THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, everybody.  Thank you.  (Applause.)  Please have a seat.  Have a seat.  (Applause.)  Well, thank you, Harry.  Thanks for giving me a chance to get out of Washington.  It’s very hot there.  (Laughter.)  It’s hot here, too, but there’s a little more humidity（湿度，湿气） there.  And I just love coming to Vegas.  (Applause.)  I love being here.  I mentioned last night, I'm not the only one who loves it, because I noticed that, for some reason, Air Force One is more crowded when we're coming to Vegas. (Laughter.)  Somehow I need more staff and logistical（后勤的） support and a couple extra Secret Service guys.  (Laughter.)

We've got some wonderful leaders here, and I just want to acknowledge them very quickly.  U.S. Representative Dina Titus is here -- (applause) -- doing a great job.  And Nevada’s Secretary of State, Ross Miller, is here.  (Applause.)  Dr. Neal Smatresk is here, and his family.  And they’re doing a great job on behalf of UNLV.  (Applause.)  And all of you are here.  (Applause.)  And I am thrilled to see you.

But I’m especially here to be with my friend and your Senator, Harry Reid.  (Applause.)  One of the first stories I heard about Harry was that he was a boxer back in the day here in Nevada.  And I was mentioning last -- she’s laughing, she’s -- oh, I can't believe it.  (Laughter.)  No, he was.  (Laughter.)  You wouldn't know that because he’s so soft-spoken.  He’s all “well, I'm Harry Reid.”  (Laughter.)  But when he first told me he was a boxer, he said, “Barack, I wasn’t the fastest, I wasn’t the hardest hitting, but I knew how to take a punch.”  (Laughter.)  He knew how to take a punch.  And Harry Reid became a pretty good boxer because he would simply outlast his opponents.  He had a stronger will.

I think that tells you something about the kind of person he is, the kind of senator he is, the kind of Senate Majority Leader he is.  He’s a fighter, and you should never bet against him.  (Applause.)  And that’s just what we need right now.  That's what Nevada needs right now.  (Applause.)  That's what Nevada needs, is somebody who’s going to fight for the people of Nevada and for the American people.

And you know that he wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth -- in Searchlight, Nevada.  So when you're going through tough times, Harry Reid has been there.  He knows what it feels like to be scraping（吝啬的，刮擦的） and scrimping（吝啬的，不足的） , and struggle to make ends meet.  And so when his home state is having a tough time, when the country is having a tough time, he knows that he’s got to be fighting on behalf of not those who are powerful, but on behalf of those who need help the most.

Now, let me tell you, when we first took office, amidst the worst economy since the Great Depression, we needed Harry’s fighting spirit -- because we had lost nearly three million jobs during the last six months of 2008.  The month I was sworn in, January 2009, we lost 750,000 jobs in that month alone.  The following month we lost 600,000 jobs.  And these were all the consequence of a decade of misguided economic policies -- a decade of stagnant（停滞的，不景气的） wages, a decade of declining incomes, a decade of spiraling（盘旋的） deficits.

So our first mission was to break the momentum of the deepest and most vicious（恶毒的） recession since the Great Depression.  We had to stop the freefall and get the economy and jobs growing again.  And digging out of this mess required us taking some tough decisions, and sometimes those decisions were not popular. And Harry knew they weren’t popular.  I knew they weren’t popular.  But they were the right thing to do.

And Harry was willing to lead those fights because he knew that we had to change course; that to do nothing, to simply continue with the policies that had gotten us into this mess in the first place would mean further disaster.  And to fail to act on some of the great challenges facing the country that we had been putting off for decades would mean a lesser future for our children and our grandchildren.

Now, as a result of those tough steps that we took, we’re in a different place today than we were a year ago.  An economy that was shrinking is now growing.  We’ve gained private sector jobs for each of the past six months instead of losing them -- almost 600,000 new jobs.

But as Harry pointed out, that’s not enough.  I don’t have to tell you that.  The unemployment rate is still unacceptably high, particularly in some states like Nevada.  And a lot of you have felt that pain personally or you’ve got somebody in your family who’s felt the pain.  Maybe you found yourself underwater on your mortgage（抵押） and faced the terrible prospect of losing your home.  Maybe you’re out of work and worried about how you’re going to provide for your family.  Or maybe you’re a student at UNLV and you’re wondering if you’re going to be able to find a job when you graduate, or if you’re going to be able to pay off your student loans, or if you’re going to be able to start your career off on the right foot.

Now, the simple truth is it took years to dig this hole; it’s going to take more time than any of us would like to climb out of it.  But the question is, number one, are we on the right track?  And the answer is, yes.  And number two, how do we accelerate the process?  How do we get the recovery to pick up more steam?  How do we fill this hole faster?

There’s a big debate in Washington right now about the role that government should play in all this.  As I said in the campaign -- and as I’ve repeated many times as President -- the greatest generator of jobs in America is our private sector.  It’s not government.  It’s our entrepreneurs and innovators who are willing to take a chance on a good idea.  It’s our businesses, large and small, who are making payroll（工资单） and working with suppliers and distributing goods and services across the country and now across the world.