No, quite to the contrary. We are laying our claim on the future, a future where america leads the world [cheers and applause] Governor Jindal this is not a cause any of us can resist. It is our destiny, it is our mission. As america goes, so goes the world. We are the light of freedom in a dark world and its time we started acting like it. I will not be intimidated from talking about the fact that radical islam is evil and it must be destroyed [cheers and applause] Governor Jindal containment is a strategy for losers. As general george s. Patton famously observed, americans play to win all the time. Americans dont play to lose. President obama has it wrong. Secretary clinton has it wrong. Our allies need to trust us, our enemies need to fear us. It is time we play to win again [cheers and applause] Governor Jindal as president , i will have four objectives. I will secure our borders i will replace obamacare with a Healthcare System that focuses on reducing costs and restoring freedom i will grow the private sector economy by shrinking the size, scope and reach of the federal government and i will rebuild americas defenses and restore our standing on the world stage [cheers and applause] Governor Jindal im not asking you to simply join my campaign. Im asking you to join a cause. If youre looking for a candidate who will politely manage americas descent into mediocrity, im not your man. But if you are chasing a dream looking for a land where the people are free and the opportunities are real, i am asking you to believe [cheers and applause] Governor Jindal my dad told me, as a young child, that americans can do anything. I believed him then, and i believe it now. I know in your heart, you believe it, too. I am asking you to believe again, believe in what we can do, believe in what america can do thank you, may god bless you may god bless the United States of america [cheers and applause] as of today, 19 men and women have announced theyre running for president in 2016. This past tuesday, june 30, new Jersey Governor Chris Christie became the 14th republican to enter the race. He gave remarks in livingston, new jersey, for half an hour. Mr. Christie thank you. Thank you. Thank you, new jersey. Thank you. Thank you to livingston. Lots of people have asked me over the course of the last week why here . Because everything started here for me. Everything started here for me. The confidence, the education the friends, the family, and the love that i always felt for and from this community when i decided to make this announcement, there was not any choice. I had to come home and livingstons home for me. [cheers and applause] i want to thank a dear friend of my moms and wonderful representative of this town for welcoming us here today. And i want to thank my friend some of you may be confused. It may be you thought she was being booed by her High School Classmates. She was not for reasons i will not explain. Her nickname in high school was the juice. Hence it is not a boo. It is the juice. I am here because this is where my family raised me. You have heard a lot about my mother and father. All of us know that for good and for bad, where we come from is from our parents. And so you heard sheila and lynn talk about my mom today. I am here and livingston because all those years ago, my mother and father became the first of either of their families to leave the city of newark and come here and make this home for us. My mom is not with us today but i feel her and my dad is here with me today and i am privileged to have him. We were right here when we were four years old in two years old and then our sister joined us a few years later. This is where we grew up. These are the fields we played on. These are the playgrounds we played on. This is the school we built our friends with and up until i left to share a room with very had a shared a room with todd the entire time you may was a smooth transition. My sister dawn and todd are his egg apart of today as anyone else. I they are both here and i love them. [applause] everyone thinks i am the politician in the family. We did a coin flip when i got married. I am the guy who ran but the politician just as good as me is the woman i met all those years ago at the university of delaware. From a family of 10 people, people say why arent you shy in a crowd and i say you should see the family and married into. My wife has been an indispensable part of everything i have done with my life over the last 30 years. She is largely responsible for the formation people that you see standing with her. Ever since i have been governor i have in happy to use the veto at home. So far, so good. I am glad they are here today and for andrew and sarah and patrick and bridget, i could not the prouder of four children than i am of them. I told you my parents moved to livingston to make this part of their fulfillment of their dream. Of their murder version of the american dream. They both lost their fathers at a young age. And were raised i extraordinarily strong women under really difficult circumstances. My dad, one of the best students in his High School Class admitted to Columbia University because his father passed away, he could not go. They did not have the money. He went to work and he got drafted into the army and came home and went to work at the breyers ice cream plant in newark, new jersey and decided after he met my mom that it was time for him to make more with his life and he went to school at night for six years while working at those jobs during the day to get his degree in accounting and my mother, one of the proudest pictures that she ever had was the one she called our first Family Picture. It was my mom and dad on the day he graduated from rutgers in june of 1962. The first person ever to get a College Degree and it was the first Family Picture because she was six months pregnant with me. The smiles on both their faces that day were indicative of not what they had accomplished but what they saw coming ahead of them. Their smiles were about the fact that they thought nothing was out of reach for them now. They had each other. They were building a family. They worked together, and with the help of both of those strong women, they gave them 5,000 each, probably all the money they had in the world to put a down payment on a house in this town to give their children a chance to take the dream they had started to build and to make it even bigger and even better. So im not only think about my mom and dad today, i think about my two grandmothers, women who raised children largely on their own, women who knew how to work hard and knew that hard work would deliver something for their children and i know that both of them are watching down today and part of today is the fulfillment of their dream, too. I am thinking about both of them. One of the things my mother always used to say all the time was if you work hard enough, you can be anything. She said god has given you so many gifts. If you just work hard enough you can be anything. And that story is proof, it is proof parents who came from nearly nothing except for that hard work. Parents who brought little to their marriage except for their love for each other and that hard work. And that hard work not only produced a great life for me and my brother and sister but think about how amazing this country is that one generation removed from the guy who was working on the floor of the plant at the breyers ice cream place, his son is the twoterm governor of the state where he was born and raised. [applause] that is not only what my parents have done for me but that is what new jersey has done for us. This place that represents the most ethnically diverse state in the country, the most densely populated state in the country we are all different and we are on top of each other like you are on top of each other in this gym. [laughter] and what has come from that is the absolute belief that not only can all achieve what we want to achieve because of the place we live and we cannot only do it together, we have no choice. This country needs to Work Together again, not against each other. When i became governor six years ago, we had a state that was an economic calamity, and 11 billion deficit. Estate that had the a state that no longer believed that any one person could make a difference in the lives of the people so we rolled up our sleeves and we went to work and we balance this budget and we refused to raise taxes on the people of this state for six years. We made the hard decisions that had to be made to improve our education system. We reformed tenure. We made the difficult decisions to reform pensions and Health Benefits and continue that fight today. We have stood together against each and every person, every cynic who said why are you wasting your time, this state is not governable. We proved not only can you governor the state you can lead it to a better day and that is what we have done together. And now we face a country that is not angry. When i hear the media say that our country is angry i know they are long wrong. I met people in every corner of america and they are not angry. Americans are not angry. Americans are filled with anxiety. Because they look to washington, d. C. And they see a government that not only does not work anymore, it does not even talk to each other. It does not pretend to try to work. We have a president who ignores the congress and the congress that ignores the president. We need a government that remembers you went there to work for us, not the other way around. [applause] both parties have failed our country. Both have stood in the corner and held their breath and waited to get their own way. Both parties have led us to believe that in america, a country that was built on compromise that somehow compromise is a dirty word. If washington and adams believed compromise is a dirty word, we would still be under the crown of england. And this dysfunction, this lack of leadership has led to an economy that is weak and has not recovered the way it should. It has led to an educational system that has the 27th in the industrialized world in math and 24th in science. It led us to weaker leadership around the world where our friends can no longer trust us and our adversaries do not fear us. This weakness and indecisiveness have sent a wave of anxiety through our country but im here to tell you that anxiety can be swept away by strong leadership and decisiveness to lead america again. We just need to have the courage to choose. We have need the courage to stand up. We have two coarsening have. American knows that new. It must start with this. We must tell each other the truth about the problems we have and the difficulty of the solution. If we tell each other the truth we recognize that will lead to growth and opportunity for every american in this country. What are those troops . Those truths, we have to acknowledge our government is not working anymore for us. We have to say it out loud and acknowledge it is the fault of our bickering leaders who no longer listen to us and no longer know that they are supposed to be serving us. We need to acknowledge that all of that anxiety and those failures are not the end, they are the beginning. The beginning of what we can do together. What we need to decide is that we can make a difference. That we can stand up and make a difference in this country. That is why i love the job i have. That is why i love my job as governor. Kids ask me all the time they ask me to questions, what is your favorite color, always. Second, they always asked me what is your best part of your job . And i tell them i wake up knowing i have an opportunity to do something great. I do not do something great every day. I am human but every morning i wake up with an opportunity to do something great. That is why this job is a great job and that is why president of the United States is an even greater job for a greater number of people. I have spent the last 13 years of my life as u. S. Attorney and governor of the state fighting for fairness and justice and opportunity for the people of the state of new jersey. That has not made me more wary it has make made me stronger and i am way to fight for the people of the United States of america. America is tired of handwringing and indecisiveness and weakness in the oval office. We need to have strength and decisionmaking and authority back in the oval office and that is why today i am proud to announce my candidacy for the republican nomination for president of the United States of america. [applause] and now as livingston and new jersey transits gaze to the turns its gaze to the rest of america today, what do we see and what do we have to confront . We need a campaign of ideas and hard truths and drill opportunity for the american people. We need to fix a broken entitlement system that is bankrupting our country. We have candidates who said we cannot confront this because if we do we will be lying and stealing from the american people. The lying and stealing has already happened. We have to get it back in and we can only do it by force. Way it to get our economy growing again at 4 or greater. We have to make this once again the country my mother and father told me it was. That it is as hard as you work, that is as high as you will rise. That is not the case anymore. We cannot look at our children and say that to them because we have an economy that is weak and does not present them with the same opportunities that mary pat and i were presented with in the mid1980s when we graduated from college. We did not worry about getting a job create we worried about picking which job was the best for us. We did not worry about if we were going to be successful. This country and its leadership does the same thing to my children and yours and i am ready to give it to you. [no audio] [applause] we need a tax system that is simplified and will put cpas that my dad out of this this. We need to get the government off the back of our people and businesses and encourage businesses to invest in america again. Invest in our country and people. And in a world that is as dangerous, as frightening as any time i have seen it in my lifetime, there is only one indispensable force for good in the world. It is a strong, unequivocal america that will leave the world and not be afraid to tell our friends we will be with unit matter what and to tell our adversaries there are limits to your conduct and america will enforce limits to that conduct. I heard the president say that the world respect america because of his leadership. This convinces me, this is the final confirmation that president obama lives in his of world, known in our world, and the fact is this. After seven years of a week and feckless Foreign Policy run by barack obama we had to turn it over to his second mate, hillary clinton. Leadership matters. It matters for our country and American Leadership matters for the world but if we are going to lead, we have to stop worrying about being loved and start caring about being respected again. Both at home and around the world. Im not running for president as a surrogate for elected prom king. I am not looking to be the most popular guy and tries to figure out what you want to hear, see it, and turn around and do something else. When i stand up on a stage like this in front of you there is one thing you will know for sure. I mean what i say and i say what i mean and that is what America Needs right now. Or whether it makes you cringe. Youre not going to have to wonder whether i can do it or not. In new jersey as governor, i stood up against economic calamity and unprecedented Natural Disaster. We have brought ourselves together. We have pushed back the economic calamity and we are recovering from that Natural Disaster and that is because we lead and Work Together to do it. As governor, i have proven that you can stand up and fight the most powerful special interests this state has to have an stand up and stop them but at the same time, reach across the out to our friends in the Democratic Party and say if you have a good idea, im willing to work with you because that is what our country needs. As governor, i never wavered from telling you the truth is i see it. And acting to make sure that you know that it is the truth is i believe it in my heart. You know, as a candidate for president , i want to promise you just a few things. First, a campaign without spin or pandering or focus group tested answers. You will get what i think whether you like it or not or whether it makes you cringe every once in a while or not. The campaign when i am asked that question, i am going to give the answer to the question that is asked, not the answer that my vertical consultants told me to give backstage