Thank you! Oh, thank you all! Thank you so very, very much.
It is wonderful to be here with all of you.
To be in New York with my family, with so many friends, including many New Yorkers who gaveme the honor of serving them in the Senate for eight years.
To be right across the water from the headquarters of the United Nations, where I representedour country many times.
To be here in this beautiful park dedicated to Franklin Roosevelt's enduring vision of America,the nation we want to be.
And in a place…with absolutely no ceilings.
You know, President Roosevelt's Four Freedoms are a testament to our nation's unmatchedaspirations and a reminder of our unfinished work at home and abroad. His legacy lifted up anation and inspired presidents who followed. One is the man I served as Secretary of State,Barack Obama, and another is my husband, Bill Clinton.
Two Democrats guided by – Oh, that will make him so happy. They were and are twoDemocrats guided by the fundamental American belief that real and lasting prosperity mustbe built by all and shared by all.
President Roosevelt called on every American to do his or her part, and every Americananswered. He said there's no mystery about what it takes to build a strong and prosperousAmerica: "Equality of opportunity…Jobs for those who can work…Security for those who needit…The ending of special privilege for the few…The preservation of civil liberties for all…awider and constantly rising standard of living."
That still sounds good to me.
It's America's basic bargain. If you do your part, you ought to be able to get ahead. And wheneverybody does their part, America gets ahead too.
That bargain inspired generations of families, including my own.
It's what kept my grandfather going to work in the same Scranton lace mill every day for 50years.
It's what led my father to believe that if he scrimped and saved, his small business – printingdrapery fabric in Chicago – could provide us with a middle-class life. And it did.
When President Clinton honored the bargain, we had the longest peacetime expansion inhistory, a balanced budget, and for the first time in decades we all grew together, with thebottom 20 percent of workers increasing their incomes by the same percentage as the top 5percent.
When President Obama honored the bargain, we pulled back from the brink of Depression,saved the auto industry, provided health care to 16 million working people, and replaced thejobs we lost faster than the historical average after a financial crash.
But, it's not 1941, or 1993, or even 2009. We face new challenges in our economy and ourdemocracy.
We're still working our way back from a crisis that happened because time-tested values werereplaced by false promises.