President Obama visits Kansas City electric vehicle company
Photo by Ryan Waggoner
Employees of Smith Electric Vehicles and guests listen to a speech by President Barack Obama Thursday afternoon at the company’s plant in Kansas City, Mo.
President Obama visits Kansas City
President Barack Obama visited Smith Electric Vehicles in Kansas City, Mo. Thursday afternoon. The president toured the company’s plant and gave remarks on the American economy.
Kansas City, Mo. — Barack Obama stepped out from behind a barricade, white shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows and lavender tie loosened just a bit around his neck, and told the 50 employees of Smith Electric Vehicles he was sorry.
It was no grand scale apology – he simply didn’t hit the right cue for the musical fanfare that typically accompanies entrance and walked to the stage in silence – but the apologetic tone lingered briefly as he talked about the current state of the American economy.
“We’ve gone through as bad an economic situation as we’ve had since the Great Depression,” he said. “This recession was the culmination of a decade of irresponsibility; a decade that fell like a sledgehammer on middle class families.”
Obama also acknowledged the difficulties some families face with “stagnant” incomes and rising tuition costs, a la the University’s recent 7 percent hike.
His speech centered, however, on projects like Smith Electric Vehicles, which benefited from a $32 million dollar government grant and is now on pace to double its work force by the end of the year.
“Our goal has never been to create another government program,” Obama said. “Our goal has been to spur growth in the private sector.”
The company designs and builds commercial electric vehicles that can haul 16,000-plus pounds over 100 miles without a charge. Obama cited the company as one of several success stories of “promising, innovative businesses” across the country.
All the companies he cited as recovering government grants were all related in some way to renewable, sustainable energy, an industry Obama made clear was at the fore of his economic agenda.
“This nation leads the industries of the future,” he said.
With the rise of Smith Electric and similar companies across the country, Obama said the United States could grow from producing just two percent of the world’s advanced batteries for electric and hybrid cars to producing as much as 40 percent within the next five years.
“All these efforts, taken together, are making a difference,” Obama said. “A year and a half ago, our economy was shrinking six percent a year, now it’s growing. The economy was bleeding jobs, now we’ve created private sector jobs for six consecutive months.”
The slow progress gave the President an optimistic outlook for the future, even though it may not come tomorrow.
“We’re not there. We’ve got a long way to go,” he said, “but we are moving in the right direction. The surest way out of the storm is to go forwards.”
-Tim Dwyer
