April 27, 2010
Obama in Iowa Says Clean-Energy Technology Can Spur Job Growth (Bloomberg)
President Barack Obama, taking a two-day, campaign-style swing through the rural Midwest, told employees at a Siemens AG wind-turbine plant that future U.S. economic growth depends on boosting alternative energy production.
The president highlighted the investments being made in alternative energy production under his stimulus plan as he turns his focus to the economy and jobs, topics that will be top issues in November’s midterm congressional elections.
A key element underpinning a 21st-century economy is “igniting a new, clean-energy economy that generates good jobs right here in America,” Obama said after touring the Fort Madison, Iowa, facility.
The Siemens plant was the first stop for Obama in largely rural parts of Iowa, Illinois and Missouri to promote the $862 billion economic stimulus program and his administration’s work on health care, energy and regulation of Wall Street. All three states have felt the worst recession since the 1930s. March unemployment was 6.8 percent in Iowa, 9.5 percent in Missouri and 11.5 percent in Illinois, compared with the national average of 9.7 percent.
The president also has events scheduled in Quincy, Illinois, Mount Pleasant and Ottumwa, Iowa, and Macon, Missouri, where Obama is scheduled to visit a refinery run by Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based Poet LLC, the biggest U.S. ethanol producer.
Rural Investments
Before the trip, the White House released a 42-page paper saying the administration is pumping billions of dollars into rural America with programs for small business loans, education, medical care, and farm exports.
It’s an outline of “what we’ve already invested and what we hope to continue investing in rural communities,” Christina Romer, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers said in a conference call yesterday.
About 50 million Americans live in rural areas, the paper said, where the labor force “is aging and its educational attainment lags behind” urban areas. Health-care improvements “have not kept pace” with large cities, it said.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa, said rural areas of the U.S. are suffering through a “silent crisis” of higher unemployment, rising poverty, an aging workforce and loss of population.
The administration is tackling those issues through programs stressing clean energy, improved education, and the kinds of jobs found at Siemens, Vilsack, who traveled with the president from Washington, told reporters on Air Force One.
Obama said the plant owned by Munich-based Siemens, which makes blades for wind turbines and employs about 600 people, got a $3.5 million stimulus-funded tax credit in January.
No ‘Silver Bullet’
“As extraordinary as this facility is, however, wind power isn’t the silver bullet that will solve all our energy challenges. There isn’t one,” Obama said. “But it is a key part of a comprehensive strategy to move us from an economy that runs on fossil fuels to one that relies on more homegrown fuels and clean energy.”
Obama also called for the enactment of energy and climate legislation which has stalled in the U.S. Senate after Republican Lindsey Graham withdrew his support to protest a Senate push to take up an overhaul of immigration laws first.
Calling wind energy a “key part” of the strategy to wean the nation off of fossil fuels like oil, Obama said the legislation will create new industries and jobs.
“Our security, our economy and the future of our planet depend on it,” Obama said.
Election Ahead
The trip comes less than seven months before elections that will determine control of Congress...
