And I had a chance to see this recently.  I went over to Parkville Middle School in Maryland, where engineering is now the most popular subject, mainly thanks to some outstanding teachers who have inspired students to focus on their math and their science skills.  So we know teachers can make a difference, and we want to help you have the very best teachers in the classroom.
 
We also have to invest in innovation -- in American research and technology, in the work of our scientists and engineers, and in sparking the creativity and imagination of our people.
 
Now, a lot of this obviously is done in the private sector.  But as much as the private sector is the principal driver of innovation it’s often hesitant（迟疑的，踌躇的） to invest in the unknown, especially when it comes to basic research.  Historically, that's been a federal responsibility.  It’s how we ended up with things like the computer chip and the GPS.  It’s how we ended up with the Internet.  It’s also how a lot of your states are already attracting jobs and industries of the future.
 
I went to Wisconsin, for example, a few weeks ago, and I visited a small-town company called Orion that’s putting hundreds of people to work manufacturing energy-efficient lights in a once-darkened plant.  They benefited from federal research.
 
In Ohio and Pennsylvania, thanks in part to federal grants, I saw universities and businesses joining together to make America a world leader in biotechnology and in clean energy.  And if you have any doubt about the importance of this federal investment in research and development, I would suggest that you talk to the cutting-edge businesses in your own states.  They will tell you that if we want the next big breakthrough, the next big industry to be an American breakthrough, an American industry, then we can’t sacrifice these investments in research and technology.
 
The third way that we need to invest is in our infrastructure -- everything from new roads and bridges to high-speed rail and high-speed Internet -- projects that create hundreds of thousands of private sector jobs.  And I know that in some of your states, infrastructure projects have garnered controversy.  Sometimes they’ve gotten caught up in partisan（党派的） politics.
 
This hasn’t traditionally been a partisan issue.  Lincoln laid the rails during the course of a civil war.  Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System.  Both parties have always believed that America should have the best of everything.  We don’t have third-rate airports and third-rate bridges and third-rate highways.  That’s not who we are.  We shouldn’t start going down that path.
 
New companies are going to seek out the fastest, most reliable ways to move people, goods, and information -- whether they’re in Chicago or they’re in Shanghai.  And I want them to be here, in the United States.  So to those who say that we can’t afford to make investments in infrastructure, I say we can’t afford not to make investments in infrastructure.  We always have had the best infrastructure.  The notion that somehow we’d give up that leadership at this critical juncture in our history makes no sense.
 
Just ask the folks that I met up in Marquette, Michigan -- I was talking to Rick Snyder about this -- up in the Upper Peninsula.  This is a town of 20,000 people far away from the hustle and bustle（喧嚣气氛） of places like Detroit or Grand Rapids.  But because of the wireless infrastructure that they have set up, they’ve now got -- the local department store, third generation family-owned department store, has been able to hook up with the university and have access to wireless, and they are now selling two-thirds of their goods online.  They’re one of the 5,000 fastest growing companies in America -- up in the Upper Peninsula because the infrastructure was in place to allow them to succeed.
 
And you’ve got kids in schoolhouses in even more remote areas who are able to plug in to lectures and science fairs anywhere in America because of the infrastructure that was set up.  That’s a smart investment for every state to make.  And the federal government wants to be your partner in making those investments.
 
These are the kinds of investments that pay huge economic dividends（股息，红利） in terms of jobs and growth.  They are the fundamentals that allow some states to weather economic storms better than others.  They’re the fundamentals that will make some states better positioned to win the future than others.  These investments are not just critical for your state’s success; they’re critical for America’s success.  And I want to be a partner in helping you make that happen.
 
Which brings me to the final topic that’s going to help determine our ability to win the future, and that’s getting control of our health care costs.  Now, I am aware that I have not convinced everybody here to be a member of the Affordable Care Act fan club.  But surely we can agree that for decades, our governments, our families, our businesses watched as health costs ate up more and more of their bottom line.  There’s no disputing that.  That didn’t just happen last year.  It didn’t just happen two years ago.  It’s been going on for years now.
 
We also know that the biggest driver of the federal debt is Medicare costs.  Nothing else comes close.  We could implement every cut that the House of Representatives right now has proposed and it would not make a dent in our long-term budget, wouldn’t make a dent in our long-term deficits -- because of healthcare costs.  We know it’s one of the biggest strains in your state budgets -- Medicaid.
 
And for years, politicians of both parties promised one thing:  real reform.  Everybody talked about it.  Well, we’ve decided to finally do something about it -- to create a structure that would preserve our system of private health insurance; would protect our consumers from the worst abuses of insurance companies; would create competition and lower costs by putting in place new exchanges, run by the states, where Americans could pool together to increase their purchasing power and select from various plans to choose what’s best for them -- the same way that members of Congress do, the same way that those who are lucky enough to work for big employers do.