THE
WHITE HOUSE
Office
of the Press Secretary
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
EMBARGOED UNTIL
DELIVERY
February 10, 2011
Remarks
of President Barack Obama – As Prepared for Delivery
On
the Wireless Innovation and Infrastructure Initiative
Marquette,
Michigan
February
10, 2011
As Prepared for
Delivery—
Hello,
Marquette! It is good to be in the U.P. It is good to be at
Northern Michigan University!
So, I have to say, I
think some folks on my staff have it out for me. Not because it’s 10
degrees here – I can handle that. It’s because for the second time in two
weeks, not long after my Bears went down, they’ve sent me to a town with a
bunch of Green Bay Packer fans, even if we are in Michigan. But I
congratulate all the fans here, and we’ll see the Packers at the White House.
Of course, I haven’t
come to Marquette to talk about winning the Super Bowl. I’ve come here
because it’s towns like this where the jobs and businesses of tomorrow will
take root. It’s towns like this where our economic future will be won.
In the short-term, the
best thing we can do to speed up economic growth is to make sure families and
businesses have more money to spend. And that’s exactly what the tax cuts
we passed in December are doing. Because Democrats and Republicans came
together, Americans’ paychecks will be a little bigger this year.
Businesses will be able to write off their investments. Companies will grow and
add workers.
But we have to do
more. Our measure of success has to be whether every American who wants a
job can find one; whether this country is still the place where you can make it
if you try. In a world that’s more connected and more competitive, other
nations look at this as their moment – their turn to win the jobs and
industries of our time. I see things differently. I see this as
America’s moment to win the future.
To do this, though, we
have to up our game. To attract the best jobs and newest industries, we’ve got
to out-innovate, out-educate, out-build and out-hustle the rest of the
world. That means investing in cutting-edge research and technology, like
the new advanced battery manufacturing industry that’s taking root right here
in Michigan. It means investing in the skills and training of our
people. It means investing in transportation and communication networks
that move goods and information as fast as possible.
And to make room for
these investments, we have to cut whatever spending we can do without.
That’s why I’ve proposed that we freeze annual domestic spending for the next
five years, which would reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion over the
next decade, and bring that spending to the lowest share of our economy since
Eisenhower was President.
Government has to
start doing what American families do every day: we have to live within
our means. But even as we do so, we cannot sacrifice our future. If
you’re trying to cut back, you might decide not to go out to dinner or take a vacation.
But you wouldn’t stop saving for your kids’ college or your retirement.
The same is true with our country. Even as we cut out the things we can
afford to do without, we have a responsibility to invest in those areas that
will have the biggest impact our future – innovation, education, and
infrastructure.
That last area –
infrastructure – is why I’ve come here today.
Connecting a country
of our size has never been easy. Just imagine what Americans experienced
when they fanned out from thirteen colonies to settle a continent. If you
wanted to get from one coast to the other, it would take you months and cost
you a small fortune. If you settled in the heartland, you were an island,
with no real market to sell your goods or buy what you needed.
So we decided to build
a railroad to span a continent – one that would blast through mountains of
granite, use thousands of miles of steel, and put to work an army of citizens
and immigrants. It was an endeavor that would also require support from
our government. As General William T. Sherman said, “Uncle Sam is the
only giant I know who can grapple the subject.”
Even as President
Lincoln tried to hold together North and South, he was determined to see this
railroad unite East and West. Private companies joined the charge, racing
one another to meet in the middle. And eventually, a telegraph operator
sent out a simple message to the cheers of a waiting nation:
“DONE.” If he knew we’d still be talking about it today, he might
have come up with something more inspiring.
Overnight, the
transcontinental railroad laid the way for a nationwide economy. A
cross-country trip was cut from months to days. The cost to move goods
and mail plummeted. Cowboys drove cattle to railcars that whisked them
East. Entrepreneurs could sell anything, anywhere.
After the railroad was
completed, a newspaper proclaimed: “We are the youngest of peoples. But
we are teaching the world to march forward.”
That’s who we are – a
nation that has always been built to compete. That’s why, decades later,
FDR set up the Rural Electrification Administration – to help bring power to
vast swaths of America that were still in darkness. Companies said that
building lines to rural areas would be too costly. So Americans in these
towns simply went without refrigeration or running water. If you wanted a
glimpse of the larger world, your town might run a movie off a small diesel
engine – but it might not even last for the full film.
Once power lines were
laid down, electricity flowed to farms across the country and transformed
millions of lives. When a Texas family returned home the first night
their farmhouse was hooked up, a woman thought it was on fire. “No mama,”
said her daughter, “the lights are on.”
Years later, as our
nation grew by leaps and bounds, we realized that a patchwork system of back
roads and dirt paths couldn’t handle the biggest economy in the world. So
President Eisenhower helped make possible an Interstate Highway System that
transformed the nation as much as the railways had. Finally, we could
ship goods and services to places that railroads didn’t reach. We could
live apart from where we worked. We could travel and see America.
These
achievements…none of them just happened. We chose to do them. We
chose to do big things. And every American benefited – not just from new
conveniences. Not just from the jobs created by laying down new lines or tracks
or pavement. We benefited from new economic growth – from the scores of
new businesses that opened near each town’s new train station, new power lines,
or new off-ramp.
But this is a new
century. And we cannot expect tomorrow’s economy to take root along
yesterday’s infrastructure. New companies are going to seek out the
fastest, most reliable ways to move people, goods, and information – whether
they’re in Shanghai or Chicago. And so if we want new jobs and businesses
in America, we have to have the best transportation and communication networks
in the world. Just like the movie, Field of Dreams: if we build it, they
will come.
Over the last two
years, we have begun rebuilding for the 21st century, a national
project that has meant thousands of good jobs for the hard-hit construction
industry. And I have I proposed redoubling these efforts. We want
to put more Americans to work repairing crumbling roads and bridges.
Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80 percent of Americans access to
high-speed rail, which could allow you go places in half the time it takes to
travel by car. And within five years, we want to make it possible for
businesses to put high-speed wireless services in reach of virtually every
American.
That last part is why
I chose to come to Northern Michigan University today. Today, more than
90 percent of homes in South Korea subscribe to high-speed broadband.
Meanwhile, in America, the nation that created the internet, only 65 percent of
households can say the same. When it comes to high-speed internet, the
lights are still off in one-third of our households. For millions of
Americans, the railway hasn’t come yet.
For our families and
businesses, high-speed wireless service is the next train station; the next
off-ramp. It’s how we’ll spark new innovation, new investments, and new
jobs.
You already know this
here at Northern Michigan. For a decade now, this university has given a
new laptop to every incoming student. WiFi stretched across campus.
But if you lived off-campus, like most students and teachers here, you were
largely out of luck. Broadband was often too expensive to afford.
And if you lived a bit further out of town, you were completely out of luck –
broadband providers often won’t build networks where it’s not profitable.
So this university
tried something new. You partnered with various companies to build a
high-speed, next-generation wireless network. And you managed to install
it with six people in only four days – without raising tuition. Today,
this is one of America’s most connected universities, and enrollment is near
the highest it’s been in 30 years.
What’s more, you told
nearby towns that if they allowed you to retrofit their towers with new
equipment to expand your network, then their schools, first responders, and
city governments could use it too. As a result, police officers can access
crime databases in their cars. Firefighters can download blueprints on
the way to a burning building. Public works officials can save money by
monitoring pumps and equipment remotely.
And you’ve created new
online learning opportunities for K-12 students as far as 30 miles away, some
of whom can’t always make it to school in a place that averages 200 inches of
snow a year. Now, I’m sure some of the students don’t exactly see the end
of snow days as an opportunity. But it’s good for their education, and
it’s good for our economy. In fact, I’ve just come from a demonstration
of online learning in action.
For local businesses,
broadband access is helping them grow, prosper, and compete in a global
economy. In fact, Marquette has been rated one of the top five “eCities”
in Michigan for entrepreneurship. Consider Getz’s Clothiers, a
third-generation, family-owned Marquette institution. They’ve occupied
the same downtown store for more than a century – but with the help of
broadband, they were recently listed as one of America’s 5,000 fastest-growing
companies. Online sales make up more than two-thirds of its annual
revenue. It can process more than 1,000 orders a day, and its workforce
has more than doubled. Today Getz’s is a local business with a
global footprint.
If you can do this in
the snowy wilderness of the Upper Peninsula, we can do this all across
America. In fact, many places already are. In Wagner, South Dakota,
patients can receive high-quality, life-saving medical care from a Sioux Falls
specialist who can monitor their EKG and listen to their breathing – from 100
miles away. In Ten Sleep, Wyoming, a town of about 300 people, a
fiber-optic network allowed a company to employ several hundred teachers who
teach English to students in Asia over the internet, 24 hours a day. You’ve all
heard about outsourcing. Well this is what we call “insourcing” – where
overseas work is done right here in America.
We want to multiply
these stories – and yours – all over the country. We want to invest in
the next-generation of high-speed wireless coverage for 98 percent of
Americans.
This isn’t just about
a faster internet or being able to friend someone on Facebook. It’s about
connecting every corner of America to the digital age. It’s about a rural
community in Iowa or Alabama where farmers can monitor weather across the state
and markets across the globe. It’s about an entrepreneur on Main Street
with a great idea she hopes to sell to the big city. It’s about every
young person who no longer has to leave his hometown to seek new opportunity –
because it’s right at his fingertips.
To make this happen,
we’ll invest in research and development of emerging technologies and
applications. We’ll accelerate breakthroughs in health, education, and transportation;
and deploy a new nationwide, interoperable wireless network for first
responders – making sure they have the funding and the frequencies that they
were promised and that they need to keep us safe. And by selling private
companies the rights to these airwaves, we won’t just encourage private
investment and expand wireless access; we’ll actually bring in revenues that
lower our deficits.
Now, access to
high-speed internet by itself won’t make a business more successful, or a
student smarter, or a citizen more informed. That takes hard work.
It takes those late nights. It takes that quintessentially American drive
to be the best. But we have always believed that we have a responsibility
to guarantee all our people every tool necessary for them to meet their full
potential. And in a 21st century economy, that has never been
more important. Every American deserves access to the world’s
information. Every American deserves access to the global economy.
We have promised this for fifteen years. It is time we delivered on that
promise.
Connecting our
people. Competing with the rest of the world. Living within our
means without sacrificing what’s required to win the future. We can do
all this. We have done it before.
In 1960, at the height
of his presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy came to Michigan. It was a
moment not unlike this one, when other nations were doing their best to take
our place at the top. And here, he made it clear that if we wanted to
keep from being knocked off, then there could only be one goal for the United
States, and it could be summed up in one word: “first.”
“I do not mean first,
but,” he said. “I do not mean first, when. I do not mean first,
if. I mean first – period.”
“The real question
now,” he continued, “is whether we are up to the task – whether each and every
one of us is willing to face the facts, to bear the burdens, to provide the
risks, [and] to meet our dangers.”
Marquette, we were up
to the task then. We are up to the task today. Time and time again,
whether westward or skyward, with each rail and road we’ve laid, in every
community we’ve connected with our own science and imagination, we have forged
anew our faith that we can do anything. We do big things. That’s
who we are. That’s who we must be once more – that young nation that
teaches the world to march forward.
That’s what you’re
doing here at Northern Michigan University, and that’s what all of us are going
to do together in the months and years to come. Thank you, God Bless You,
and God Bless the United States of America.
