THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  (Applause.)  Everybody, please have a seat.  Thank you very much.  It is wonderful to be at ZBB Energy.  And thanks for your hospitality（好客，殷勤） , and thanks for helping¹ to build a future.

I've got a couple of people I want to acknowledge.  First of all, your wonderful Governor and First Lady, Jim and Jessica Doyle are here.  Please give them a big round of applause.  (Applause.)  We've got somebody who is fighting on behalf of Wisconsin families each and every day -- Russ Feingold, your wonderful U.S. senator.  (Applause.)  A great friend and somebody who has been really doing great work over her first couple of years in Congress -- Congresswoman Gwen Moore.  Please give her a big round of applause.  (Applause.)  

And thank you, Eric, for the wonderful tour that you provided to us.  Please give Eric Apfelbach a big round of applause -- CEO of ZBB.  (Applause.)

It is great to be here.  I just had a chance to see some of the batteries that you’re manufacturing and talk to a few of the men and women who are building them.  And the reason I’m here today is because at this plant you’re doing more than just making high-tech² batteries.  You’re pointing the country towards a brighter economic future.

Now, that’s not easy.  We’ve been through a terrible recession -– the worst that we’ve seen since the Great Depression.  And this recession was the culmination³（顶点，高潮） of a decade that fell like a sledgehammer（大锤） on middle-class families.  For the better part of 10 years, people were seeing stagnant⁴（停滞的，不景气的） incomes and sluggish⁵（萧条的，迟钝的） growth and skyrocketing health care costs and skyrocketing tuition bills, and people were feeling less secure economically.

And few parts of the economy were hit harder than manufacturing.  Over the last 10 years, the number of people working in manufacturing shrank by a third.  And that left millions of skilled, hardworking Americans sitting idle, just like the plants were sitting idle.  That was before the recession hit. Obviously once the recession took hold, millions more were struggling in ways that they never imagined.  And there’s nobody here who hasn’t been touched in some way by this recession.  And certainly a state like Wisconsin or my home state of Illinois can tell a lot of stories about how badly hit manufacturing was, particularly in the Midwest.

Now, there’s some who suggest this decline is inevitable⁶（必然的） . But I don’t see it that way -– and I know neither do you.  Yes, times are tough.  But we’ve been through tough times before.  And we’ve made it through because we are resilient（有弹力的） -- Americans are resilient.  We don't give in to pessimism⁷（悲观，厌世） ; we don't give in to cynicism.  We fight for our future.  We work to shape our own destiny as a country.

And that’s what we’ve been trying to do since I took office. We’ve been fighting on all fronts -– inch by inch, foot by foot, mile by mile -– to get this country moving forward again, and going after every single job we can create right here in the United States of America.

So we’re investing in 21st century infrastructure⁸ -- roads and bridges, faster Internet access, high-speed railroads -- projects that will lead to hundreds of thousands of private sector⁹（私营部门） jobs, but will also lay the groundwork so that our kids and our grandkids can keep prospering¹⁰.

We’ve cut taxes for small businesses that hire unemployed¹¹ workers.  In fact, I’ve signed seven other small business tax cuts so that entrepreneurs（企业家） can help expand and buy new equipment and add more employees.  We’ve taken emergency steps to prevent layoffs¹² of hundreds of thousands of teachers and firefighters and police officers, and other critical public servants in our communities.  And I think that Governor Doyle will testify that we have made progress in part because everybody has pulled together.  There was a great danger of even greater layoffs all across this state for vital services that would affect our kids and our families.  These folks would have otherwise lost their jobs because of state and local budget cuts.

And at the same time what we've been trying to do -- and that's why I'm here at ZBB -- is to jumpstart（安装，引进） a homegrown, clean energy industry –- building on the good work of your governor and others in this state.  That’s why I’m here today.  Because of the steps we’ve taken to strengthen the economy, ZBB received a loan that’s helping to fund an expansion of your operations.  Already, it’s allowed ZBB to retain nearly a dozen workers.  And over time, the company expects to hire about 80 new workers.  This is leading to new business for your suppliers, including MGS Plastics and other manufacturer here in Wisconsin.

And ZBB is also planning to take advantage of a special tax credit（税收抵免） to build another factory in southeastern Wisconsin, so we can create even more jobs and more opportunity.  And Eric is confident that you can expand because you’re seeing rising demand for advanced batteries.  And all this is part of steps we’ve taken in clean energy -– steps that have led to jobs manufacturing wind turbines and solar panels, building hybrid¹³（混合的，杂种的） and electric vehicles, modernizing¹⁴ our electric grid¹⁵ so that we have more sources of renewable energy but we can also use it more effectively.

We expect our commitment to clean energy to lead to more than 800,000 jobs by 2012.  And that’s not just creating work in the short term, that’s going to help lay the foundation for lasting¹⁶ economic growth.  I just want everybody to understand --just a few years ago, American businesses could only make 2 percent of the world’s advanced batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles -- 2 percent.  In just a few years, we’ll have up to 40 percent of the world’s capacity.