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Creating a 'Green Impact Zone'
Poziom:
Temat: Środowisko
(applause)
President Obama:
You don't need to do that.
It's good to see you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Everybody --
everybody have a seat.
Usually they announce me
with some fancy thing,
and I think I messed up
-- I just walked out here.
(laughter)
So I hope you didn't mind.
But on the way out, if you want,
we can play the Ruffles and
Flourishes and all that.
I want to, before I start,
acknowledge some people
who have just done a
wonderful job for this area,
but also a wonderful
job for the country.
First of all, one of the best
governors that we've got in the
United States of America,
Governor Jay Nixon.
(applause)
One of my -- not just my
favorite senators but one of
my favorite people and a great
friend of mine who is fighting
every day for the
people of Missouri,
Senator Claire McCaskill.
(applause)
We've got two outstanding
members of Congress,
one from this side and
one from that side --
Congressman Emanuel Cleaver --
(applause)
-- and Congressman Dennis Moore.
(applause)
And finally, I just want to
acknowledge all the wonderful
people at Smith Electric
Vehicles and their energetic
and outstanding staff.
It is outstanding to be here,
and I'm not going to take
a long time.
I just want to spend some time
shaking hands and thanking you
for the great work
that you've done.
I just had a chance to get
a tour and saw some of the
battery-powered trucks
that you're manufacturing.
I had a chance to talk to some
of the folks who build them.
But the reason I'm here today
is because, at this plant,
you're doing more than just
building new vehicles.
You are helping to fight our
way through a vicious recession
and you are building the
economy of America's future.
Now, it's not easy.
We've gone through as bad a
economic situation as we've
had since the Great Depression.
And this recession was a
culmination of a decade of
irresponsibility -- a decade
that felt like a sledgehammer
hitting middle-class families.
For the better part of 10 years,
people have faced stagnant
incomes, skyrocketing
health care costs,
skyrocketing tuition costs, and
declining economic security.
And this all came to a head in
a massive financial crisis that
sent our economy into a freefall
and cost 8 million American
jobs, including many
in this community.
So it was in the middle of this
crisis that my administration
walked through the door, and
we had to make some difficult
decisions at a moment
of maximum peril,
to avoid a Great Depression, to
make sure that we didn't have a
complete meltdown in
our financial system.
It was a moment when the markets
were in turmoil and we were
losing 750,000 jobs every month.
Some of the decisions we made
weren't popular at the time
-- and some of them may
still be unpopular today.
But we made those
decisions because we
had to stop that freefall.
And because we made
those hard choices,
our economy is in a different
place today than it was just
a year ago.
One of those decisions was to
provide critical funding to
promising, innovative businesses
like Smith Electric Vehicles.
And because we did, there is a
thriving enterprise here instead
of an empty, darkened warehouse.
Because of the grant that
went to this company,
we can hear the sounds of
machines humming and people
doing their work, instead of
just the ghostly silence of an
emptied-out building and the
memory of workers who were
laid off a long time ago.
And we made that kind
of decision all across
America last year.
And we were guided by a simple
idea: Government doesn't have
all the answers.
Ultimately, government
doesn't create all the jobs.
Government can't guarantee
growth by itself.
But what government can do
is lay the foundation for
small businesses to
expand and to thrive,
for entrepreneurs to open up
shop and test out new products,
for workers to get the
training that they need,
and for families to achieve some
measure of economic security.
And that role is
especially important
in tough economic times.
And that's why, when my
administration began,
we immediately cut
taxes -- that's right.
You wouldn't know it
from listening to folks,
but we cut taxes for working
families and for small business
owners all across American to
help them weather the storm.
Through our small
business loans,
and our focus on
research and development,
and our investment in high-tech,
fast-growing sectors like clean
energy, we're helping to speed
our recovery by harnessing the
talent and the drive and
the innovative spirit of
the American people.
So our goal has never been
to create another government
program, our goal has
been to spur growth in
the private sector.
For example, right
here at Smith,
you've recently passed a
milestone -- hiring a 50th
employee -- and I know you're
on the way to hire 50 more.
And we're seeing similar
things all across America,
with incentives and investments
that are creating wind turbines
and solar panels.
We're seeing investments in
energy-efficient appliances and
home-building materials, and in
advanced battery technologies
and clean energy vehicles.
So just give you a couple
examples, just last week,
Abound Manufacturing in Colorado
received backing for two plants
to produce solar panels.
This is going to create
2,000 construction jobs
and 1,500 permanent jobs.
One of the plants is actually
taking over what's now an empty
Chrysler supplier factory.
Another company,
called Abengoa Solar,
is now planning to build one of
the world's largest solar plants
right here in the United States.
And when it's finished, this
facility will be the first
large-scale solar plant in the
United States that can actually
store energy that it creates
for later use -- even at night.
All told, we expect energy
investments alone to generate
700,000 jobs over
the next few years.
And this is not just going to
boost our economy in the short
term; this is going to lay
a platform for the future.
It's going to create
opportunities year after
year after year, decade
after decade after decade,
as companies like Smith, that
start small, begin to expand.
And I was just
talking to your CEO,
and he says he wants to open
up 20 of these all across the
country, so that in each
region you're able to service
-- Smith is able to
service its customers,
and they're going to have a
reliable sense that Smith
is always going to
be there for them,
making sure that
customer satisfaction
and performance is high.
I'll give you another example.
Just a few years ago, America
had the capacity to build only
about 2 percent of the world's
advanced batteries for electric
and hybrid vehicles like Smith's
-- 2 percent, that was it.
We account for 25 percent of the
world's economy and we were only
making 2 percent of the
world's advanced batteries.
But thanks to our new focus
on clean energy and the work
that's taking place in
plants like this one,
we could have as much as 40
percent of the world's market
by 2015 -- five years.
That means jobs.
But that also means we're going
to have an expertise in a sector
that's just going to keep on
growing all around the world
for years to come.
So all these efforts
taken together are
making a difference.
A year and a half ago, our
economy was shrinking at
6 percent a year;
now it's growing.
The economy was bleeding jobs.
We've now created private sector
jobs, added private sector jobs,
for six consecutive months.
Now, obviously the progress
we've made isn't nearly enough
to undo all the damage that
was done as a consequence of
the economic crisis.
There are still five unemployed
workers for every vacancy.
There's still too many empty
storefronts on Main Street
all across America.
And I've said since I took
office that my administration
will not rest until every
American who is able and
ready and willing to
work can find a job,
and a job that pays a decent
wage and has decent benefits
to support a family.
We're not there yet.
We've got a long way to go.
But what is absolutely
clear is we're moving in
the right direction.
We are headed in
the right direction.
And that's -- the surest way out
of this storm is to go forward,
not to go backwards.
There are some people who argue
that we should abandon some of
these efforts -- some people who
make the political calculation
that it's better to just say
no to everything than to lend
a hand to clean up the
mess that we've been in.
But my answer to those who don't
have confidence in our future,
who want to stop -- my answer is
come right here to Kansas City.
Come see what's going
on at Smith Electric.
I think they're going to be
hard-pressed to tell you that
you're not better off than you
would be if we hadn't made the
investments in this plant.
For the naysayers, they ought to
travel all across America and
meet the people that I've met at
places like Navistar in Indiana,
where folks are being hired
to build new electric trucks;
or Siemens Wind Power in Iowa,
where they're making wind
turbines in a factory that used
to be empty just like this one;
or Celgard, which is a battery
technology company in North
Carolina that hired more
than 50 people because of the
investments we made; or Poet
Biorefinery here in Missouri
that's putting people to work
harvesting homegrown energy.
While they're at it, they
ought to talk to all the small
business owners who've gotten
tax breaks to pay for their
health plans and new SBA loans
to expand or keep their doors
open -- and that includes tens
of millions of dollars in loans
for companies right
here in Kansas City.
Or they ought to talk to the
crews that are rebuilding all
the highways and laying tracks
for new rail lines -- including
road projects that are
putting hundreds of people
to work in this area.
They ought to talk to the
scientists who are toiling
day and night to develop the
technologies and the cures
with the potential to improve
our economy and our health and
our well-being.
And they might want to talk to
the teachers who didn't get laid
off because of the budget help
that we gave the state of
Missouri -- who are then going
to be teaching our kids and
they're being incentivized to
reform how they do business so
we've got the best education
system in the world and we've
got the highest number of folks
who are going to community
colleges or four-year colleges
than anyplace in the world.
That's how we're going to
take charge of our destiny.
That's how we create jobs
and create lasting growth.
That's how we ensure that
America doesn't just limp along,
maybe recover to
where we were before,
but instead that we're
prospering -- that
this nation leads the
industries of the future.
I mean, this has been a
difficult time for America
right now: two years
of brutal recession,
a decade of economic insecurity.
And there are going to
be some hard days ahead.
That's the truth.
It's going to take a while
for us to dig ourselves out
of this hole.
But what you are proving here
-- each and every one of you
who work here at Smith
Electric -- is the promise
of a brighter future.
What you're proving is that if
we hold fast to that spirit of
entrepreneurship and innovation
that's always defined America,
we're not just going to emerge
from this period of turmoil,
we're going to emerge
stronger than we were before.
You're proving that as long
as we keep on moving forward,
nobody can stop us.
And for that I
want to thank you.
You are setting a model for
what we need to be doing all
across the country.
So congratulations.
Thank you very much.
(applause)
