So today, my administration is releasing our strategy to foster new jobs, new businesses, and new industries by laying the groundwork and the ground rules to best tap our innovative potential. This work began with the recovery plan that we passed several months ago, which devoted well over $100 billion to innovation, from high-tech classrooms to health information technology, from more efficient homes to more fuel-efficient cars, from building a smart electricity grid to laying down high-speed rail.
But our efforts don't end there. For this strategy is about far more than just recovery -- it's about sustained growth and widely shared prosperity. And it's rooted in a simple idea: that if government does its modest part, there's no stopping the most powerful and generative economic force that the world has ever known, and that is the American people.
Our strategy begin where innovation so often does: in the classroom and in the laboratory -- and in the networks that connect them to the broader economy. These are the building blocks of innovation: education, infrastructure, research.
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| From a supporting press release today:
The Obama Innovation Strategy
1. Invest in the Building Blocks of American Innovation. We must first ensure that our economy is given all the necessary tools for successful innovation, from investments in research and development to the human, physical, and technological capital needed to perform that research and transfer those innovations.
2. Promote Competitive Markets that Spur Productive Entrepreneurship. It is imperative to create a national environment ripe for entrepreneurship and risk taking that allows U.S. companies to be internationally competitive in a global exchange of ideas and innovation. Through competitive markets, innovations diffuse and scale appropriately across industries and globally.
3. Catalyze Breakthroughs for National Priorities. There are certain sectors of exceptional national importance where the market is unlikely to produce the desirable outcomes on its own. These include developing alternative energy sources, reducing costs and improving lives with health IT, and manufacturing advanced vehicles. In these industries where markets may fail on their own, government can be part of the solution.
The fact sheets (one pager and three-pager) and white paper for the innovation strategy can be found in the linked pdf's.
And for all you youngsters out there in TV land...
... in the coming years, jobs requiring at least an associate's degree are projected to grow twice as fast as jobs requiring no college experience. Think about that -- twice as fast. We will not fill those jobs, or keep those jobs here in America, without graduating more students, including millions more students from community colleges.
Seriously. Stay in school. And so...
That's why I've asked Dr. Biden to travel the country promoting the opportunities that community colleges offer. That's why I'm grateful that Senator Chuck Schumer, who couldn't be here today, has shown tremendous leadership on this issue. And that's why I've set this ambitious goal: By 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. We used to be number one. We should be number one again.
The applause was loud enough I couldn't quite make out that last line.
So, uh, how ya gonna do that boss?
... we've increased Pell Grants....
And..?
... created a simplified $2,500 tax credit for college tuition.
Ok, and..?
We've made student aid applications less complicated and ensured that that aid is not based on the income of a job that you've lost. I hear too much from folks who say, I can't get any student aid because they're still looking at my income taxes when I had a job as opposed to my situation right now.
That's good. Cuz there's a lotta folks that don't have last years jobs right now. Conservative economic policy will do that to you ya know.
We've also passed a new G.I. Bill of Rights to help soldiers coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan begin a new life in a new economy.
Good! They deserve it and we owe it to them. My Dad got a good bit of his college education through the Army during and after WWII. This is a good thing.
But then he got into something very interesting and very important....
Right now, the federal government provides a subsidy to banks to get them to lend money to students.
Subsidizing banks? Say it isn't so!
The thing is the federal government also guarantees the loans in case the students don't repay.
So, uh, you're saying they are getting us coming and going?
So we're subsidizing banks to take on the risk of giving loans to students, even though taxpayers are absorbing the risk anyway. That doesn't make much sense.
No, it doesn't.
It costs us more than $80 billion. If we just cut out the middle-man -- the banks -- and lent directly to the students, the federal government would save that money and we could use it for what's actually important -- helping students afford and succeed in college.
SOCIALIST!!!
Care for a spot of tea?
That's what the bill -- I want to emphasize this just because every once in a while you may not know what your members of Congress are doing for you. These three guys right here are standing up for young people. We need senators to do the same. The bill that they voted on -- the bill that I proposed -- here's what it does: It takes the $80 billion the banks currently get and uses it to make Pell Grants larger. It uses those funds to focus on innovative efforts to help students not only go to college but to graduate. And just as important, these savings will allow us to make the largest investment ever in the most underappreciated asset in our education system, and that is community colleges like Hudson Valley, which are so essential for the future of our young people. So we hope to improve on this bill in the Senate and go even further on behalf of students.
Aaaah! Maybe that is why he praised the Congressmen a little extra at the beginning. Do I detect a bit of a hint at the Senate to get its act in gear here too?
Ending this unwarranted subsidy for the big banks is a no-brainer for folks everywhere -- except some folks in Washington. In fact, they're already seeing -- we're already seeing special interests rallying to save this giveaway. And the large banks -- many who have benefited from taxpayer bailouts during the financial crisis -- are lobbying to keep this easy money flowing. That's exactly the kind of special-interest effort that has succeeded before, and we can't allow it to succeed this time. This is exactly the kind of waste that leaves people wary of government, leaves our country straddled with trillions of dollars of deficits and debt with little to show for it.
Whoop! There it is. Special interest money looking to the Senate to stop good legislation from making it through unscathed.
Hmmm... I think I've heard that refrain before.
Next up... stuff that makes my little inter-tubular heart go all aflutter. |
