Sen. Barack Obama Speaks at Campaign Event in Dunedin, Florida

Unlike Senator McCain, it didn't take a crisis on Wall Street for me to understand that folks are hurting out on Main Street.

It was two years ago that I introduced legislation to stop mortgage transactions that promoted fraud, risk or abuse. It was one year ago that I called on our Treasury Secretary and our Fed Chairman to bring every stakeholder together and find a solution to the subprime mortgage meltdown before it got worse. In March, when John McCain was saying "I'm always for less regulation," I called for a new, 21st century regulatory framework to restore accountability, transparency, and trust in our financial markets.

I believe that our free market has been the engine of America's great progress. It's a market that has created a prosperity that is the envy of the world, and rewarded the innovators and risk-takers who have made America a beacon of science, and technology, and discovery. But the American economy has worked in large part because we have guided the market's invisible hand with a higher principle -- that America prospers when all Americans can prosper.

That's the change we need right now. And that's the kind of change I'll bring to Washington when I'm President of the United States of America.

Change means a tax code that doesn't reward the lobbyists who wrote it, but the American workers and small businesses who deserve it. I will stop giving tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America. I will eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses and start-ups -- that's how we'll grow our economy and create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow.

I will cut taxes -- cut taxes -- for 95% of all working families. My opponent doesn't want you to know this, but under my plan, tax rates will actually be less than they were under Ronald Reagan. If you make less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increase one single dime. In fact, I offer three times the tax relief for middle-class families as Senator McCain does -- because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle-class.