Obama Says Commitment to Clean Energy Will Boost Jobs
ZBB Energy Corporation Manufacturing Facility
Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images
President Barack Obama tours ZBB Energy Corporation Manufacturing Facility in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin.
President Barack Obama tours ZBB Energy Corporation Manufacturing Facility in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. Photographer: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images
President Barack Obama said government incentives to expand clean-energy industries will help restore jobs, citing a battery maker in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, where he is highlighting the impact of the economic stimulus.
Obama used the example of ZBB Energy Corp., which is using a $1.3 million loan from the legislation to keep 12 workers on staff and eventually hire 80 more as it expands production.
“We expect our commitment to clean energy to lead to more than 800,000 jobs by 2012,” Obama said after a tour of the ZBB factory. “And that’s not just creating work in the short term; that’s going to help lay the foundation for lasting economic growth.”
Obama is kicking off a three-day, cross-country tour to defend his economic policies and raise money for Democratic candidates.
At a fundraiser in Milwaukee he told supporters that Republicans would put the nation on the same path that led to the worst recession in more than 80 years.
“What we don’t need, the worst thing we could do, is to go back to the very same policies that created this mess in the first place,” he said. “The most important thing we can do right now is to keep moving forward.”
Stimulus Critics
Republicans, who are working to wrest control of Congress in the November elections, are critical of the $862 billion stimulus measure as economic growth and hiring have fallen short of some administration projections.
Since the legislation was approved in February 2009, the U.S. unemployment rate has climbed to 9.5 percent in June from 8.2 percent. The administration projects the jobless rate will average 9.7 percent for the year.
The White House hasn’t made much progress in selling the stimulus spending to voters. Asked how their opinion of the stimulus has changed in recent months, respondents to a Bloomberg National Poll were divided almost evenly among those who say they had become more supportive, those who are less supportive and those who haven’t changed their view.
Obama has been making regular trips outside Washington to defend the stimulus and the government’s bailout of automakers, and to say the U.S. economy is on the mend.
‘Right Direction’
“These have been a couple of very hard years for America. And we’re not completely out of the woods yet,” he said at the battery factory. “But we are headed in the right direction.”
Following today’s visit to Wisconsin, Obama will fly to Los Angeles to raise money for his party’s congressional candidates.
The president will deliver remarks on the economy tomorrow in Seattle and attend a fundraiser for Democratic Senator Patty Murray. On Wednesday he’ll discuss the economy in Columbus, Ohio, and raise money for the Ohio Democratic Party before traveling to Miami for a similar fundraiser for Florida Democrats.
So far this month Obama has raised more than $4.5 million for Democratic candidates and party organizations.
All 435 members of the House of Representatives face elections this year, as well as more than one-third of the Senate. Democrats now have majorities in both chambers.
“Everybody’s going to have a tough race across this country because we’re going through tough times,” Obama said at the Milwaukee event, which raised money for Mayor Tom Barrett’s campaign for governor and the state Democratic Party organization.
To contact the reporter on this story: Nicholas Johnston in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at 1264 or njohnston3@bloomberg.net
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