dependence on foreign oil and reclaim America’s future.
These are some of the challenges that our generation has been called to meet. And yet, there are those who would have us try what has already failed; who would defend the status quo.
They argue that our health care system is fine the way it is and that a clean energy economy can wait. They say we are trying to do too much, that we are moving too quickly, and that we all ought to just take a deep breath and scale back our goals.
These naysayers have short memories. ?They forget that we, as a people, did not get here by standing pat in a time of change. We did not get here by doing what was easy. That is not how a cluster of 13 colonies became the United States of America.
We are not a people who fear the future. We are a people who make it. And on this July 4th, we need to summon that spirit once more. We need to summon the same spirit that inhabited Independence Hall two hundred and thirty-three years ago today.
That is how this generation of Americans will make its mark on history. That is how we will make the most of this extraordinary moment. And that is how we will write the next chapter in the great American story.
