President Obama boasted Friday that the stimulus bill he signed into law in 2009 helped create green energy jobs that still exist today, and said those jobs are a sign the U.S. is still leading, despite what Republican presidential candidates are saying.
Obama visited the Saft America Battery Plant in Jacksonville, Fla., Friday afternoon, a factory built partially using $95.5 million in federal stimulus funds. The facility produces lithium-ion batteries for electric cars, wind turbines and solar panels.
“Solar and wind don’t work [as energy alternatives] unless we have good ways to store power so it can be used in a regular, reliable way,” he said. “…These batteries make us able to stabilize our energy grid.”
A decade ago, the plant site had been swampland, Obama said, but thanks the stimulus funds, it is now employing 300 workers, 40 percent of whom are veterans. The stimulus, he argued, was key to reviving the flagging economy.
“We turned recession into recovery faster” than other countries, he said. “We took an empty swamp and turned it into an engine of innovation.”
The president also took a passing shot at the Republican candidates for president.
“On the campaign trail all these people are talking down America. I don’t know when it became fashionable to do that,” he said.
Over the last three months of 2015, the United States deployed more “advanced energy storage capacity than over the previous two years combined,” he said.
“And that’s what we should be investing in,” he said. “Clean energy is about cutting carbon emissions and fighting climate change…protecting the planet for future generations and making sure Florida doesn’t get flooded.”
Environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council argue that rising sea levels caused by climate change could flood 400 feet into the coastline over the next 100 years.
“And clean energy is about a steady stream of jobs that can allow American families to reach for something higher,” he continued.
He offered special praise for the decision by factory managers to hire so many veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
“I’ve often said to CEOs across the country: ‘If you want the job done right, hire a vet,'” Obama said, noting that the solar industry has committed to hiring 50,000 veterans in the coming years.
“We’ve seen what a new economy looks like,” he said. “It looks like this facility right here: new energy and new technologies and highly skilled workers. It’s an economy that is producing for the United States and U.S. markets, but [its goods] are also sold overseas.”
