Obama returns to Iowa on May 20, 2008 with his family, wife Michelle and daughters Malia Ann Obama and Natasha Obama.
Bullet Points of Speech:
"You have put us within reach of the Democratic nomination," he told cheering supporters.
Pays tribute to Senator Edward Kennedy after learning of his illness.
Fifteen months ago, in the depths of winter, it was in this great state where we took the first steps of an unlikely journey to change America.
The skeptics predicted we wouldn't get very far. The cynics dismissed us as a lot of hype and a little too much hope. And by the fall, the pundits in Washington had all but counted us out.
You spoke of an America where working families don't have to file for bankruptcy just because a child gets sick; where they don't lose their home because some predatory lender tricks them out of it;
You spoke of an America where our parents and grandparents don't spend their retirement in poverty because some CEO dumped their pension
The Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans that once bothered Senator McCain's conscience are now his only economic policy. The Bush health care plan that only helps those who are already healthy and wealthy is now John McCain's answer to the 47 million Americans without insurance and the millions more who can't pay their medical bills.
Change is a tax code that rewards work instead of wealth, cutting taxes for middle-class families, and senior citizens, and struggling homeowners; a tax code that reward by s businesses that create good jobs here in America instead of the corporations that ship them overseas. That's what change is.
Change is a health care plan that guarantees insurance to every American who wants; that brings down premiums for every family who needs it; that stops insurance companies from discriminating and denying coverage to those who need it most.
Change is an energy policy that doesn't rely on buddying up to the Saudi Royal Family and then begging them for oil - an energy policy that puts a price on pollution and makes the oil companies invest their record profits in clean, renewable sources of energy that will create five million new jobs and leave our children a safer planet. That's what change is.
Change is giving every child a world-class education by recruiting an army of new teachers with better pay and more support; by promising four years of tuition to any American willing to serve their community and their country; by realizing that the best education starts with parents who turn off the TV, and take away the video games, and read to our children once in awhile.
Change is ending a war that we never should've started and finishing a war against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan that we never should've ignored.
Change is coming to America. It's what led all those young men and women who saw beatings and billy clubs on their television screens to leave their homes, and get on buses, and march through the streets of Selma and Montgomery - black and white, rich and poor.
Change is coming to America.
It's what I saw all those years ago on the streets of Chicago when I worked as an organizer.