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（可靠的，可信赖的） 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（混合动力汽车） 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（专门知识，专门技术） 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（空缺，空位） .  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（否定者，拒绝者） , 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（企业家精神） and innovation that’s always defined America, we’re not just going to emerge from this period of turmoil（混乱，骚动） , 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.)
                  
END
12:26 P.M. CDT