THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I am -- I'm just thrilled to be here. And I want to thank Joe and Rhonda and the entire family for being such great hosts.  And I want to thank all of you for taking the time to be here.

I see the mayor of Columbus is here, a great friend.  Somebody who’s going to be running and I hope winning for the U.S. Senate, Lee Fisher is here.  And Mary Jo Kilroy is here.  We've got one of the best senators I believe in the United States Senate in Sherrod Brown -- is here.  And one of the finest governors in the country, Ted¹ Strickland, is here.  So give those folks a big round of applause.  (Applause.)

Should we tell them to take off their jackets, too?  (Laughter.)  Take off your jackets, guys.  Lighten up（放松） a little bit.  Sheesh!  (Laughter.)

This is just a great opportunity for me to have a conversation with you.  And I don't want this to be too formal.  What I want to do is have a chance to listen to you and also answer your questions.  What we've tried to do whenever we are in a setting like this is to talk about the things that folks are going through day to day -- because, look, I'll be honest with you, sometimes when you're in Washington you get caught up with the particular legislative² battles or the media spin（旋转，疾驰） on certain issues, and sometimes you lose touch in terms of what folks are talking about around the kitchen table.

One of the ways that I stay in touch is through events like this, as well as reading letters from constituents³（成分） and voters all across the country every night.  And obviously what’s on a lot of people’s minds right now is the economy.

We went through the worst recession that we've had since the Great Depression.  And when I was sworn in about 18 months ago, we had already lost several million jobs and we were about to lose several million more.  We lost 800,000 jobs the month I was sworn in.  And so we had to act fast and take some emergency steps to prevent the economy from going back into what could have been a Great Depression.

And we were successful in doing so.  We stabilized⁴ the economy; we stabilized the financial system.  We didn’t have a complete meltdown（灾难，彻底垮台） .  And whereas we were losing jobs in the private sector⁵（私营部门） when I was first sworn in, we're now gaining jobs, and we've gained jobs seven consecutive⁶ months in the private sector.  The economy was shrinking about 6 percent; the economy is now growing.  So we've made progress.  But let’s face it, the progress hasn’t been fast enough.

And Joe, Rhonda and I were just talking about the challenges that they’ve had to go through when Rhonda got laid off -- and, by the way, also lost her health insurance in the process, at a time when her son was going through some significant medical needs.  So, in addition to trying to stop the crisis, what we also wanted to do was make sure that we were helping⁷ people get back on their feet.  So something that I'm very pleased with is that Rhonda was able to use the provisions that we passed to help her get COBRA so that she had health insurance, could keep her health insurance, at a time when the family was very much in need.  And millions of people across the country have been able to keep their health insurance.