President Barack Obama Delivers Remarks On The Economy From Columbus, Ohio
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Take you straight to the president of the United States now. He's starting that discussion in the backyard there with some families in Columbus, Ohio, talking economy and health care.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have got one of the best senators, I believe, in the United States Senate. Sherrod Brown is here. And one of the finest, finest governors in the country, Ted Strickland is here. So give those folks a big round of applause.</s>QUESTION: Hi, President Obama. I hope I don't pass out while I'm asking this question, so. My question is actually about health care. My brother is disabled. He is -- and is definitely what I would consider one of the working poor. He -- he will not mature any more as far as mindset of a 12-year-old. Right now he works, you know, washing dishes at a local restaurant. And, unfortunately, because the employer does not offer health care insurance, one whole check -- which is two weeks' worth of work -- has to actually go toward, you know, him just paying for COBRA, which is obviously well out of his budget, but he has to simply because of the various illnesses that he suffers from. My question is, unfortunately, I'm not able to sit down and read a 2,000-page bill -- or a law, or -- with all the reform that happened with health care. With the present reforms that went into place, how will that help him? And if it doesn't, then how will -- I know that you're not done with health care. How will your -- you know, your -- the latest changes that you want to happen with health care, how will that help them? And thank you for doing such a wonderful job.</s>OBAMA: Well, thank you. The -- you know, here's how specifically health reform should help your brother. Number one, it gives an incentive to his employer to provide health insurance. Because one of the key components of health care reform was providing employers a 35 percent tax break on the premiums they pay for their employees. All right? So basically it's cutting his potential costs, the employer's potential costs for providing your brother with health insurance, it's cutting it by a third. That's step number one. And there are going to be companies out there that say, "You know what? We want to provide health insurance but we just couldn't afford to do it, but now that it's costing us up to a third less, saving us thousands of dollars, maybe we should go ahead and provide coverage for that." OK? So that is step number one. Step number two is, if the employer still doesn't provide coverage, over the next couple of years your brother is going to be able to join a pool, what we're calling an exchange, where he can basically buy the same kind of insurance that these members of Congress are buying. And the advantage that he's going to have is that now he's part of a pool of millions of people who are buying it all at the same time, which means they've got leverage the same way big companies are able to lower their costs per employee because the insurance company really wants their business. Well, now your brother could be part of the same pool that these guys are, and that's going to give leverage, which will lower his rates. And the final part of it is, if even with these lower rates, this better deal, he still can't afford it, then we're going to provide some subsidies to help him. So all those things combined should help make sure that your brother is getting health insurance. Now, one of the things that I think people may not be aware of is that although this exchange isn't going to be set up until 2014, because it takes a while, we've got to set it up right, there are some immediate things that are helping right now. If your child has a preexisting condition, insurance companies, starting this year, will not be able to deny those children coverage, and that's a big deal for a lot of folks whose children may have diabetes or some other illness and right now can't get insurance. Insurance companies are going to have to provide them insurance. That's number one. Number two, how many -- how many people here have kids who are college age, about to go to college? All right. Well, one of the things that you're going to be able to do is, when those kids get out of college, if they don't get insurance right away, they're going to be able to stay on your insurance until they're 26 years old. That's a big deal because, a lot of times that first job or those first couple of jobs out of college are the ones that don't provide health insurance. So there are a number of changes that are being made right now that will make those of you who have health insurance more secure with the insurance they have. We're eliminating lifetime limits. There's a bunch of fine print on the insurance forms that sometimes have ended up creating real problems for people. Your insurance company decides to drop you right when you get sick, just when you need it most. Those kinds of practices are over now. And the final aspect of health reform that's important is that, by changing the incentives for how doctors get paid under Medicare and under Medicaid, we're actually encouraging doctors to become more efficient so that, over time, health care costs actually start leveling out a little bit instead of skyrocketing each and every year. Because everybody here who's got health insurance, what's been happening? Your premiums have been going up, co-payments, deductibles; all that's stuff has been going up. So we've got to actually try to control the costs of it, and part of it is just a matter of making sure that we get a better bang for our health care dollar. So, for example, when you go to a doctor, you know, we're still filling out forms in triplicate on paper. It's the only business there is that -- where you still have a whole bunch of paperwork. And what we're trying to do is to encourage information technologies so that, when you go into a doctor, they can already pull down your medical records electronically. If you take a test, then it's sent to all the -- all the specialists who are involved so you don't end up having to take four or five tests and pay for four or five tests when all you needed was just one. Those are the kinds of things that will take a little bit longer to actually take into effect, but hopefully, over time, are actually going to lower costs. All right. I'm going to go, boy-girl, here, to make sure it's fair.</s>QUESTION:  (OFF-MIKE) OBAMA: Absolutely.</s>QUESTION: Mr. President, I'm concerned about the furor lately that's been similar to what's happened in the past but is re-emerging, mostly from the Republican Party but some Democrats, that Social Security needs to be privatized because it's losing money and we're all going to -- it's going to go broke and that sort of thing. How would you comment on that?</s>OBAMA: I have been adamant in saying that Social Security should not be privatized, and it will not be privatized as long as I'm president. And here's -- here's the reason.</s>QUESTION: Mr. President, sir, my name is Aaron McGreevey (ph). I was born and raised in a good blue collar town, in Toledo, Ohio. I grew up in a union family, and I work now for a significant number of pension assets in the labor union market with an investment firm. I think the question I have that most bothers me is what's important to my people out there I talk to. And those two things are, the first, what's going to happen with their pensions, especially those, as you know, in the red and the yellow. The PPA has not exactly been that favorable to them and the PBGC is not a very good option. My father had to take early retirement and he's not receiving the maximum amount after decades of hard work and service that he anticipated. The second part is, I'm not naive enough to think that just the pensions alone can help save workers. We've got 9.5 percent unemployment in this country, at least at last release. And I'm sure, as you know, that's even more -- it's larger than that for the manufacturing industry and us in the Rust Belt -- Toledo, Detroit, Cleveland. Obviously, we need to put those guys back to work. They need to have man-hours out there. How can we create a sustainable, competitive product and an advantage to make us another leader in the manufacturing and labor force industry going forward, not just to get them back to work for a year or two, sir, but to get back to work for the long term so they can grow the market on their own, with their own product and their own work? Well, look, this is a great question, and it goes to the heart of what our economic strategy has to be. And Senator Brown, Congresswoman Kilroy and others, I know this is their number one concern each and every day -- and certainly this is your governor's number one concern each and every day -- is how do we make sure that we're creating a competitive America in which we aren't just buying things from other countries, we're selling things to other countries; and we're making things here in the United States of America. Let me give you a couple of examples of areas that I think have enormous promise. Number one is the whole clean energy industry. And Toledo actually is becoming a leader in this, creating good jobs in areas like solar -- building solar panels, wind turbines, advanced battery manufacturing. There is a whole series of huge potential manufacturing industries in which we end up being world leaders and, as a bonus, end up creating a more energy efficient economy that is also good for the environment. Now, we made at the beginning of my term, the largest investment in clean energy in our history. And so there are plants that are opening up all across the country, creating products made in America that are now being shipped overseas. I'll give you one example, and that's the advanced battery manufacturing industry. These are the batteries that go into electric cars or the batteries that are ending up helping to make sure that if you get solar power or wind power that it can be transmitted in an efficient way. We had 2 percent of the entire market -- 2 percent. By 2015, in five years, we're going to have 40 percent of that market because of the investments that we made. So one of the advanced battery manufacturing plants that we helped get going was key loans and support and tax breaks. They're now putting those batteries into the Chevy Volt. And you combine it then with an entire new U.S. auto industry that is cleaner and smarter, and has better designs, is making better products. Those are potentially thousands -- tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs. And the Midwest is really poised to get a lot of jobs. In a town like Toledo where you still got a lot of skilled workers, they are poised to be able to take off on that. But we've got to continue to support it. The other area that I've already mentioned is infrastructure. We've got about $2 trillion worth of infrastructure improvements that need to be made all across the country -- roads, bridges, sewer lines, water mains. It's crumbling. The previous generation made all these investments that not only put people to work right away, but also lay the foundation, then, for economic growth in the future. And, you know, we used to always have the best infrastructure, worldwide. Now, you know, if it comes to rail, we certainly don't have the best rail system in the world. Our roads, in a lot of places, aren't the best. Our airports aren't the best.</s>QUESTION: Mr. President, thank you. Tied in with the jobs situation, I think, is the education system, and it seems to be in a crisis now, and people are not being educated to take these jobs that are going to be created. And I wondered what sort of plans you might have for -- for that?</s>OBAMA: That's a great question. Are you -- are you in education?</s>QUESTION: No, I'm a nurse.</s>OBAMA: Well, that's important, too.</s>QUESTION: Yes.</s>OBAMA: Thanks -- thanks for the care you give to people all day long. I'm a big fan of nurses. So the thing that will probably most determine our success in the 21st century is going to be our education system. I'll just give you a quick statistic. A generation ago, we ranked number one in the number of college graduates. We've now slipped to number 12 in the number of college graduates. That's just in one generation. That is putting us at a huge competitive disadvantage because, look, companies these days, they can locate anywhere. You've got an Internet line, you can set your company up in India; you can set up your company in the Czech Republic. It doesn't really matter where you are. And so what that means is a lot of companies are going to look for where can they find the best workforce. And we have to make sure that that is in Columbus, Ohio. We've got to make sure that's that in Toledo. We've got to make sure that that's in the United States of America. Now, we still have the best universities and the best colleges on earth, but there are a couple of problems that have come up. First of all, our education starts at K through 12. And we're not doing a good enough job at the K through 12 level, making sure that all our kids are proficient in math and science, in reading and writing. And what we've done is we've set up something called the Race to the Top, where, although a lot of federal money still flows to schools just based on a formula and based on need. We've taken a certain amount of money and we've said, you know what, you've got to compete for this money, and you've got to show us that you've got a plan to improve the education system, to fix low-performing schools, to improve how you train teachers, because teachers are the single most important ingredient in the education system, to collect data to show that you're improving how these kids are learning. And what's happened is, is that states all across the country have actually responded really well. And we've seen the majority of states change their laws to start doing this bottom-up grassroots reform the K-12 system. That's critical. That's number one. Second thing that we've got to solve is that college became unaffordable for a lot of people. And Joe and Rhonda, we were just talking, we're about the same age, and we got married, I think, the same year, our kids are about the same age. So we've kind of gone through the same stuff. And Michelle and I -- I don't know about you guys, we didn't talk about this -- but Michelle and I, we had a lot of debt when we finished school. It was really expensive. And we -- neither of us came from wealthy families, so we just had to take out a bunch of student loans. It took us about 10 years to pay off our student loans. It was actually higher than our mortgage for most of the time. And I don't want that burden to be placed on kids right now because a lot of them, as a consequence, maybe they decide not to go to college or, if they do, they end up getting off to a really tough start because their pay just is not going to support the amount of debt that they've got. So here's what we did, working with Sherrod, working with Mary Jo, Democrats in Congress. This didn't get a lot of attention, but we actually completely transformed how the government student loan program works. Originally what was happening was all those loans were going through banks and financial intermediaries, and even though the loans were guaranteed by the government so the banks weren't takes any risks, they were skimming off billions of dollars in profits. And we said, well, that doesn't make any sense, if we're guaranteeing it, why don't we just give the loans directly to the students and we'll take all that extra billions of dollars that were going to the banks as profits and we'll give more loans. And as a consequence what we've been able to do is to provide millions of more students additional loans and make college more affordable over time. That's the second thing. Third thing we've got to do is we've got to focus on community colleges, which are a wonderful asset. Not everybody's going to go to a four-year college. And even if you go to a four-year college you may need to go back and retrain two years or -- for a year or two even while you're working to keep up -- keep pace with new technologies, new developments in your industry. So what we really try to do is -- is to partner with community colleges, figure out how we can strengthen them, put more resources into them, and link them up to businesses who are actually hiring so that they're training people for the jobs that exist as opposed to the jobs that don't. One of the problems we've had for a lot of young people is they go to college training for a job thinking that their job's -- or thinking there's a job out there, and actually the economy has moved on. And what we need to do is tailor people's education so that they are linked up with businesses who say, "We need this many engineers," or, "We need this kind of technical training," or -- and we'll help design what that training is so that when that person goes to college and they're taking out some of those loans to go to college, they know at the end of the road there's actually going to be a job available to them. Last thing, math, science -- we've really got to emphasize those. That's an area where we've really fallen far behind. And our technological competitiveness is going to depend on how well we do in math and science. All right. O.K. Who we got? Yes, sir.</s>QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)</s>QUESTION: Mr. President, my name is Joe Richard (ph). I am a proud firefighter for the great city of Columbus here in Ohio.</s>OBAMA: Joe -- Joe, did you used to play for Ohio State, man?</s>QUESTION: I must correct you. I was actually part of the national championship team for Eastern Kentucky University.</s>OBAMA: Oh, O.K., all right. That's nice.</s>QUESTION: But a national champion, no less.</s>OBAMA: Well, there you go, O.K. But you look like you could -- we could put you on the line right now.</s>QUESTION: Oh, that's what they all say.</s>OBAMA: Well, the -- thank you. And as I said, you guys put your lives on the line each and every day. We wanted to make sure that public safety was not being threatened as a consequence of the recession. We've done that. We've helped to support not just firefighters, but also police officers, teachers, other vital services. We're going to continue to support you. And, again, we're very grateful for everything you do. And if this is your lovely wife here, we're grateful to her, too, because she's got to -- she's got to put up with you --</s>QUESTION: Hi, Mr. President. My name is Pam Cohen (ph), and I was actually recently laid off of a position working at our local community college helping dislocated workers get back and get retrained. But the position was funded on workforce investment dollars and the funding ended. As I look for a new position in social services, one of my concerns is I'm having trouble finding a position that pays enough so that I can pay my bills and also send my daughter to quality child care. So I was wondering if there is anything that's been done to reduce child care costs in Washington?</s>OBAMA: Well, we have a child care credit in place. We'd like to make it stronger. This is one of those back-and-forths we've been having with the Republicans, because we actually think it is a good idea, and they don't.</s>QUESTION: My name's Mike O'Reilly, and I work for a company that just is benefiting from some stimulus money here in Columbus. And it's -- it's keeping me and my crews afloat for a while, but what we really need is a stronger housing market here in Columbus. We need to be building new roads and making houses affordable for people. They need to get out there, buying. They need to be able to get the loans and -- what's up with that?</s>OBAMA: Well -- well, remember I told you that it's going to take some time for this economy to come back? One of the reasons it's going to take time for this economy to come back is the housing market is still a big drag on the economy as a whole, is we built a lot of homes over the previous five, seven, 10 years. Every year, about 1.4 million families are formed that are ready to buy a new house or need -- need someplace to live. And what happened over the previous four, five, seven years during this housing bubble was we were building 2 million homes a year when only 1.4 million were being absorbed. And then, the bubble burst. And now we're only building 400,000. And all that inventory that's, you know, happened during the housing bubble, it's still out there. So some states are worse than others. You go to places like Nevada or Arizona, or Florida, California, you know, their inventory of unsold homes was so high that it is just going to take a whole bunch of years to absorb all that housing stock. Now, what we can do is to help people who are currently in their homes stay in their homes. We can strengthen the economy overall so that new family that just formed, you know, they feel confident enough to say, "You know, what? It's time, honey, for us to go out and take the plunge and start looking." And right now they're kind of holding back the way a lot of people are still holding back because there's uncertainty in the market. And we've initiated through the Treasury Department a number of programs like that to help support the housing market generally. But I want to be, you know, honest with you. It is going to take some time for us to absorb this over -- this inventory that was just too high. And there's no really quick way to do it. Because we're talking about a $5 trillion market. And we can't plug that big hole in terms of all the housing that needs to be absorbed. We're not going to be able to subsidize, you know, all that overcapacity right now. What we can do is just stabilize it, and then improve the economy overall. What we're going to do is get back to the point where we're building 1.4 million homes a year instead of 400,000. And that's a huge difference. So the industry is going to come back. The question is, can we just nudge it a little bit more? And the most important thing we can do now is to improve the economy overall so that people start feeling a little more confidence. All right? I've got time for one more. You had a question? Here, you can use mine.</s>QUESTION: Thank you. My name is Nadine Eggleston (ph). I'm the practice manager at an ophthalmology practice at the Eye Center of Columbus downtown. It is a great facility that the city of Columbus helped us get in place. There are over 30 ophthalmologists providing specialty care in separate practices, a state-of-the-art ambulatory surgery center. We see tens of thousands of patients a year. And I think we do a very efficient job of providing quality care. Over 300 people employed. So I'm kind of on both sides of health care. When I started working for this practice 25 years ago, we are now getting reimbursed one-third of what we got paid for -- I'm just going to pick cataract surgery -- yet our operating costs continue to go up. My boss is kind enough to provide health care costs entirely for all of his employees. How does he continue to do that when Medicare continues to reduce what they're paying, and there's the threat of more cuts coming, and the private insurance companies follow suit.</s>OBAMA: Well, it's a great question. And let me talk about Medicare generally. Medicare, I think, is one of the cornerstones of our social safety net. I mean, the basic idea is you've been working all your life, you retire, just like you've got Social Security that you can count on, you've also got health care that you can count on. You're not going to go bankrupt just because you get sick. But in the same way that Social Security has to be tweaked because the population's getting older, we've got to refresh and renew Medicare to make sure that it's going to be there for the next generation as well. And the key problems are not just that more people as they retire are going to be part of Medicare. The big problem is just health care inflation generally. The costs of health care keep on skyrocketing. Now, the way we've been dealing with it, which I think is the wrong way to deal with it, is basically under-reimbursing our providers. The right way to deal with it is to work with the providers to figure out how can we make the system less wasteful, more efficient overall? And that way, we're paying, you know, your boss -- you know, if he's spending a dollar on care, he's getting reimbursed a dollar. But we're also making sure that the care he's providing is exactly what the person needs, and high quality for -- for a better price. And that's part of what health care reform was all about. I'll just give you a couple examples. One of the things that we were doing in Medicare was we were giving tens of billions of dollars of subsidies to insurance companies, under the Medicare Advantage plan, even though that plan wasn't shown to make seniors any healthier than regular old Medicare. So we said, all right, we're not going to end Medicare Advantage, but we are going to have some competitive bidding and we're going to force the insurance companies to show us, well, what exactly -- what value are you adding; how are you helping to make these seniors healthier? And if you're not helping, then you shouldn't be getting paid. We should be giving that money to the doctor and the nurse and the other people who are actually providing care, not the insurance companies. Well, you know, there was a lot of hue and cry about this. But it was absolutely the right thing to do, because now we just found out the actuaries for Medicare said the changes we've already made has extended the life of the Medicare trust fund for another 12 years, which is, by the way, the longest it's ever been extended as a consequence of a reform effort. So we've made Medicare stronger just with some of the changes that we've already been -- we've already made. But you're absolutely right that we're going to have to keep on making these changes to continue to make it stronger. And that will affect not just Medicare; it will affect the entire health care system because there is no doctor out there who doesn't see Medicare as the 800-pound gorilla. If Medicare is saying you've got to improve your quality and efficiency, then they will because they've got a lot of Medicare patients. But they also have a lot of regular patients. So hospitals, doctors, everybody starts getting more efficient as Medicare gets more efficient. The key is making sure that we're not just cutting benefits. And, frankly, this is an argument that I have with my friends in the Republican Party sometimes. One big change that some of them have advocated is to voucherize the Medicare system. Basically, instead of, once you have Medicare, you knowing that you can take that and go get care anywhere you want, we would just give you -- all right, here's whatever it is, $6,000 or $7,000 or whatever, you go shop and figure out what kind of best deal you can get. The problem is, is that if Medicare costs keep -- if health care costs keep on going up, but your voucher doesn't keep going up, you're going to be in trouble, and suddenly you've got seniors who find themselves way short of what they need in terms of providing care. We've got to change how the health care system actually operates, and that means more prevention -- more preventive care. It means better -- that we reimburse people for checkups. It means we reimburse doctors when they're consulting with people, you know, on things like smoking cessation and weight control and exercise. There are a whole bunch of things that can make us healthier, reduce our costs overall, but, unfortunately, the system doesn't incentivize them right now. We need to change that. OK? All right. Anybody have any last burning question? That was technically the last, but this has to be like one that you're just, "Man, I really need an answer for."</s>QUESTION:  (OFF-MIKE) OBAMA: OK. Go ahead.</s>QUESTION: It's a -- it's a very general question here. My name's Colin O'Reilly (ph). That's my dad, Mike. I work on Wall Street. I was wondering what kind of changes we can expect to see in the reform in the next couple years.</s>OBAMA: Well, the -- here's the essential components of Wall Street reform that we set up. Number one is that we've got a -- we had a system in which there was huge amounts of leverage that banks can take. And what leverage means is, if they've got a dollar in deposits, they were making a $40 bet using that $1. Which when times are good means you're making a lot of money, right? You putting $1 down of your own money and you got $40, and when the market's going up, you're making out like a bandit. But when the market goes down, when it starts deleveraging, you're in trouble. And that's basically what happened with Lehman's and a lot of these other companies. So one thing that we've said is that we've got to have for -- for big firms that are -- what we call systemic -- that if they go down, the whole system could go down with them -- we've got to have a better check and say, "You know what? You've got to control a little bit how you're -- how you work in terms of leverage. You've got to have enough capital, actual money, to cover the bets that you're placing so that you're not putting the whole system at risk." That's number one. Number two, there's a whole derivatives market out there which, frankly, even the bankers don't completely understand. But you've got trillions of dollars -- and if you work on Wall Street, you're familiar, obviously, with the derivatives market. I mean, you've got trillions of dollars that are basically outside of the regulated banking system, and people didn't know who's making bets on what. And what we said was that derivatives market -- it needs -- it can continue, but it's got to be in an open, transparent marketplace so that everybody knows, you know, who is betting on what. And -- and we're very clear about, you know, who the various parties are in these complex derivatives transactions. That means the regulators can follow it a little more closely. That's number two. The third thing that we did is we made sure that we don't have taxpayer bailouts again. So we've set up a system whereby, if a big firm gets in trouble, we're able to essentially quarantine it, separate it out from the rest of the pack, liquidate it without it spilling over into the system as a whole. That's the third thing. And the fourth thing is having a consumer financial protection agency that is really going to do a good job making sure that consumers know what they're getting when it comes to financial products. I mean, you know, when you buy a toaster, there's been some assurance provided that that toaster will not explode in your face, right? That's -- there are a whole bunch of laws in there. People have to do tests on the toasters to make sure that nothing happens. But if you buy a mortgage that explodes in your face because you didn't know what was going on, everybody acts like, well, that's your problem. Well, no, it's actually all of our problems. Because part of the reason we had this financial crisis was because people did not always understand the financial instruments that they were purchasing. A lot of these subprime loans that were being given out, a lot of these no-interest -- you know, you can buy your house, you don't put any money down, you don't pay any interest, you got this beautiful house. And naturally people, you know, were thinking, well, this sounds great. But what they weren't looking at was, OK, there's a balloon payment five years down, you know, this is only going to work if your housing -- the value of your house keeps on appreciating, and if it stops appreciating suddenly it's not going to work anymore. People hadn't thought through all those -- all those ramifications, and that had an effect on the whole system. So what we've said is, we're going to have a strong consumer finance protection agency whose only job is to look after you when it comes to financial products. And, you know, Joe, Rhonda and I were just talking about how it was only seven, eight years ago when Michelle and I were trying to figure out our student loans, how are we going to invest for the kids' college education. We had, you know -- at the end of the month, I'd be getting my credit card bills. I'm a pretty smart guy, but you open up some of those credit card, you don't know what's going on. You don't read all that fine print. You just look at the statement. Well, as an example of the kinds of things that this new agency are going to be enforcing, we've already passed a law, thanks again to Mary Jo and Sherrod, we've already passed a law that says a credit card can't raise the interest rates on existing balances. So they can't, you know, attract you with a zero percent interest, you run up a $3,000 balance, and then suddenly they send you your next statement, it says, oh, you know, your interest went up to 29 percent. You can't do that. I mean, they -- they'll still be able to say we're going to raise your interest rate to 29 percent, but that can only be on the balances going forward. It can't be on the money that you borrowed where you thought it was a zero percent. Well, that's an example of straightforward, honest dealing that we're going to be expecting. We think the financial markets will still make money; the banks can still make money, but they've got to make money the old-fashioned way, which is loan money to small businesses who, you know, are providing services to the community, you know, loan money to Joe for his architectural firm and he's going to make sure you pay him back. Loan people for mortgages but make sure that you've done the due diligence so that you're not tricking them into something they can't afford. Make sure that it's something that you can afford. Right? There are just a bunch of basic, common-sense reforms that we're putting in place that will allow the market to function -- because the free market is the best system ever devised for creating wealth, but there have got to be some rules of the road so that you're making money not by gaming the system but by providing a better product or a better service. All right? Well, listen. I want to thank all of you for spending the time. I know it got a little warm, and you guys just hung in there like troupers. I want to make sure that, you know, I thank, once again, Ted Strickland, Sherrod Brown, Mayor Michael Coleman, your lieutenant governor, and I believe the next United States senator, Lee Fisher, and Mary Jo Kilroy, for being here. And obviously, I want to thank Joe and Rhonda Whiteman and the whole Whiteman family for sharing their backyard. And, you know, we're going to have to make sure that we're helping -- their lawn, here, it got trampled on, a little bit. I hope you guys are not stepping in the corn.