PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:

Look, you just look at the evidence here in Elkhart, as you mentioned in the introduction. When I took office, this was the first city I came to.

And unemployment about a month after I took office, a month-and-a-half after I took office, was almost 20 percent. One out of 10 people were behind on their mortgage or in foreclosure. Today, the unemployment rate is around 4 percent. It's only about one in 30 people who are behind on their mortgage.

Now, the R.V. industry, which is central to Elkhart, is on track to break records in terms of sales. And so that doesn't mean that folks aren't struggling in some circumstances. And one of the things that I have emphasized is that there are some long-term trends in the economy that we have to tackle, in terms of wages not going up as fast as they used to, some big costs, like college costs or health care costs, that are still a challenge, people still worrying about retirement.

And so we're going to have to make sure that we make some good decisions going forward. But the notion that somehow America is in decline is just not borne out by the facts.