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Investing in Clean Energy Manufacturing
Poziom:
Temat: Środowisko
The President:
Thank you very much.
It is wonderful to
be at ZBB Energy.
And thanks for your hospitality,
and thanks for helping to build
a future.
I've got a couple of people
I want to acknowledge.
First of all, your wonderful
Governor and First Lady,
Jim and Jessica Doyle are here.
Please give them a
big round of applause.
(applause)
We've got somebody who is
fighting on behalf of Wisconsin
families each and every day -- Russ Feingold,
your wonderful U.S. senator.
(applause)
A great friend and somebody who
has been really doing great work
over her first couple
of years in Congress --
Congresswoman Gwen Moore.
Please give her a big
round of applause.
(applause)
And thank you, Eric, for the
wonderful tour that you provided to us.
Please give Eric Apfelbach
a big round of applause --
CEO of ZBB.
(applause)
It is great to be here.
I just had a chance to see some
of the batteries that you're
manufacturing and talk to a few
of the men and women who are
building them.
And the reason I'm here today
is because at this plant you're
doing more than just making
high-tech batteries.
You're pointing the country
towards a brighter economic future.
Now, that's not easy.
We've been through a
terrible recession --
the worst that we've seen
since the Great Depression.
And this recession was the
culmination of a decade that
fell like a sledgehammer
on middle-class families.
For the better part of 10 years,
people were seeing stagnant
incomes and sluggish growth and
skyrocketing health care costs
and skyrocketing tuition bills,
and people were feeling less
secure economically.
And few parts of the economy
were hit harder than manufacturing.
Over the last 10 years, the
number of people working in
manufacturing shrank by a third.
And that left
millions of skilled,
hardworking Americans
sitting idle,
just like the plants
were sitting idle.
That was before
the recession hit.
Obviously once the
recession took hold,
millions more were struggling in
ways that they never imagined.
And there's nobody here who
hasn't been touched in some way
by this recession.
And certainly a state like
Wisconsin or my home state of
Illinois can tell a lot of
stories about how badly hit
manufacturing was,
particularly in the Midwest.
Now, there's some who suggest
this decline is inevitable.
But I don't see it that way -- and I know neither do you.
Yes, times are tough.
But we've been through
tough times before.
And we've made it through
because we are resilient --
Americans are resilient.
We don't give in to pessimism;
we don't give in to cynicism.
We fight for our future.
We work to shape our own
destiny as a country.
And that's what we've been
trying to do since I took office.
We've been fighting
on all fronts --
inch by inch, foot by
foot, mile by mile --
to get this country
moving forward again,
and going after every single job
we can create right here in the
United States of America.
So we're investing in 21st
century infrastructure --
roads and bridges,
faster Internet access,
high-speed railroads -- projects that will lead to hundreds of
thousands of private sector jobs,
but will also lay the groundwork so that our kids and our
grandkids can keep prospering.
We've cut taxes for small
businesses that hire unemployed workers.
In fact, I've signed seven other
small business tax cuts so that
entrepreneurs can help expand
and buy new equipment and add
more employees.
We've taken emergency steps to
prevent layoffs of hundreds of
thousands of teachers and
firefighters and police
officers, and other critical
public servants in our communities.
And I think that Governor Doyle
will testify that we have made
progress in part because
everybody has pulled together.
There was a great danger of even
greater layoffs all across this
state for vital services that
would affect our kids and our families.
These folks would have otherwise
lost their jobs because of state
and local budget cuts.
And at the same time what
we've been trying to do --
and that's why
I'm here at ZBB --
is to jumpstart a homegrown,
clean energy industry --
building on the good work of
your governor and others in this state.
That's why I'm here today.
Because of the steps we've taken
to strengthen the economy,
ZBB received a loan that's
helping to fund an expansion of
your operations.
Already, it's allowed ZBB to
retain nearly a dozen workers.
And over time, the company
expects to hire about 80 new workers.
This is leading to new
business for your suppliers,
including MGS Plastics and other
manufacturer here in Wisconsin.
And ZBB is also planning to
take advantage of a special tax
credit to build another factory
in southeastern Wisconsin,
so we can create even more
jobs and more opportunity.
And Eric's confident that you
can expand because you're seeing
rising demand for
advanced batteries.
And all this is part of steps
we've taken in clean energy --
steps that have led to jobs
manufacturing wind turbines and
solar panels, building hybrid
and electric vehicles,
modernizing our electric grid
so that we have more sources of
renewable energy but we can
also use it more effectively.
We expect our commitment to
clean energy to lead to more
than 800,000 jobs by 2012.
And that's not just creating
work in the short term,
that's going to help lay the
foundation for lasting economic growth.
I just want everybody
to understand --
just a few years ago, American
businesses could only make 2% of
the world's advanced batteries
for hybrid and electric vehicles -- 2%.
In just a few years, we'll
have up to 40% of the world's capacity.
Here at ZBB, you're building
batteries to store electricity
from solar cells
and wind turbines.
And you've been able to export
batteries around the globe,
and that's helping
lead this new industry.
For years, we've heard about
manufacturing jobs disappearing overseas.
Well, companies like this are
showing us how manufacturing can
come back right here in the
United States of America,
right back here to Wisconsin.
(applause)
Now, obviously, we've got
a lot more work to do.
The damage that was done by
this recession was enormous.
Eight million people lost their job; 750,000 lost jobs the month
I was sworn into office; 3 million had lost their jobs by
the time we took office, and several more million in those
first few months of 2009.
So too many of our family
members and our friends and our
neighbors are still having
a tough time finding work.
And some of them have been
out of work a long time.
And I've said before
and I'll say it again,
my administration will not rest
till every American who is
willing to work can find a job,
and a job that pays decent wages
and decent benefits
to support a family.
But what's clear is that we're
headed in the right direction.
A year and a half ago, this
economy was shrinking rapidly.
The economy is now growing.
A year and a half ago, we were
losing jobs every month in the
private sector.
We've now added private sector
jobs for seven months in a row.
And that means the worst mistake
we could make is to go back to
doing what we were doing that
got us into the mess that we were in.
We can't turn back.
We've got to keep going forward.
We've got to keep going forward.
(applause)
Now, I'll be honest with you,
there's going to be a big debate
about where we go.
There are folks in Washington
right now who think we should
abandon our efforts to
support clean energy.
They've made the political
calculation that it's better to
stand on the sidelines than
work as a team to help American
businesses and American workers.
So they said no to the small
business tax cuts I talked about.
They said no to rebuilding
infrastructure.
And they said no to
clean energy projects.
They even voted against getting
rid of tax breaks for shipping
jobs overseas so we could give
those tax breaks to companies
that are investing
right here in Wisconsin.
And my answer to people who have
playing politics the past year
and a half is, they
should come to this plant.
They should go to any of the
dozen new battery factories,
or the new electrical
vehicle manufacturers,
or the new wind turbine makers,
or the solar plants that are
popping up all
over this country,
and they should have to explain
why they think these clean
energy jobs are better off being
made in Germany or China or
Spain, instead of right
here in the United States.
See, when folks lift up the
hoods on the cars of the future,
I want them to see engines
stamped "Made in America."
When new batteries to store
solar power come off the line,
I want to see printed on the
side, "Made in America."
When new technologies are
developed and new industries are
formed, I want them made
right here in America.
That's what we're fighting for.
That's what this is about.
(applause)
So, ZBB, you're part
of that process.
You guys are at
the cutting edge.
You're how we're going to
strengthen this economy.
These have been a couple of
very hard years for America.
And we're not completely
out of the woods yet.
There are going to be some
more tough days ahead.
It would be a mistake
to pretend otherwise.
But we are headed in
the right direction.
You're pointing us in
the right direction.
And I am confident
about our future,
because of what I have seen at
this plant and what I see when I
talk to workers like all of you,
what I've seen all across this country.
When the chips are down, it's
always a mistake to bet against
the American worker.
It's a mistake to bet
against American businesses.
It's a mistake to bet
against the American people.
This is the home to
the most skilled,
hardworking people on Earth.
There's nothing we cannot
achieve when we set our minds to it.
All we've got to do is harness
the potential that's always been
central to our success.
That's not just how we're going
to come through the storms we've
been in recently.
That's how we're going to emerge
even stronger than before.
So I want to say
thank you to Eric.
I want to thank
ZBB for hosting us.
More importantly, I want to
thank all of you for setting a
model for how we're going to
create the kind of lasting
economy that's going to be good
not just for this generation,
but for the next generation.
Thank you very much, everybody.
God bless you.
God bless America.
Thank you.
(applause)
