Obama talks manufacturing, economy during stop in Princeton
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- Published: Saturday, 04 October 2014 23:51
PRINCETON, Ind. – President Barack Obama spent the afternoon of National Manufacturing Day Friday (Oct. 3) in Indiana, addressing students, business leaders and local factory workers at Millennium Steel Services – a key supplier for the Toyota production plant located next door.
Standing on a platform in front of large steel coils and an American flag, the president talked about the state of the nation’s manufacturing industry in an informal question-and-answer style session.
Obama visit from TheStatehouseFile.com on Vimeo.
President Obama speaks during a town hall-style forum at Millennium Steel in Princeton, Ind. The president visited the plant, a Toyota supplier, for National Manufacturing Day. Photo by Hannah Troyer, TheStatehouseFile.com |
President Obama addresses a crowd of about 200 during a town hall-style forum at Millennium Steel in Princeton, Ind. The president visited the plant, a Toyota supplier, for National Manufacturing Day. Photo by Hannah Troyer, TheStatehouseFile.com |
Workers from the Millennium Steel plant in Princeton listen as President Barack Obama talks about the economy during a visit Friday to the plant. Photo by Hannah Troyer, TheStatehouseFile.com |
Obama touched on the unemployment rate, job growth, salaries and the minimum wage. But he said more work is needed and he called for a higher national minimum wage and more spending on the country’s infrastructure.
Millennium Steel and its home Gibson County made an appropriate background for the president’s talk about manufacturing. More than one third of the county’s jobs are in manufacturing and Indiana ranks first in the nation for the percentage of jobs in that sector.
Obama and Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker briefly toured the Millennium Steel plant before the president came to the stage.
The president made his trip to the Hoosier state to highlight National Manufacturing Day – a day intended to educate the younger generation of men and women of the job possibilities in the industry.
“Factories like this one all over the country are opening their doors to give young people a chance to understand what opportunities exist in manufacturing in the 21st Century in the United States of America,” Obama said. “So I figured what better place to celebrate Manufacturing Day than with a manufacturer.”
Obama’s appearance drew a large crowd from business and production leaders from across the state.
David Snow, the director of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership for Indiana, said the president’s address about manufacturing was something he didn’t want to miss.
“My job day in and day out is to help Indiana manufacturers be more competitive globally and produce better product, so this is an event I wouldn’t miss,” Snow said. “(Indiana) is a manufacturing intensive state… so it’s a perfect place for him to come to.”
Millennium Steel Services is a relatively small facility, with less than 60 employees, but it does upwards of $250 million a year in business.
James Harris, an employee at the Southern Indiana company, said Millennium Steel has provided a much-needed boost to the local economy.
“This is one of the largest minority-owned companies in Southern Indiana and I think it’s the 14th largest in the nation, so I figured he (the president) might come here to see that,” Harris said.
Obama began his speech with uplifting statistics about the country’s economy and job growth. However, he also said the nation’s financial progress has not come easy.
“This progress that we’ve been making, it’s been hard. It goes in fits and starts,” the president said. “It’s not always been perfectly smooth or as fast as we want, but it is real and it is steady and it is happening, and it’s making a (difference) in economies all across the country.
“So there is a lot of good stuff happening in the economy right now. But what we all know is, is that there are still some challenges…and that means that we’ve still got some more work to do to put in place policies that make sure that the economy works not just for the few, but it works for everybody… “
Towards the end of his appearance, a man asked Obama to share specifics about his plan to improve the nation’s infrastructure – the Rebuild America Act.
“It’s not just the traditional roads and bridges,” Obama said. “It’s also the infrastructure we don’t see – sewer systems, water systems. A lot of them are breaking down. There’s a whole bunch of new infrastructure that we should be building.”
Obama fielded a question about the effectiveness of increasing the national minimum wage and whether it will lead to inflation and higher prices on goods and services.
“Typically, the minimum wage are in certain sectors of the economy,” the president said. “But unlike what people think, the majority of folks getting paid the minimum wage are adults, many of them supporting families. The average age of somebody getting paid the minimum wage is 35 years old. They’re not 16.”
He said that although an increase of the minimum wage would have a positive effect on families, it “generally does not have a huge impact in terms of prices.”
The president said most companies can afford to give raises to their employees, but don’t because they are not required to. The “somewhat soft” labor market is also a contributing factor, he said.
“The market will take care of some of this, but having a minimum wage that’s a little bit higher, that’s also going to help.”
The trip was Obama’s sixth to Indiana since he was elected president. After finishing on stage Friday, he made his way through the crowd, shaking hands, before heading back to the Evansville Regional Airport and then to the White House.
Article writer Jacob Rund is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.
