“If You Want to be President, You Owe the American People the Truth!”

I was among the bloggers and journalists who participated in a conference call this morning with David Axelrod, President Obama’s senior advisor. About Mitt Romney’s debate performance he said it was “Well-delivered, but fraudulent…We’ll hold [him] accountable for the things he said… and make him justify those claims.” The president held a spirited rally before leaving Denver today. Here’s a 7-minute video of his talk and then a transcript of it.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Now, the reason I was in Denver obviously is to see all of you, and it’s always pretty, but we also had our first debate last night. And when I got on to the stage, I met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney. But it couldn’t have been Mitt Romney because the real Mitt Romney has been running around the country for the last year promising $5 trillion in tax cuts that favor the wealthy. The fellow on stage last night said he didn’t know anything about that. The real Mitt Romney said we don’t need any more teachers in our classrooms, but -don’t boo, vote – but the fellow on stage last night, he loves teachers, can’t get enough of them. The Mitt Romney we all know invested in companies that were called pioneers of outsourcing jobs to other countries, but the guy on stage last night, he said that he doesn’t even know that there are such laws that encourage outsourcing. He’s never heard of them. Never heard of them. Never heard of tax breaks for companies who ship jobs overseas. He said that if it’s true, he must need a new accountant. Now, we know for sure it was not the real Mitt Romney because he seems to be doing just fine with his current accountant. So you see, the man on stage last night, he does not want to be held accountable for their real Mitt Romney’s decisions and what he’s been saying for the last year and that’s because he knows full well that we don’t want what he’s been selling for the last year. So Governor Romney may dance around his positions, but if you want to be president, you owe the American people the truth. So here’s the truth – Governor Romney cannot pay for his $5 trillion tax plan without blowing up the deficit or sticking it to the middle class. That’s the math. We can’t afford to go down that road again. We can’t afford another round of budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy. We can’t afford to gut out investments in education or clean energy or research and technology. We can’t afford to roll back regulations on Wall Street or on big oil companies or insurance companies. We cannot afford to double down on the same top-down economic policies that got us into this mess. That is not a plan to create jobs, that is not a plan to grow the economy, that is not change, that is a relapse. We don’t want to go back there. We’ve tried it, it didn’t work and we are not going back, we are going forward.

Now, I’ve got a different view about how we create jobs and prosperity. This country doesn’t succeed when we only see the rich getting richer. We succeed when the middle class gets bigger. We grow our economy not from the top down, but from the middle out. We don’t believe that anybody’s entitled to success in this country, but we do believe in something called opportunity. We believe in a country where hard work pays off and where responsibility is rewarded and everybody’s getting a fair shot and everybody’s doing their fair share and everybody plays by the same rules. That’s the country we believe in. That’s what I’m fighting for, that’s why I’m running for a second term as President of the United States, and that’s why I want your vote.

AUDIENCE: Four more years!

PRESIDENT OBAMA: What I talked about last night was a new economic patriotism, a patriotism that’s rooted in the belief that growing our economy begins with a strong, thriving middle class. That means we export more jobs and we outsource – export more products and outsource fewer jobs. You know, over the last three years we came together to reinvent a dying auto industry that’s back on top of the world. We’ve created more than half a million new manufacturing jobs. And so now you’ve got a choice. We can keep giving tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, or we can start rewarding companies that are opening new plants and training new workers and creating jobs right here in the United States of America. That’s what we’re looking for. We can help big factories and small businesses double their exports and create a  million new manufacturing jobs over the next four years. You can make that happen. I want to control more of our own energy. You know, after 30 years of inaction, we raised fuel standards so that by the middle of the next decade, your cars and trucks will be going twice as far on a gallon of gas. We’ve doubled the amount of renewable energy we generate from sources like wind and solar, and thousands of Americans have jobs today building wind turbines and long-lasting batteries. The United States of America today is less dependent on foreign oil than any time in the last two decades. So now you’ve got a choice between a plant that reverses this progress or one that builds on it. You know, last night my opponent says he refuses to close the loophole that gives big oil companies $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies every year. Now, we’ve got a better plan where we keep investing in wind and solar and clean coal and the good jobs that come with them, where farmers and scientists harness new biofuels to power our cars and our trucks, where construction workers are retrofitting homes and factories so they waste less energy, and we can develop a hundred-year supply of natural gas that creates hundreds of thousands of jobs and, by the way, we can cut our oil imports in half by 2020. That will be good for our economy, that will be good for our environment, that will be good for Colorado, that will be good for America, that’s what we’re fighting for, that’s why I’m running for a second term as President of the United States.