THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  Thank you, everybody.  Thank you.  Thank you, everybody.  Please have a seat.  Thank you.

It is good to spend my birthday with some good friends.  (Laughter.)  And as I look around the room, there are very few of you who I haven’t, in some form or fashion, worked directly with on an issue -- some of you dating back to when I was in the state legislature（立法机关） , some of you who I’ve worked with in the United States Senate, and all of you who I’ve had the opportunity to work with as President of the United States.

So I am grateful.  And I want to first of all thank Rich, not only for inviting me here, not only for I know making clear my commitment to all of you during an earlier session today, but also for your outstanding leadership of the labor movement.  And we very much appreciate everything that you do.  (Applause.)

I want to thank Liz and Arlene for bucking up（振作，打起精神） Rich all the time -- (laughter) -- and making him look good.  This is a shared leadership, and we are very proud of them.  I want to thank all the members of the Executive Council, all my brothers and sisters in the AFL-CIO.

Together, you are fighting for the hardworking men and women in this country after nearly 10 years of struggle.  The middle class has been struggling now for about a decade -- 10 years in which folks felt the sting of stagnant（停滞的，不景气的） incomes and sluggish（萧条的，迟钝的） job growth and declining economic security, as well as at least eight years in which there was a profound animosity（憎恨，仇恨） towards the notion of unions.

It’s going to take some time to reverse all that’s been done, but we’re on the right track.  We’re moving forward.  And that’s what I’m going to want to talk to you about briefly today. 

I hope you don’t mind me interjecting（插嘴） , though, a topic, because it’s in the news right now and I want to make sure that all of you are aware of it.

One place in our country where people have faced particular struggles in the last few months is in the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the BP oil spill.  So it was very welcome news when we learned overnight that efforts to stop the well through what’s called a “static kill” appear to be working -- and that a report out today by our scientists show that the vast majority of the spilled oil has been dispersed（分散，传播） or removed from the water.  So the long battle to stop the leak and contain the oil is finally close to coming to an end.  And we are very pleased with that.  (Applause.)

Our recovery efforts, though, will continue.  We have to reverse the damage that’s been done, we will continue to work to hold polluters accountable for the destruction they’ve caused, we’ve got to make sure that folks who were harmed are reimbursed（偿还，赔偿） , and we’re going to stand by the people of the region however long it takes until they’re back on their feet.

Now, beyond the Gulf, many of those who’ve been hit hardest by the economic upheaval（剧变，隆起） of recent years have been the people that you represent.  For generations, manufacturing was the ticket to a better life for the American worker.

But as the world became smaller, outsourcing（外包，外购） , an easier way to increase profits, a lot of those jobs shifted to low-wage nations.  So, many who held those jobs went to work in the construction industry, as we had the housing boom.  But when the subprime mortgage crisis hit, when those mortgages were called up on Wall Street, that bubble burst, leaving devastation everywhere.

So now we’ve got millions of our fellow Americans swept up in that disaster -- hardworking people who’ve been left to sit idle for months and even years as their lives have been turned upside down.

And there’s one last element to it, obviously.  Having been plunged into a recession, it also means that teachers and firefighters and people who are providing public services each and every（每一个） day are threatened because tax revenues（税收） at the state level and at the local levels have crashed.  And so you have a perfect economic storm that’s hit our middle class directly in every region, every segment of this country.

You know the stories -- I don’t need to tell you.  You know what happens when a plant closes and hundreds of your members are suddenly without work and an entire community is devastated.  You know how hard it is for somebody who’s worked his whole life to be unable to find a job.  And that pain goes beyond just the financial pain.  It goes to who they are as a person.  It hits them in their gut.

Having a conversation with your spouse and saying, you know, maybe we can’t afford this house anymore; maybe we’re going to have to give up on being able to save for our kids’ college education -- that goes directly to people’s identities, to their cores.  And this is something that all of you know all too well.

But I’m here to tell you, we are not giving up and we are not giving in.  We are going to keep fighting for an economy that works for everybody, not just for a privileged（享有特权的） few.  (Applause.)  We want an economy that rewards, once again, people who work hard and fulfill their responsibilities, not just people who game the system.  And that’s been at the heart of the economic plan that we put in place over the past year and a half.

And I want to thank the AFL-CIO for all you’ve done to fight for jobs, to fight for tax cuts for the middle class, to fight for reforms that will rein in the special interests, and to fight for policies that aren’t just going to rebuild this economy but are actually going to put us on a long-term path of sustainable growth that is good for all Americans.