Remarks by the President in a Town Hall Discussion on Energy in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania
Gamesa Technology Corporation, Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania
2:04 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you so much. Everybody, please have a seat, have a seat.
Hello,
Fairless Hills! Hello, Gamesa! It is good to be here. I was here
three years ago. I was then a candidate -- how many folks were here at
the time? Anybody remember? (Applause.) We had a good visit. I
signed a blade, I think, while I was here. I didn’t have as much gray
hair back then. (Laughter.) You guys still look great. I’m a little
worn down.
It is great to be back, and I love visiting places
where people are actually making stuff, because that’s what America is
about. Everybody here, you are helping to build towers that are going
to stand 400 feet in the air and generate enough electricity to power
600 homes. And the blades alone are 140 feet long, so these aren’t your
father’s windmills. These are wind turbines. You guys are not messing
around. This is the future of American energy.
So I wanted to
come back partly because over the last two years since I’ve been
President, just as I promised when I was here as a candidate, I have
been promoting and boosting clean energy. I think it’s absolutely
critical for our future. And it’s also nice to be next to cool
products.
I think that what you do here is a glimpse of the
future, and it’s a future where America is less dependent on foreign
oil, more reliant on clean energy produced by workers like you. And I
know that this is -- this whole issue of energy is on the minds of a lot
of people right now, partly because you’re paying more at the pump.
Anybody notice that? You noticed that a little bit.
The fact is, for a lot of folks, money was already tight before gas
prices started climbing, especially for some families where the husband
or the wife had been out of work or you’ve had to get by with fewer
customers or hours on the job. Having high gas prices is just one more
added burden.
But I want everybody to remember, every time gases
go up, we see the same pattern. Washington gets all worked up, just
like clockwork. Republicans and Democrats both start making a lot of
speeches. Usually the Democrats blame the Republicans; the Republicans
blame the Democrats. Everybody is going in front of the cameras and
they’ve got some new three-point plan to promise two-dollar-a-gallon
gas. And then nothing happens. And then gas prices go down, and then
suddenly it’s not in the news anymore and everybody forgets about it
until the next time gas prices go back up again.
That’s what was
happening when I was running three years ago. You remember “Drill,
baby, drill”? That was because the economy was overheated, gas prices
were skyrocketing, and everybody made a lot of speeches but not much
happened. And I said then that we can’t afford to continue this kind of
being in shock when gas prices go up and then suddenly being in a
trance when things go back down again. We’ve got to have a sustained
energy policy that is consistent, that recognizes that there’s no magic
formula to driving gas prices down; it’s a steady improvement in terms
of how we use energy and where we get energy from -- that’s what’s going
to make a difference. That’s how we’re going to secure our energy
future.
So last week I laid out a vision of how we could do
this. It’s a plan that says we’re not going to play the usual
Washington politics that have prevented progress on energy for decades.
Instead, what we’re going to do is we’re going to take every good idea
out there. Whether you’re Republican or Democrat, whatever the idea.
From environmentalists. From oil men like T. Boone Pickens. I want to
have a comprehensive energy strategy that can help us move forward. And
that means we’ve got to pursue every breakthrough, every renewable
resource, every technology, every approach to change the way we produce
and use energy.
And through this plan, what we want to do is
promote all kinds of homegrown energy. That’s what’s going to help us
secure our energy future. That’s what’s going to help us win the
future.
Now, first of all, what I want to do is, in a decade, I
want us to have cut by one-third the amount of oil that we imported when
I was elected to this office. I want to cut our energy imports by a
third.
Now, understand why that’s so important, because when you
see what happens in the Middle East, and suddenly the world oil markets
get spooked, even if the supply is there, your gas prices are going to
go up. The less we import, the more control we have over what happens
at the pump.
Second, through sources like wind energy, produced
in part by your turbines, I want us to double the amount of electricity
that we draw from clean sources. I want us to double it. And that
means by 2035, 80 percent of our electricity will come from renewables
like wind and solar, as well as efficient natural gas, clean coal,
nuclear power. We can do that.
And by the way, that would make a
huge difference here at Gamesa. This is an approach that says we’re
not going to pick one energy source over another. What we do is we set a
target, an achievable goal, and then we give industry the flexibility
to achieve it. We say to the utilities, you’ve got to get this much
energy from renewable sources, and then wind is competing with solar is
competing with natural gas. And there’s a healthy competition out
there, and everybody starts getting better at what they do because
you’re producing more and you know you’ve got a reliable customer for
it.
So we’re cutting oil imports by a third. We’re going to get
80 percent of our electricity from clean sources. And if we follow
through on this, if we actually tackle this challenge, here’s what will
happen. Our economy will be less vulnerable to wild swings in oil
prices. Our nation will no longer be beholden to the countries that we
now rely on for oil imports. We won’t be sending billions of dollars a
day to the Middle East. We can potentially keep some of that invested
right here at home.
We’ll reduce the pollution that’s disrupting
our climate and threatening the planet that we leave for our children
and our grandchildren. We’ll become more energy independent. And we’ll
spark innovation and entrepreneurship across America. We will be more
likely to win the global competition for new jobs and new industries --
because I don’t know about you, I don’t want China to be the world’s
leading wind power manufacturer. I want the United States to be the
leading manufacturer of wind power. I want it made right here in the
U.S. of A. (Applause.)
Same thing goes with solar, same thing
goes -- whatever energy source, I want us to be the best. That’s how
we’ll win the future. But we’re going to have to out-innovate the
world. And this plant is a good example. For decades, this was part of
steel country. Thousands went to work in the old buildings that lined
these streets, forging the metal that built our trains and our ships and
our cars and our skyscrapers.
But you know the story. The economy changed. Those jobs vanished. A lot of empty factories started lining these same streets.
But
this company brought jobs back to these floors. Buildings that were
dark, they’re now humming again. We got more than 250 people on the job
at these plants and 800 workers across the state. And Gamesa has
partnered with Bucks County Community College to create a Green Jobs
Academy that serves as a pipeline for new workers as the company
expands. And there are other companies pursuing clean energy along
these streets as well.
This has made a difference in this
community. It’s made a difference for folks like Jim Bauer. Is Jim
around? Where’s Jim? There’s Jim right there. (Applause.) Hey, Jim!
See, I heard about Jim because he lost his job when the mills closed,
but then he’d be pretty soon working again in the shadow of where he
spent 25 years in the steel industry. Now he’s here.
And there
was a quote that we got from Jim. He said, “I was forced into
retirement” -- “after I was forced into retirement, nobody would hire me
for any kind of decent money. Then I saw an ad looking for
steelworkers to join Gamesa, and now I’m happy to contribute to
something that’s important.” (Applause.)
And that -- there are a
lot of folks out there like Jim who are hardworking, have great skills,
but maybe haven’t gotten a chance. And there’s no reason why they
can’t be working in a place that’s doing some important things.
But
times are still tough. A lot of people out there are still looking for
work. And I’ll be honest with you, not every manufacturing job that
used to be here from the steel companies are going to come back --
because if you go to a steel plant now these days, it may take 10
workers to produce what it used to take 100 workers to produce, just
because of automation and new technologies. But Jim’s story should give
us hope. It should give us some idea of the promise of clean energy
for our country.
Let me just say this one last thing and then
I want to take some questions. None of this is going to be easy. When
people -- when politicians tell you something’s going to be easy,
they’re not telling you the truth. If it was easy, somebody would have
already done it and taken credit for it, and had a photo op. Reducing
our dependence on oil, doubling the clean energy we use, helping to grow
our economy by securing our energy future -- that’s going to be a big
challenge. And it’s going to require effort. It’s going to require
ingenuity. It’s going to require us coming together. It’s going to
require us getting past some of the petty politics that we play
sometimes. But we can meet that challenge.
We’re not going to
always agree with each other on everything. We live in a big country.
We’ve got a robust democracy, and that’s fine. But we should agree on
some basic things. We should be able to agree on developing clean
energy and reducing our dependence on foreign oil. We should be able to
agree that we need to invest in things like our roads and our bridges
and our infrastructure -- because we used to have the best
infrastructure in the world, and we don’t right now; other countries
have gone past us. And if we were investing in our infrastructure we’d
be putting more people to work.
You know, I don’t expect
everybody to always agree with me. But coming here today, I was
reminded of what I said right here three years ago, back when it wasn’t
sure that I was going to win the election. I mean, you guys couldn’t
pronounce my name. (Laughter.) But here’s what I said. I said, “I am
not a perfect man and I will not be a perfect president. But I can
promise you this: I will always tell you where I stand. I will be
honest with you about the challenges we face and how we can solve these
problems. And I will take what I hear from you -- your voices, your
struggles, your hopes, your dreams -- that’s what I’m going to be
thinking about every single day when I’m in the White House.” And I
have kept that promise. (Applause.) I have kept that promise. I’m
thinking about you guys every single day when I’m in the White House.
And I’m going to keep pushing, and I’m going to keep fighting for you.
With
all that’s going on in the world, with all the challenges we’re facing,
that’s what I think about every single day when I wake up -- what
matters to you. I want to make sure everybody who wants a job can find
one; everybody can pay their bills; everybody can raise their kids and
give them a better life. And that’s what all of us should be thinking
about. Some of you may have heard the latest argument in Washington --
the fight over last year’s budget. Keep in mind, we’re not arguing
about this year’s budget, we’re arguing about last year’s budget. It
makes it tough to win the future when you haven’t passed the budget from
last year.
So I asked Congress to send me a budget that makes
some serious spending cuts but still invests in things like clean
energy; still invests in research; still invests in infrastructure;
still invests in education -- investments that are critical for us to be
able to compete with any country in the world. That’s what I asked
for. I asked for it several months ago.
Now, after weeks of
negotiations, we’ve now agreed to cut as much spending as the
Republicans in Congress originally asked for. I’ve got some Democrats
mad at me. But I said, you know what, let’s get past last year’s budget
and let’s focus on the future. So we’ve agreed to a compromise, but
somehow we still don’t have a deal, because some folks are trying to
inject politics in what should be a simple debate about how to pay our
bills. They’re stuffing all kinds of issues in there -- abortion and
the environment and health care. And, you know, there are times to have
those discussions, but that time is not now. Right now, we need to
just make sure that we pay our bills and that the government stays
open. And if we don’t reach common ground by Saturday, the federal
government shuts down. And some of you may not be that sympathetic.
You may say, well, let it shut down, what do I care? But here’s the
thing. When government shuts down, it means that that small business
owner who’s waiting to get a loan, suddenly nobody’s there to process
it. He may not get that loan and that business may not open. And
whoever he was planning to hire, suddenly he may not have that job that
he was counting on.
It may turn out that somebody who was trying
to get a mortgage can’t have their paperwork processed by the FHA and
now the person who was going to sell the house, what they were counting
on, they can’t get it.
Folks who were planning a vacation to
Yellowstone -- well, it turns out national parks, suddenly you’re
closed, you’re out of luck. You may have to try to figure out if you
can get your money back for that resort you were going to stay at.
I mean, these are things that affect ordinary families day in, day out,
and it affects our economy right at the time when our economy is
getting momentum. We had the best jobs report we had had in a very long
time this past Friday. But you know what? Companies don’t like
uncertainty and if they start seeing that suddenly we may have a
shutdown of our government, that could halt momentum right when we need
to build it up -- all because of politics.
I do not want to see
Washington politics stand in the way of America’s progress. At a time
when you’re struggling to pay your bills and meet your responsibilities,
the least we can do is meet our responsibilities to produce a budget.
That’s not too much to ask for. That’s what the American people expect
of us. That’s what they deserve. You want everybody to act like
adults, quit playing games, realize that it’s not just “my way or the
highway.” How many folks are married here? When was the last time you
just got your way? (Laughter.) That’s not how it works, right? He
lifted his wife’s hand up -- (laughter) -- you know, no.
I mean,
the fact is, is that you have to make compromises as a family. That’s
what we are, the American family. So Democrats and Republicans need to
get together, work through their differences, keep the government
running so we can focus on keeping this economy growing, focus on things
like clean energy, driving down gas prices. That’s our job. That’s
what people want to see -- results. You deserve no less than that.
So
this is a challenging time for America, and we’ve been through the
worst recession since I was -- before I was born. A lot of folks are
still hurting out there. But if we come together, if we listen to each
other, if we remember that we’re one nation, that we’re one people, then
I’m confident that we’re going to come out of this period stronger than
we were before.
And what makes me confident is seeing all of
you and seeing what I see all across America -- people who have drive
and who have optimism and who are decent and do right by their families
and do right by their communities. That’s what’s lifted us out of tough
times before. That’s what’s going to carry forward America into the
future.
So thank you, Gamesa, for the great work you’re doing.
And with that, let me take some questions. Appreciate you. Thank you.
Thank you. (Applause.)
All right. We’ve got these wonderful
volunteers who are -- have their mics and they’re going to come up so
that I can hear your question. This young man right here -- who had
their hand up right -- right here, this gentleman. Introduce yourself,
too.
Q Daniel Ream (ph), sir. In 2009, the Center for
American Progress sponsored the National Clean Energy Project, in which
they detailed the implementation of an efficient, high-voltage grid that
would extend from coast to coast. Now our particular product can only
apply to so many mountains, valleys, and regions before we run out of
space. It’s critical that this grid be established so we can continue
to grow these green-collar jobs and maintain this product within our
American shores. What’s the current level of appropriations being
provided for this particular endeavor, and how high a priority is it for
your current Cabinet?
THE PRESIDENT: That was a good
question there. (Laughter and applause.) I mean, is that how he talks
all the time? (Laughter.) Man. I better take off my jacket. All
right. (Laughter.) That was serious.
No, listen, it
actually was a great question. I think a lot of you guys are aware,
there are some places -- say, the Dakotas -- where it’s flat and you’ve
just got a lot of wind, but you may not have a lot of customers. And so
the question for wind power and solar power and a lot of these
renewable energy industries is if we’re producing the energy one place,
how do we get it to another place? And that’s why this whole concept of
a smart grid is really important. And a smart grid is just a fancy
name for a better electricity grid than what we’ve got right now.
Because the way it works right now, we’ve got this patchwork of all
these different electricity grids and connectors, and there’s all this
leakage and a bunch of it was created decades ago so it’s not
particularly efficient.
And so the idea of a smart grid is,
if you can hook up a national electricity grid that is state of the art
and it has switches and computer monitors that are able to help
regulate the flow of electricity to the places that need it when they
need it, then you can save huge amounts of electricity, which means that
your bills are lower. It means that we have to produce less energy per
household or per business, which means we’re sending less pollution
into the air, whatever form of energy we’re using. It means that
renewable energies like solar and wind now have an advantage because you
can get them from where they’re being created to where they need to
go. And because it’s more efficient, there’s less waste so you can
actually store wind energy even when it’s not windy, or solar energy
even when it’s not sunny. So this is a huge and important project.
It turns out that the challenge is not so much a money issue. When you
said appropriations, you know, the question was, does -- are we going
to -- is Congress going to put a lot of money into building this thing?
It turns out, actually, that you could probably get a lot of private
sector dollars to invest in a smart grid. The big challenge is actually
all these different zoning laws because people don’t want transmission
lines, et cetera, in their vicinity, and each state and each local
government has its own control about siting issues. And so you’ve got
this patchwork instead of one national concept.
So what
I’ve been trying to do -- and this wouldn’t cost a lot of money -- is
just to get governors, mayors, county officials, federal government all
to sit down and figure out, how can we get this done? How can we get
this done? And it may start just in certain sections of the country.
So you’d have a smart grid in, let’s say, the upper Midwest and then
you’d have another smart grid in the Northeast. And you kind of build
these bigger patchworks and then you kind of stitch them all together at
the end.
We should be able to get this done, but it’s
going to require some organization and it requires cooperation from each
of these different units of government than we’ve got right now. All
right? Okay. And if you want to be a TV commentator, you let me know.
(Laughter.)
All right. Who’s next? Who’s next? Gentleman right here.
Q How you doing, Mr. President?
THE PRESIDENT: I’m good.
Q My name is Jazz (ph). You were talking about the rise of gas
prices. Is there any way that -- talks of lowering the prices? I mean,
I know back in the ‘70s when we had this conflict, they were going from
-- our license plates, from odd to evens, days we could get gas. I
know we’re not at that stage right now, but they did lower the prices
after that. Is there a chance of the price being lowered again?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, let me go over what I said a little bit earlier.
Most of the reason the gas price spiked three years ago was demand for
oil increased. Then what happened was we had the terrible recession. A
lot of businesses closed, a lot of folks were out of work, folks were
driving fewer miles, so demand for oil goes down, prices went down. And
by the way, oil prices are worldwide prices, so you don’t just have
like a U.S. market for oil -- you’ve got a world market for oil.
Anything that happens anywhere in the world will lower the price.
So now the economy is picking up, which is a good thing. More folks
are finding jobs. Businesses are starting to hire again. And that’s
happening all around the world. So now you’re starting to see demand go
back up and the prices are going back up. You add on top of that
what’s happening in the Middle East and it makes folks nervous and so
these folks start saying, you know what, I’m going to bid a higher price
on oil, on a barrel of oil now, because I’m thinking it’s going to go
up a little further in case something happens on the world oil markets.
And that pushes prices up just a little bit more.
Now,
there are a couple of things that we can do. But I’m just going to be
honest with you, there’s not much we can do next week or two weeks from
now. What we can do is, for example, increase oil production here in
the United States. So we are out there -- here’s a little secret for
you. We actually have seen higher oil production here in the United
States than any time in our history. We are producing a lot of oil.
It’s just demand keeps on going up faster than production. But we can
still do more.
Now, we just had the Gulf crisis last summer
when everything was messed up. And so what I had to do was I had to
say, you know what, before we start drilling again out there, then I
want you guys to show me proof that you can actually do this safely and
when something goes wrong you can cap that thing so we’re not going
through six months of oil just spilling into the ocean and ruining
coastal communities and hurting fishermen and so forth. We now have a
situation where the safety rules have been improved and drilling is
beginning again in that region. But the drilling that’s taking place in
the Gulf now, that product doesn’t get to market right away.
We’re also saying, you know, let’s look in places like off the Atlantic
or in Alaska. If there are other places where we can do some offshore
drilling, we’ll do it. But here’s the thing about oil. We have about
2, maybe 3 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves; we use 25 percent
of the world’s oil. So think about it. Even if we doubled the amount
of oil that we produce, we’d still be short by a factor of five.
So we can’t just drill our way out of the problem. And that’s why the
second thing we can do is increase efficiency on cars and trucks, which
is where most of our oil is used. (Applause.) Now, I notice some folks
clapped, but I know some of these big guys, they’re all still driving
their big SUVs. You know, they got their big monster trucks and
everything. You’re one of them? Well, now, here’s my point. If you’re
complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting eight miles a
gallon -- (laughter) -- you may have a big family, but it’s probably
not that big. How many you have? Ten kids, you say? Ten kids?
(Laughter.) Well, you definitely need a hybrid van then. (Laughter.)
But here’s the thing is that last year, for the first time in 30 years,
we increased fuel-efficiency standards on cars and trucks. And we
didn’t do it, by the way, with a law. We got autoworkers, auto
companies, environmentalists -- everybody agreed to it. That’s going to
save us about 1.8 billion barrels of oil. But we can do more. The
more efficient our auto fleets are, the more efficient our truck fleets
are, the less people are using -- that lowers gas prices as well. So
that’s the second thing we can do.
The third thing we can
do is we can start looking at electric cars, and maybe natural gas cars,
so that we’re not just using petroleum to power our vehicles. That
would be, by the way, a huge boost for Gamesa. If you’ve got a much
better distribution network for electric cars -- right now, some of
these electrics, you should be able to just plug it in into your garage;
you basically just have a big socket. You plug it in at night, unplug
it, you’re driving it all day. You get home, you plug it back in, and
if you’ve got one of these smart boxes in your garage, the unused
electricity from your car actually goes back into your house. And so
you’re saving both ways.
But the problem is right now that
we don’t have a broad enough distribution network. The cost of advanced
batteries for cars is still a little bit too expensive, so we’re trying
to drive down the price. It’s like anything else, though; it’s the
same with your wind turbine, the same with wind energy -- the more you
make, the cheaper it gets, because the technology improves, you’re
creating more of them, you get economies of scale.
So
number one, increase oil production. But that’s not a short -- that’s
not a long -- a short-term solution, and it’s a not a long-term
solution, either; it will just -- it will help a little bit. Number
two, more efficient cars so we’re using our gas more effectively.
Number three, shifting to electric cars and other forms of
transportation so we don’t use oil as much.
None of that is
going to help you this week, though. So, like I said, if you’re
getting eight miles a gallon you may want to think about a trade-in.
You can get a great deal. I promise you, GM or Ford or Chrysler,
they’re going to be happy to give you a deal on something that gets you
better gas mileage.
All right. Young lady right here.
Q Mr. President, I want to thank you for going to Latin America a
couple weeks ago. And this is a great story where Ex-Im Bank and Gamesa
worked together to supply over 50 turbines to Honduras, for example.
THE PRESIDENT: Right.
Q If you could elaborate more on your National Export Initiative, I
think that that would be an amazing thing to talk about.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, that’s a good point. You guys are selling some of
your turbines overseas, partly because what’s called the Export-Import
Bank -- which is a government agency that helps businesses market to
overseas markets -- hooked up with Gamesa and saw -- discovered this way
where they could get into that market.
Now, one of the
ways that we got in trouble before the recession was we were borrowing a
lot of money to buy a lot of stuff from somebody else. Right? I mean,
basically, what happened was we ran up our credit cards, we took out
home equity loans, and we bought a lot of flat-screen TVs, and we bought
a lot of whatever you all buy. (Laughter.) I didn’t want to get
personal in terms of all the things that you might have purchased. But a
lot of it was made somewhere else. And that was great for China. That
was great for some of these other countries that are exporting to the
United States, but it wasn’t very good for U.S. industry.
The way countries succeed over the long term is by making stuff and
selling it to somebody else. (Applause.) So what -- my -- I set a
goal. I said I want to double our exports. I want to double our
exports over the next five years and we can do it. We’ve already
increased our exports by 18 percent. Now that’s a good start, but that
means we got another 80 percent to go. And that’s where using something
like the Export-Import Bank can be really important, because a lot of
these other countries give a big advantage to their exporters. They
help give them financing. They help them find markets. They negotiate
deals for them. And my attitude is, well, if they’re doing it for their
companies I want to make sure we’re doing it for our companies. And I
want to make sure that goods that we’re producing here in the United
States get sold other places.
We’ve got the best
technology. We’ve got the best workers in the world. But we are such a
big market that a lot of times we’ve been focused more internally than
thinking about how can we sell to other countries. And we can’t be
afraid of competition. We’ve got to go after it. All right?
Young lady right there. Yes, you.
Q Hi, my name is Singaza Bell (ph). Yes, my question is in light of
what you just said. What of corporate tax incentives and R&D tax
incentives that will make companies like Gamesa do their manufacturing
here? Because it’s one thing to have the knowledge base in the United
States, but we really need manufacturing back here.
THE
PRESIDENT: You’re right, and the reason that companies locate in
different places is complicated. A lot of it has to do with the fact
that labor costs may be lower in some of these other countries, but a
lot of it has to do with our tax code, which is kind of screwy.
On paper, we’ve got the highest tax -- one of the highest tax codes for
corporations in the world -- on paper. But here’s the catch, we have
so many loopholes that it turns out you’ve got a whole bunch of
companies who are paying no axes or barely paying taxes, or they keep
their money in offshore accounts and it doesn’t get reinvested back here
in the United States of America.
So this is one of the
reasons why I’ve said that I think it would make sense for us to reform
our tax code, simplify it, lower the rate for corporations, but
eliminate a bunch of the loopholes so that everybody is paying the same
and it’s fair.
Because what you pay in taxes should not
depend on how good your lawyer is, or how good your accountant is. If
you make a certain amount of money, that’s what you should pay. And I
think that same principle, by the way, we can apply to individuals as
well. So one of the things I’m interested in is looking at tax reform.
Ninety percent of you shouldn’t even have to probably file a return.
The way electronics works these days, you should be able to -- with
your W-2, it gets plugged in. It’s on a computer somewhere. Here’s
your refund. You sign something electronically. It gets done.
Most people don’t itemize. If you don’t itemize, sending in some
complicated return is just a waste of paperwork. And even if you do
itemize, most of you probably it’s your mortgage on your house --
interest payments on your mortgage and a couple other things. It
shouldn’t be some two-week ordeal.
And by the way, because
sometimes folks will say, well, you don’t have to do your taxes. Look,
it’s true, I don’t do my taxes anymore. I’ve got other stuff that I’ve
got to do. But it wasn’t that long ago when I did do my taxes. I
remember. It was terrible. (Laughter.) Just like I remember pumping
gas. I don’t pump gas anymore, but I remember what it was like when you
filled it up and it turned out you didn’t have as much money as you
thought.
So I think we can actually simplify it. But on
manufacturing, tax reform on the corporate side could make a
difference. The other thing, though, is in terms of encouraging
manufacturing, we’ve got to understand what our advantage is. See,
we’ll never compete in terms of low wages; there’s always going to be
someplace that has lower wages than we do. We’re a wealthy country.
So if a company just wants to make plastic toys, we’re just not going
to be able to keep up with that. But when it comes to high-end,
high-skilled jobs, those are the kind of manufacturing jobs we have to
go after. And that’s where research, innovation is so important.
That’s where on something like clean energy, making sure that there’s a
market for that clean energy is so important. That’s what’s going to
produce manufacturing jobs -- making sure we’ve got a good smart grid.
Those are the kinds of things that are going to make sure that we have
the high-end manufacturing here in our country.
And I just
want to introduce -- there’s a guy right here, this guy, I’m going to
embarrass him. His name is Ron Bloom. Ron is actually the guy who
helped us save the auto industry. He helped to design our program to
make sure that G.M. and Chrysler did not get liquidated and did not go
under. And by the way, I don’t know if you guys heard, a couple weeks
back G.M. said it was now going to hire back every single worker that
had been laid off. Every single worker that had been laid off.
(Applause.)
So Ron is now working to develop manufacturing
strategies for every industry around the country, and he’s doing great
work. And I’m sure he’s going to be talking to the folks here at Gamesa
and others in terms of finding ways that we can increase manufacturing
here in the United States all across the country.
All right, gentleman right here.
Q David Campbell (ph). My question is in regards to the ITC and the
PTC -- the investment tax credit and the production tax credit,
renewable energy. It’s somewhat known that the large energy developers
act somewhat volatile depending on the looming deadlines in some of the
provisions in those tax credits. And they have been known, and they’ve
been spoken on in the industry as being helpful. Can you just speak on
how your administration plans to support that or plans to continue to
support it because you already are?
THE PRESIDENT: We want
to make them permanent so that people aren’t looking every few years to
try to figure out is this investment going to be there for us.
(Applause.)
I want to kick-start this industry. I want to
make sure we’ve got good customers, and I want to make sure that there’s
the financing there so that we can meet that demand. And there’s no
reason why we can’t do both, but it does require us getting past some of
these political arguments.
I don’t understand why some folks
think that if you promote clean energy that somehow you’re some
pointy-headed, environmentalist type, but if you’re all about just
drilling and getting more oil, then you’re a tough guy.
If
oil is what you’ve got and it works for you, then there’s nothing wrong
with oil. But when you only have 2, 3 percent of the world’s oil
reserves, why wouldn’t you want to develop alternative sources of energy
that are cleaner and more efficient and that produce manufacturing jobs
like are being produced right here.
Sometimes people say,
well, what about coal? Look, coal -- we are the Saudi Arabia of coal.
We’ve got a whole lot of coal, but the fact of the matter is, coal -- if
we don’t have clean coal technologies to catch the particles that are
sent up in the air, it causes serious pollution that increases the rates
of asthma and is contributing to weather patterns changing. So we
should work on technologies to make coal cleaner. But that doesn’t mean
that it’s an either/or; it’s a both/and.
We can use oil,
use coal. We’re going to need those for a while. But let’s also
develop these new energies, these cleaner energies, that can really make
a difference. We’re going to need bipartisan support for that. That’s
what I’m hoping we’re going to be able to get.
All right. Gentleman right here.
Q Hi, Mr. President. First off, thank you very much on behalf of
everyone here for coming today. It really means a lot to us.
THE PRESIDENT: You bet.
Q My name is Alan Berchel (ph). I’m a Canadian. I just moved here
about a year ago. And my question for you today is in reference to the
Canadian tar sands. Now, we’ve heard you speak today about the
importance of manufacturing things domestically for the purpose of
exporting. We’ve heard you speak about the importance of domestic
energy security, as well the importance of out-performing China in terms
of the ability for us to manufacture wind turbines.
Now, I
would like to know how you balance your commitment to the environment
with domestic energy security, given that there has been recent domestic
dissent from the idea of importing Canadian oil, and as well, keeping
in mind that it does require energy in order to manufacture these
turbines -- if you do not import the Canadian tar sands oil, you are
opening the door to further investments by SunCor in Canada; as well
you’re essentially offering up this very vast and politically stable oil
-- energy resource to a country like China. I just want to know how
you’re balancing all these different pressures.
THE
PRESIDENT: Did you talk to this guy? (Laughter.) You know --
(laughter.) For those -- just to give background to folks, there are
these tar sands in Canada than can produce oil. There is talk about
building a pipeline into the United States to import that oil. I can’t
comment on the specifics of this because the State Department is going
through this complicated review process, and if it looks like I’m
putting my fingers on the scale before the science is done, then people
may question the merits of the decision later on. So I’m not going to
get into the details of it.
I will make this general point,
which is that, first of all, importing oil from countries that are
stable and friendly is a good thing. So, for example, some of you saw I
went down to Brazil a couple of weeks back. And I know people think I
was going there to see samba dancers or something; they play soccer. I
was going down there partly because Brazil is actually already doing a
really good job with biofuels. They’ve got some of the best cellulosic
ethanol -- this ethanol that’s not made with corn, but it’s made with
like sugar cane stalks.
So I think a third of their cars
already on the road run on biofuels. So I wanted to make sure that we
learn from them -- this goes to the point about another way that we can
lower gas prices. But they also just had these huge discoveries of oil
off their shores underwater, pretty deep down. And can we start working
with them using our outstanding technology -- some of the lessons we’ve
learned in the Gulf -- to create another regular source or supply of
oil.
Canada already is one our largest oil exporters, or
that’s -- we import from Canada. These tar sands, there are some
environmental questions about how destructive they are, potentially,
what are the dangers there, and we’ve got to examine all those
questions. It’s the same thing with natural gas here in Pennsylvania.
Everybody has been hearing about the whole fracking issue, right?
Now, natural gas is a clean, relatively clean energy. It’s a fossil
fuel, but it burns pretty clean. But we’ve got to make sure that as
we’re extracting it from the ground, that the chemicals that are being
used don’t leach into the water. Nobody is an environmentalist until
you get sick. And it turns out, well, gosh, why didn’t somebody tell me
that this might affect the water that we drink or the air that we
breathe, or what have you? So we’ve got to do some science there to
make sure that the natural gas that we have in this country, we’re
extracting in a safe way. The same thing is true when it comes to oil
that’s being piped in from Canada, or Alaska for that matter. We just
got to do these evaluations, and we’re always trying to do that based
on the science. All right?
Let me see. Let’s go right here in the glasses. Yes.
Q Hey, Mr. President. Welcome back.
THE PRESIDENT: Great to be back.
Q My children -- I have seven of my children and eight
grandchildren. I was just wondering, like, what are we going to do
about their education? Because we’re (inaudible) cutting this school,
we’re cutting five schools, six schools here and all. I mean, that’s
our future. If we’re cutting their heads off, then where are we going
to be in 30 or 40 years?
THE PRESIDENT: It’s a great
question. Can I just ask before I answer, though, is there some rule at
Gamesa that you got to have a whole bunch of kids? (Laughter.) I
mean, you got 10 over here, you got seven over here. Golly.
(Laughter.)
Look, the single most important determinant of
how we do as an economy is going to be how educated our workforce is.
That’s our biggest competitive advantage, is having workers who are
skilled. (Applause.) If we’ve got the best scientists, if we’ve got
the best engineers, if we’ve got the best mathematicians, if we’ve got
workers who know how to -- as they do here at Gamesa -- to use high-tech
equipment, that’s what’s going to be our advantage.
Like I
said, we’re not going to win the race just by driving our wages down,
because we’ll never win that race. I mean, China doesn’t even have the
lowest wages now. Some companies are now moving to the next country
that’s got lower wages than China, because China’s economy is starting
to grow. There’s always going to be some country out there with lower
wages. But we can out-educate anybody. (Applause.) And we used to
have -- we used to have the best education system in the world. We used
to have the number one percentage of college graduates in the world.
We don’t anymore. Our kids used to do the best on math and science
exams; now we’re like ninth, 12th, 21st. And that means that other
countries are going to pass us by.
This is why even in these
tough budget times, where we need to cut the things that we don’t need,
we can’t stop investing in education. We can’t stop investing in
education. (Applause.) I put forward my budget proposal for next year,
and almost every department I cut. One department I didn’t cut --
education. I did not cut education, I actually increased our investment
in education. (Applause.)
Now, money is not the only thing
that makes a good school, so we’ve also got to reform our schools. Some
schools are not structured to make sure kids learn. There are schools
out there where they’ve got enough money, but for whatever reason --
most of the time they’re in poor neighborhoods, but part of it is also
that the teachers, the principals, et cetera, they’re not working
together in as effective a way with the parents and the community to
make sure that there are high expectations for the kids and everybody is
performing.
So what we’ve said is, yes, we’re going to put more
money in the schools, but we’re also going to reform the schools. And
part of the money that we’ve done is -- what we’ve done is we’ve carved
out some of this money and we’ve said, instead of it just going to every
school district based on some formula, we want you to compete for it.
Come up with a plan explaining how you’re going to reform our education
system; how you’re going to make sure there are high standards for every
kid; how you’re going to get the best teachers; how you’re going to
train and retain those teachers; how you’re going to make sure that the
schools are accountable. And if you do those things, we’re going to
give you a little bit of extra money. And it gives an incentive for
every state and every school district to start looking at what they’re
doing to see if they’re using the best practices possible to educate our
kids. So that’s on the K through 12 level.
We also have to
focus on community colleges, because that’s -- it’s not just enough to
have kids getting good educations. We have to have adults who are
constantly retraining. I mean, how many here -- how many folks here who
are working at Gamesa took some sort of training class at a community
college that helped them along the way? Anybody? Look at that.
Right? So we’ve got a decent number of folks who, maybe you’ve got a
career change; maybe your old skills are a little obsolete and you need
to upgrade them. Well, you’ve got to be able to also get a good
education. So that’s why we’re putting more money into community
colleges as well as four-year colleges. And what we’ve done is we’ve
expanded the grant programs, the Pell Grant, the student loan programs,
so that more people can afford to go to college without getting huge
debt -- (applause) -- especially if you’re working and if you’ve already
got a family, you can’t afford to be taking out $50,000 worth of debt.
So we want to give you more help.
Now, this is a good
place to just talk, again, about this budget debate, because you’re
going to be hearing a lot about this. Right now we’re debating last
year’s budget and we may have a government shutdown, and then we’re
going to have to debate next year’s budget. All of us think that the
government should live within its means. We all believe that. You do
it in your families. Government should have to do the same thing. And
there is some waste in government.
And so we’ve been
cutting in a whole bunch of areas, and we’re consolidating some agencies
and earmarks that are not necessary and we’re looking at the Pentagon
-- how do we make our defense spending smarter and better? And so we’re
going to be doing a lot of consolidation and cuts, but one thing we
can’t do is stop investing in education, in research, in infrastructure,
in things like a smart grid. Those are the things that are going to
make us competitive over the long term.
So if you see me
getting in some arguments in Washington, I want you to be clear. Don’t
believe that somehow the argument is about whether we should cut or
not. I’ve already said we’ve got to cut spending. I just want to make
sure we’re cutting the right things. Don’t protect things we don’t need
and get rid of things that we do. That’s my basic attitude.
(Applause.)
All right. I have time for one more question, and I’ll call on that young lady back there.
Q Mr. President, given that energy efficiency is the cleanest,
safest, cheapest, and most labor-intensive energy resource, what else --
what more can the federal government do that is revenue neutral to
support the growth of the energy efficiency industry?
THE
PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, I want you to know that you are
absolutely right. The first thing we can do to improve our economy and
our environment at the same time -- and can actually produce a lot of
jobs -- is to make everything we do more efficient. That’s sort of the
low-hanging fruit. We use huge amounts of energy because our buildings
aren’t well insulated, or the lighting that we use is old-fashioned, or
the heating -- the HVAC systems, the heating and cooling systems, are
inefficient. So what we’ve said is, why not provide incentives to both
businesses and homeowners to make your home or your business more energy
efficient, because you’ll get the money back. It will pay for itself,
because your electricity bills will go down.
But the only
problem is, a lot of folks, they need a little bit of money up front to
get started. I mean, I’ll bet a lot of folks here -- anybody recently
reinsulated their house or put in new windows or something? Gentleman
right here. And how long ago did you do it? A few months ago? Are you
already seeing a drop in your electricity bill? You are, right?
So -- but you had those up-front costs that you had to deal with.
Right? And so the question is, you may not have initially the couple
thousand bucks out of pocket to be able to do it. Now, this guy looks
like he’s pretty handy, so he might have done it himself, right? But I
would have gotten a nail in my thumb or something, because I’m
challenged in those ways. So I might have had to hire somebody.
But the point though is, is that that money up front -- if we can give
you a tax break to do it initially, you’re going to get that money
back. And if you’re not somebody who can do it yourself, you’re going
to hire somebody. And that now is creating a job in a whole bunch of
new industries for people who are doing energy efficiency.
So I already mentioned how we’re trying to provide incentives for
cleaner cars and more energy-efficient transportation sectors. I think
the next big challenge are commercial buildings and homeowners, giving
them incentives to make these investments. It’s a win-win situation for
everybody. (Applause.)
All right, well, listen, Gamesa,
it was wonderful to be with all of you. I’m proud of what you’re
doing. As I said before, just in closing, we’ve gone through a very
tough couple of years. And I’m not going to guarantee standing here
that suddenly every single challenge we have is going to go away
overnight. And if somebody promises you that, they’re not telling the
truth.
Gas prices, they’re going to still fluctuate until
we can start making these broader changes. And that’s going to take a
couple of years to have serious effect. Not everybody is going to be
able to remodel or insulate their homes right away. But slowly we can
get more and more homes and more and more buildings doing it.
If we get a clean energy standard, then Gamesa is going to have more
customers. It’s not going to immediately transform the wind industry,
but it’s going to make it that much stronger. And I’ll bet that the
leaders of your company will start hiring some more people because there
will be greater demand.
And day by day, week by week, year
by year, we slowly make more and more progress. On education, we’re
not going to transform all the schools overnight. Too many kids are
going to be dropping out. Too many kids are going to be ranking too low
on international standards on math and science. But if we improve
those schools each year, then slowly but surely our whole workforce gets
better.
We’re not going to eliminate the debt that’s built
up overnight. But if each year we’re making good choices, we’re
investing in those things that we need, not investing in those things
that we don’t, then the debt will come down. That’s how progress is
made.
In our own individual lives, whether it’s trying to
build a career or raise your kids or getting exercise, it starts a step
at a time. And then slowly you make progress. And then a year, two
years, five years later you look back and you said, you know what, I’m
in a better place now. The country is the same way.
So
we’ve got to have a vision for how we’re going to win the future. We’ve
got to be persistent about it. We’ve got to be steady about it. But
we have to also have confidence. America has always been able to make
the changes that it needs to. And I have every bit of confidence we’re
going to be able to do that again this time out. And we’re going to do
it partly because of the great workers at places like Gamesa.
So thank you very much, everybody. God bless you. God bless you. (Applause.)
'「어학 외국어」 > Barack Obama' 카테고리의 다른 글
West Wing Week: 4/15/11 or "Open for Business" (0) | 2011.04.16 |
---|---|
Weekly Address: To Win the Future, America Must Win the Global Competition in Education (0) | 2011.04.16 |
President Obama on a Historic Day in Egypt (0) | 2011.02.14 |
Kennedy vs. Nixon: The fourth 1960 presidential debate (0) | 2010.05.21 |
클린턴 대통령 취임사 (0) | 2010.04.23 |