Thursday, July 15, 2010

Obama Defends Economic Policies


This article is published here with permission from www.tysknews.com/
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Oh… about 300 jobs (if you believe the projections). Lessee here [calculator in-hand] …Wow! That’s over a half‑million dollars per job! Such a deal!

Obama Defends Economic Policies At Michigan Battery Plant


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President Obama defended his economic policies in Michigan on Thursday and argued that his administration’s investments in alternative energy technologies have blunted the recession and set the stage for the economy to rebound.

Speaking at the groundbreaking of a Compact Power battery plant in Holland, Mich., Obama said the Recovery Act prevented the country from falling into an even deeper economic crisis and helped put people back to work in the construction and manufacturing sectors.

“Yes, the progress we have made so far is not nearly enough to undo the enormous damage the recession caused. As I said since the day I took office, it is going to take time to reverse the toll of the deepest downturn in generations,” Obama said. “But what is absolutely clear is that we are headed in the right direction — and that the surest way out of the storms we’ve been in is to keep move forward, not to go backward.”

As an example, Obama pointed to the $2.4 billion in the Recovery Act allocated to encourage the development of advanced batteries and electrical vehicles. The Holland plant is the final of nine advanced battery factories funded by stimulus dollars to begin construction. Obama said the United States will go from producing 2 percent of the world’s advanced batteries to 40 percent by 2015 as a result of the grants.

“In every case, we’ve been guided by a simple idea: Government cannot generate the jobs or growth we need by itself. But it can lay the foundation for small businesses to expand and hire, for entrepreneurs to open up shop and test new products, for workers to get the training they need, and for families to achieve some measure of economic security,” Obama said.

Compact’s parent company, South Korean firm LG Chem, received $151 million from the Department of Energy to build the $300 million factory, which will manufacture batteries for the Chevrolet Volt and Ford Focus. The plant is expected to provide 300 construction jobs at the peak of the project and then employ 300 people full time once completed.

Full article: http://tinyurl.com/2atvr8n

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