THE PRESIDENT: Thank you so much. Everybody, please have a seat, have a seat.
Hello, Fairless Hills! Hello, Gamesa! It is good to be here. I was here three years ago. I was then a candidate — how many folks were here at the time? Anybody remember? (Applause.) We had a good visit. I signed a blade, I think, while I was here. I didn’t have as much gray hair back then. (Laughter.) You guys still look great. I’m a little worn down.
It is great to be back, and I love visiting places where people are actually making stuff, because that’s what America is about. Everybody here, you are helping to build towers that are going to stand 400 feet in the air and generate enough electricity to power 600 homes. And the blades alone are 140 feet long, so these aren’t your father’s windmills. These are wind turbines. You guys are not messing around. This is the future of American energy.
So I wanted to come back partly because over the last two years since I’ve been President, just as I promised when I was here as a candidate, I have been promoting and boosting clean energy. I think it’s absolutely critical for our future. And it’s also nice to be next to cool products.
I think that what you do here is a glimpse of the future, and it’s a future where America is less dependent on foreign oil, more reliant on clean energy produced by workers like you. And I know that this is — this whole issue of energy is on the minds of a lot of people right now, partly because you’re paying more at the pump. Anybody notice that? You noticed that a little bit.
The fact is, for a lot of folks, money was already tight before gas prices started climbing, especially for some families where the husband or the wife had been out of work or you’ve had to get by with fewer customers or hours on the job. Having high gas prices is just one more added burden.
But I want everybody to remember, every time gases go up, we see the same pattern. Washington gets all worked up, just like clockwork. Republicans and Democrats both start making a lot of speeches. Usually the Democrats blame the Republicans; the Republicans blame the Democrats. Everybody is going in front of the cameras and they’ve got some new three-point plan to promise two-dollar-a-gallon gas. And then nothing happens. And then gas prices go down, and then suddenly it’s not in the news anymore and everybody forgets about it until the next time gas prices go back up again.
That’s what was happening when I was running three years ago. You remember “Drill, baby, drill”? That was because the economy was overheated, gas prices were skyrocketing, and everybody made a lot of speeches but not much happened. And I said then that we can’t afford to continue this kind of being in shock when gas prices go up and then suddenly being in a trance when things go back down again. We’ve got to have a sustained energy policy that is consistent, that recognizes that there’s no magic formula to driving gas prices down; it’s a steady improvement in terms of how we use energy and where we get energy from — that’s what’s going to make a difference. That’s how we’re going to secure our energy future.
So last week I laid out a vision of how we could do this. It’s a plan that says we’re not going to play the usual Washington politics that have prevented progress on energy for decades. Instead, what we’re going to do is we’re going to take every good idea out there. Whether you’re Republican or Democrat, whatever the idea. From environmentalists. From oil men like T. Boone Pickens. I want to have a comprehensive energy strategy that can help us move forward. And that means we’ve got to pursue every breakthrough, every renewable resource, every technology, every approach to change the way we produce and use energy.