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Obama Speaks on State of U.S Economy
- By Williams Ekanem
- Published July 12th, 2010
- Washington File
- Unrated
PRESIDENT Barack Obama last week commented on the state of the United States economy, saying that the country is not there yet and still has a long way to go.
But what is absolutely clear, according to him 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.”
The president who was addressing Smith Electric Vehicles workers in Kansas City, Missouri said, the country has gone through as bad an economic situation as there has never been since the Great Depression, attributing it to 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,he said 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.
According to the president, “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.”
Admitting that government doesn’t have all the answers, he pointed out that 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.
Giving practical examples of how this has worked out, he said that “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.”
But what is absolutely clear, according to him 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.”
The president who was addressing Smith Electric Vehicles workers in Kansas City, Missouri said, the country has gone through as bad an economic situation as there has never been since the Great Depression, attributing it to 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,he said 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.
According to the president, “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.”
Admitting that government doesn’t have all the answers, he pointed out that 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.
Giving practical examples of how this has worked out, he said that “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.”
