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Stephen Brashear / Getty Images
President Barack Obama gives a speech Feb. 17, 2012 on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner assembly line in Everett, Washington. Obama's visit included a tour of the plant and fundraisers elsewhere in the Puget Sound.
EVERETT, Wash. – With a giant 787 Dreamliner jet as his backdrop, President Obama said the government needs to do more to spur American manufacturing exports as Boeing has with its planes.
In his last appearance on a three-day trip, Obama unveiled a set of new proposals aimed at giving American manufacturers a better competitive edge against foreign companies.
"We've gotta make sure we're making it easier for companies like Boeing to create jobs here at home and sell our products abroad," Obama said, addressing workers at Boeing's cavernous plant in Everett, Wash., noting that "business is booming" for the company, which hired 13,000 people nationwide last year.
Several of Obama's new initiatives would be funded through the Import-Export bank, which Congress authorized to continue lending up to $100 billion to businesses through May 2012. But the White House contends that the bank could hit that limit as early as the end of March because of "unprecedented demands for export financing in recent years."
Friday, Obama urged Congress to reauthorize the bank's authority, noting that it would fund, among others, a new program that would finance small businesses looking to increase exports.
"That's why it's so important for Congress to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank," Obama said, noting that its director, Fred Hochburg, was in the audience. "It helps companies like Boeing, as well as thousands of small businesses."
While Obama urged Congress to act on his new proposals, he praised lawmakers for passing today an extension of the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance, a bill that had been met with strong opposition from House and Senate Republicans.
"I want to thank Congress for listening to the voices of the American people," he said. "It is amazing what happens when Congress focuses on doing the right thing instead of just playing politics."
"This was a good example, and Congress should take pride in it."
Before he spoke today, Obama toured the Boeing plant and the Dreamliner jet, at one point marveling at a feature that darkens the cabin's no-shade windows at the turn of a switch.
"This is pretty spiffy," Obama said to the group of Boeing executives, employees and reporters that accompanied him on the tour.
During the speech, Obama seemed to refer to the Dreamliner as an example of what government-funded research can produce, noting that the plane was first designed using virtual technology that was developed by NASA.
"Government research helped to create this plane," he said.
President Obama's appearance at the plant comes just weeks after the National Labor Relations Board withdrew a 10-month complaint against Boeing after it relocated a plant from Seattle, to South Carolina, a right-to-work state.
The NLRB had claimed Boeing had moved the facility "to retaliate for past strikes and chill future strike activity," but dropped its complaint in December after the Boeing union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, agreed to a four-year contract extension stipulating that Boeing builds its 737 MAX jet in Washington.
The flap played heavily into the Republican presidential primary, especially in South Carolina, where candidates routinely slammed the NLRB's lawsuit as an infringement of state sovereignty.
In the run-up to the first-in-the-South's Jan. 21 primary, Mitt Romney released an ad calling Obama's NLRB appointees "union stooges."
"The National Labor Relations Board, now stacked with union stooges selected by the president, says to a free enterprise like Boeing, 'You can't build a factory in South Carolina because South Carolina is a right-to-work state.' That is simply un-American," Romney said in the ad, released Jan. 5.
Despite the recent political controversy surrounding Boeing's labor issues, the White House insisted that Obama's trip here today had nothing to do with the recently-settled NLRB dispute.
"This trip has everything to do with the president's focus on manufacturing and on increasing our exports and nothing to do" with the issue, press secretary Jay Carney said Thursday.
After the speech, President Obama was scheduled to appear at two campaign events in Seattle; the last of eight fundraisers scheduled during his three-day trip.
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Have you heard of the recession? We do need to re-organize, and the "family" and " board of directors"have to agree.........
You say "recession". Well during the Great Depression we had 25% unemployment at the height. If you measure unemployment for 2012 in the US the same way we did the Great Depression it is 23% unemployed.
This is a depression and neither mainstream party has a plan....... much less a realistic plan that would work. Every single thing that is involved with turning this financial nightmare around pisses off all the lobby's and special interest groups of both parties.
We have to let "the market" correct itself and stop attempting to control it through the federal government's borrowing. The defense contractors, car manufacturers and most of all the financial institutions have to be let to fail. We have to cut off ALL the bailout money, FED printing and government stock purchasing etc. It is only temporarily helping party legacy lobby's and stopping an actual real and long term turn around. New healthy better run companies will replace them.
These corporations are all taking the bailout money we give them and POURING it back into the campaigns of the politicians in charge of handing them more. Every corporation given a bailout has been allowed to use as much of that bailout money as they please for political lobbying. They are using taxpayer money to BUY OUR POLITICIANS. At least before they had to use their own!
This is completely insane. The government should not be giving one single corporation a nickel while letting others fail. They assist some employees while letting others go unemployed. They are playing "God" with the economy and picking the winners and losers based on lobby money contributions and special interest vote buying.
This has become an absolute complete self defeating situation with the largest conflicts of interest in the history of this country. It started with the "too big to fail banks", then AIG and Fannie/Freddie, then GM/Chrysler. Then it progressed to bailing out the banks in Europe with Obama/FED giving them $16 trillion between 2009 and 2010. None of that helped so now we have moved to bailing out entire countries and governments!
Where in all God's name does the responsibility of the now small amount of US taxpayers end? We have become conditioned now to hearing about "trillions" going to anyone for anything. Nothing is questioned nor is it even debated. The taxpayers have become inconsequential financial mules numb to what is going on in the world around them.
Both party's are political, they decide where the money goes, and how much to print. More spending, more money supply, more growth. Without inflation we would all be better. Inflation is the cause of economic depression. http://rodgermmitchell.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/monetarily-sovereign-the-key-to-understanding-economics/ this should be mandatory reading in all schools. Forget the gold standard, it could be used only to hold us hostage to bankers and other country's who want to bankrupt us.
Greece and others do not have their own currency that is part of the reason they are broke. We print our own and are not a household budget as many believe. If you could print your own money and people bought it would you have a problem? No. Are people buying our money and T-Bills, yes. No we are not on a road to doom. Those who say so want some of your money, so be smart.
Japan's national debt is 200% of their G.N.P. yet they are living well and can afford their government programs, no austerity measures. That is because their people have faith in their system, unlike the conservative/austerity type who post and politicise austerity. Don't buy it, they are after your money.
Please name a product that we can buy, that has no taxes? Your quote "Where in all God's name does the responsibility of the now small amount of US taxpayers end?"
You may like to look at graphs so here is one ...........http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/georgejarkesy/2012/02/12/has_congress_ever_really_balanced_the_budget/page/full/
Balanced budget, no we have never had one, and never will..................................
Ron Paul's plan on raising the debt ceiling,..............http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/91224/ron-paul-debt-ceiling-federal-reserve, Dean Baker, the progressive likes it, sounds good to me.
"Most people define the central point of dispute between liberals and conservatives as being that liberals want the government to intervene to bring about outcomes that they consider fair, while conservatives want to leave things to the market. This is not true. Conservatives actually rely on the government all the time, but most importantly in structuring the market in ways that ensure that income will flow upwards. The framing that "conservatives like the market while liberals like the government," puts liberals in the position of seeming to want to tax the winners to help the losers." .............http://deanbaker.net/index.php/home/books/the-end-of-loser-liberalism
Free download for those who care..............
Now if he will just adopt a policy of Fair Free Trade, of A Sustainable Jobs Initiative - We in the USA set many: quality, safety, health, environment and wage standards for various reasons. We can not set all these regulations and requirements and not expect that thousands of US American factories, millions of US American jobs, billions of US American dollars, and now the interest and obligation on trillions of US American debt would not be exported in the name of Free Trade. We do not need fewer regulations. We only need Fair Free Trade, a level playing field for the US American worker/producer to compete on for the USA market. Fair Free Trade! (Not Balanced Trade - Exporting a billion dollars of raw materials and importing a billion dollars of “Made In China” consumer goods does not return jobs to US Americans.) Fair Free Trade, where all imports to any given market must meet at least ALL minimum production/providing standards of: quality, safety, health, environment, and wages of the importing country, would bring factories, and sustainable jobs back to the USA. It would put money in the hands of our working domestic consumers, and directly into the hands of working foreign consumers that could then buy more “Made In The USA” products. Go to: www. manifestry. info > Trade
What ever our President's administration has been doing to improve the trade picture, it has not been working well since during his administration our trade deficit, though lower than during the Bush administration, has been rising. The President failed to address this issue. What the President portrays is fantasy economics.
Will, it has risen for 40 years, and never once in those years was it positive. What do you expect?
As long as we hold to our Constitution, do not criminalize the rest of the world, and have faith in our economy, we will have trust in our currency. Google "constitutions" and you will find that we have the longest existing one in the world, and that is why we have a stable, yet political economy. Austerity will not work, as our substantial difference in consumption, civil rights, and technology with other country's brings about major political/ economic change in others.
A short time ago in June of 2011, Boeing employees with the assistance of National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys took a stand against the tyranny of the Obama administration, the Machinists Union and the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) by filing a motion to stop the NLRB from shutting down Boeing’s North Charleston, South Carolina plant which if successful would save the jobs of those employed at the South Carolina plant.
NOBAMA2012, the END of an ERROR
"tyranny", and your prove, or perhaps you are not as patriotic as you think. Again, read the current news and Boeings's Plan NOW, along with the union. Compromise has won, your "tyranny" is in the gutter were it belongs..............http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/business/boeing-agrees-on-contract-with-machinists.html,
and please don't tell me the N.Y. Times is ultra-liberal and is wrong. Al Quada must love reading "tyranny" by so called Americans, on their own soil.
Bob, you should be a politician. You are so full of it.
And you are so out of date, you belong in a museum,,,,,,,,,,,LOL. At least I don't defend old news with "tyranny" and believe I'm a American.