The transcript (compiled from my audio recording and a White House transcript):

President Obama: [applause]  You don’t need to do that. It’s good to see you.  Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Everybody, everybody have a seat. Uh, usually they announce me with some fancy thing, I think I messed up and I just walked out. [laughter]  So, I hope you didn’t mind. But on the way out, if you want, we can play the Ruffles and Flourishes and all that

Uh, I, I want to, before I start, acknowledge, uh, some people who have just done a wonderful job for this area, but also a wonderful job for the country. First of all, one of the best governors that we’ve got, uh, in the United States of America, Governor Jay Nixon. [applause] uh, one of my, not just my favorite senators but one of my favorite people, uh, and a great friend of mine who is fighting every day for the people of Missouri, Senator Claire McCaskill. [applause] We have two outstanding members of Congress, uh, one from this side and one from that side, Congressman Emanuel Cleaver [applause] and Congressman Dennis Moore. [applause] And finally I just want to acknowledge, uh, all the wonderful people at, uh, Smith Electric, uh, Vehicles and their energetic and outstanding staff.

It is outstanding to be here, and I’m not going to take a long time. I just want to spend some time shaking hands and thanking you for the great work that you’ve done. I just had a chance to get a tour and saw some of the battery powered trucks that you’re manufacturing. I had a chance to talk to some of the folks who build them. But the reason I’m here today is because, at this plant, you’re doing more than just building new vehicles. You are helping to fight our way through a vicious recession and you are building the economy of America’s future. Now, it’s not easy. We’ve gone through as bad a economic situation as we’ve had since the Great Depression. And this recession was a culmination of a decade of irresponsibility, a decade that felt like a sledgehammer hittin’ middle class families. For the better part of ten years, uh, people have faced stagnant incomes, skyrocketing health care costs, skyrocketing tuition costs, and declining economic security. And this all came to a head in a massive financial crisis that sent our economy into a free fall and cost eight million American jobs, including many in this community….

….So it was in the middle of this crisis that my administration, uh, walked through the door, and we had to make some difficult decisions, uh, at a moment of maximum peril, to avoid a great depression, uh, to make sure that we didn’t have a complete meltdown in our financial system. It was a moment when the markets were in turmoil and we were losing seven hundred fifty thousand jobs every month. Some of the decisions we made weren’t popular at the time, and some of them may still be unpopular today. But we made those decisions because we had to stop that free fall.  And because we made those hard choices, our economy is in a different place today than it was just a year ago.

One of those decisions was to provide critical funding to promising, innovative businesses like Smith Electric Vehicles. And because we did, there is a thriving enterprise here instead of a empty, darkened warehouse. Because of the grant that went to this company, we can hear the sounds of machines humming and people doing their work, instead of just the ghostly silence of a, of an emptied out building and the memory of workers who were laid off a long time ago. And we made this, that kind of decision all across America last year. And we were guided by a simple idea.  Government doesn’t have all the answers.  Ultimately, government doesn’t create all the jobs. Government can’t guarantee growth by itself. But what government can do is lay the foundation for small businesses to expand and to thrive, for entrepreneurs to open up shop and test out new products, for workers to get the training that they need, and for families to achieve some measure of economic security. And that role is especially important in tough economic times.

And that’s why, when my administration began, we immediately cut taxes, that’s right. Uh, you wouldn’t know it from listening to folks, but we cut taxes for working families and for small business owners all across American to help them weather the storm. Through our small business loans, and our focus on research and development, and our investment in high-tech, fast-growing sectors like clean energy, we’re helping to speed our recovery by harnessing the talent the drive and the innovative spirit of the American people. So our, our goal has never been to create another government program, our goal has been to spur growth in the private sector.

For example, right here at Smith, you’ve recently passed a milestone, hiring a fiftieth employee, and I know you’re on the way to hire fifty more.  And we’re seeing similar things all across America, with incentives and investments that are creating wind turbines and solar panels. We’re seeing investments in energy efficient appliances and home building materials, and in advanced battery technologies and clean energy vehicles. So just give you a couple examples, just last week, Abound Manufacturing in Colorado received backing for two plants to produce solar panels.  This is gonna create two thousand construction jobs and fifteen hundred permanent jobs. One of the plants is actually taking over what’s now an empty Chrysler supplier factory. Another company, uh, called Abengoa Solar, is now planning to build one of the world’s largest solar plants right here in the United States. And when it’s finish, uh, finished, this facility will be the first large scale solar plant in the United States that can actually store energy that it creates for later use, even at night.

All told, we expect energy investments alone to generate seven hundred thousand jobs over the next few years. And this is not just gonna boost our economy in the short term, this is gonna lay a platform for the future. It’s going to create opportunities year after year after year, decade after decade after decade, as companies like Smith, that start small, begin to expand. And I was just talking, uh, to your CEO, and he says he wants to open up twenty of these all across the country, so that in each region you’re able to service, Smith is able to service its customers, and they’re gonna have a reliable, uh, sense that, uh, Smith’s always gonna be there for them, making sure that customer satisfaction and performance is high.

I, I’ll give you another example. Just a few years ago, America had the capacity to build only about two percent of the world’s advanced batteries for electric and hybrid vehicles like Smith’s. Two percent, that was it. We account for twenty-five percent of the world’s economy and we were only making two percent of the world’s advanced batteries. But thanks to our new focus on clean energy and the work that’s taking place in plants like this one, we could have as much as forty percent of the world’s market by twenty-fifteen. Five years. That means jobs. But that also means we’re gonna have an expertise in a sector that’s just going to keep on growing all around the world for years to come. So all these efforts taken together are making a difference.

A year and a half ago, our economy was shrinking at six percent a year. Now it’s growing. The economy was bleeding jobs. We’ve now created private sector jobs, added private sector jobs, for six consecutive months. Now, obviously the progress we’ve made isn’t nearly enough to undo all the damage that was done as a consequence of the economic crisis. There are still five unemployed workers for every vacancy.
There’s still too many empty storefronts on Main Street all across America. And I’ve said since I took office that my administration will not rest until every American who is able and ready and willing to work can find a job, and a job that pays a decent wage and has decent benefits to support a family. We’re not there yet. We’ve got a long way to go. But what is absolutely clear is we’re moving in the right direction. We are headed in the right direction. And that’s, the surest way out of this storm is to go forward, not to go backwards. There are some people who argue that we should abandon some of these efforts. Some people who make the political calculation that it’s better to just say no to everything than to lend a hand to clean up the mess that we’ve been in. But my answer to those who don’t have confidence in our future, who want to stop, my answer is come right here to Kansas City. Come see what’s goin’ on at Smith Electric. I think they’re gonna be hard pressed to tell you that you’re not better off than you would be if we hadn’t made the investments in this plant.

For the naysayers, they ought to travel all across America and meet the people that I’ve met at places like Navistar in Indiana, where folks are being hired to build new electric trucks, or Siemens Wind Power in Iowa, where they’re making wind turbines in a factory that used to be empty just like this one, or Celgard, which is a battery technology company in North Carolina that hired more than fifty people because of the investments we made, or Poet Biorefinery here in Missouri that’s putting people to work harvesting homegrown energy. While they’re at it, they ought to talk to all the small business owners who’ve gotten tax breaks to pay for their health plans and new SBA loans to expand or keep their doors open, and that includes tens of millions of dollars in loans for companies right here in Kansas City. Or they ought to talk to the crews that are rebuilding all the highways and laying tracks for new rail lines, including road projects that are putting hundreds of people to work in this area. They ought to talk to the scientists who are toiling day and night to develop the technologies and the cures with the potential to improve our economy and our health and our well being. And they might want to talk to the teachers who didn’t get laid off because of the budget help that we gave the state of Missouri, who are then going to be teaching our kids and they’re being incentivized to reform how they do business so we’ve got the best education system in the world and we’ve got the highest number of folks who are goin’ to community colleges or four year colleges than any place in the world.

That’s how we’re going to take charge of our destiny. That’s how we create jobs and create lasting growth. That’s how we ensure that America doesn’t just limp along, maybe recover to where we were before, but instead that we’re prospering, this nation leads the industries of the future. I mean, this has been a difficult time for America right now, two years of brutal recession, a decade of economic insecurity. And there are gonna be some hard days ahead. That’s the truth. It’s going to take a while for us to dig ourselves out of this hole. But what you are proving here, each and every one of you who work here at Smith Electric, is the promise of a brighter future. What you’re proving is that if we hold fast to that spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation that’s always defined America, we’re not just gonna emerge from this period of turmoil, we’re gonna to emerge stronger than we were before. You’re proving that as long as we keep on moving forward, nobody can stop us. And for that I want to thank you. Uh, you are setting a model for what we need to be doing all across the country.

So congratulations.  Thank you very much.  [applause]

Bryan Hansel (pdf), CEO of Smith Electric Vehicles, gave a number of interviews before the President’s arrival at the plant. Yes, that’s The stenographer standing in the background!

From the White House background release:

Bryan Hansel, President, Chief Executive Officer and Director (tour guide)

Mr. Hansel has served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Smith U.S. since inception. Mr. Hansel has been previously involved with several successful technology launches. From 2004 until 2008, Mr. Hansel served as Chief Executive Officer for Evo Medical Solutions. From 2001 until 2004 Mr. Hansel was Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of ReyHan PGF, a national graphics art pre-press manufacturer. Mr. Hansel is a graduate of the MIT Birthing of Giants program for American’s best CEOs and entrepreneurs.

The audience consisted of the management and employees of the plant, a few volunteers, and a few invited guests (including elected officials), numbering perhaps seventy-five individuals. The number of credentialed media was probably somewhat below that – but it was close.

The President greeted employees of the plant (I believe the manufacturing line workers were dressed in black) after his speech.

Uh, is the President looking at me?

Previously: White House Conference Call Preview of President Obama’s Visit to Kansas City

We’ll be covering President Obama’s visit to Kansas City tomorrow, both at the Smith Electric Vehicle plant and at one of the fundraising events for Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan’s U.S. Senate campaign. As a prelude to tomorrow’s activities the White House offered a media conference call with administration officials this afternoon on the Recovery Act event:

The White House

Office of Media Affairs

For Immediate Release

July 7, 2010

CONFERENCE CALL: Administration Officials to Preview the President’s Upcoming Visit to Kansas City, Missouri

WASHINGTON- Today, at 1:00 p.m. EDT Jared Bernstein, Chief Economist to Vice President Biden, and Matt Rogers, Senior Advisor to Energy Secretary Chu will hold a conference call to preview the President’s upcoming visit to Kansas City, Missouri.  

In Kansas City on July 8, President Obama will visit Smith Electric Vehicles where he will tour the facilities and deliver remarks on the economy to workers.  Smith Electric Vehicles is an all-electric, zero emissions commercial truck manufacturer that received a $32 million Recovery Act grant to build all-electric trucks.  The award, which is part of the $2.4 billion in Recovery Act advanced battery and electric vehicle grants the President announced last August, is helping Smith Electric establish operations at a re-purposed jet engine overhaul facility at the Kansas City International Airport, the first of as many as 20 regional assembly plants Smith Electric plans to open in the U.S….

The transcript:

Matt Lehrich, White House Communications: Hey everybody, it’s Matt Lehrich, in White House Communications, thanks for joining us today.  We are joined by Jared Bernstein who is chief economist for Vice President Biden and by Matt Rogers, Senior Advisor to Energy Secretary Chu. Gonna talk a little bit about, uh, what the President’s gonna be talking about tomorrow as well as the Recovery Act more broadly, and some of the specific programs under Department of Energy. And with that I’ll turn it over to Jared Bernstein….

….Jared Bernstein , Chief Economist to Vice President Biden: Uh, thank you very much Matt, and I, uh, very, uh, happy to be here along with, uh, another  Matt, Matt Rogers, uh, the Senior Advisor to Secretary Chu, and someone who’s, uh, been working tirelessly on, uh, uh, uh, efficiently implementing the kinds of programs we’re talking about today.

Uh, uh, before we even took office, uh, President-elect Obama recognized the urgent need to do two things. First, get economic medicine into system quickly and address what was then morphing into the deepest recession in decades. And second, incentivize investment that would both create good jobs today and plant the seeds of key new industries for tomorrow, particularly in the area of clean energy. The President’s trip to Kansas City, Missouri tomorrow to Smith Electric Vehicles is a great example of this second priority and Matt will present, uh, the details in a moment.

But first, I’d like to put the President’s visit in the broader context of the current economy and the Recovery Act. Now remember the act was passed back in February of two thousand and nine, a time when the nation’s job market was hemorrhaging jobs at, at a truly nightmarish rate. In just the first six months of last year, uh, the job market shed close to four million jobs. The Recovery Act quickly got the medicine into the system in the form of tax relief for over a hundred million working families, relief for strapped states as well, as millions who had lost their jobs and needed fast help making their family budgets. Almost immediately, as these stimulus dollars began to circulate throughout the economy the pace of job losses slowed and now we’ve seen net job growth in six of the last seven months. Now think about the pace of this turnaround. As I noted a second ago, in the first six months of last year we shed three point seven million private sector jobs. In the first six months of this year we’ve added five hundred and ninety-three thousand private sector jobs. All told the Recovery Act has widely credited with creating or saving two and a half million jobs so far, on track to create or save three and a half million by the end of this year. That’s solid movement in the right direction, but it’s not good enough. While this economic recovery that’s underway is slowly being felt in many parts of the country it’s clearly not yet provided the American middle class with, uh, the, the full [inaudible] of opportunities they need and they deserve. We’ve got to do more, uh, a lot more, to build on the momentum, uh, achieved thus far. And that’s what the President’s trip tomorrow is all about.

The Smith Electric story provides a great microcosm of the Recovery Act’s innovation agenda. First, while the quickly acting programs got up and running right away, folks on Matt’s team over at DOE, the Department of Energy, were busy choosing the best applicants, the ones who were gonna deliver the best bang for the buck from applicants to programs like the electric vehicle grants one. And this two point four billion dollar program is a subset of over one hundred billion dollars of innovation investments in clean energy, health IT, grid modernization, high speed rail, and broadband Internet access. It’s precisely by planting these seeds that the federal government incentivizes private capital to come in off of the sidelines and get to work building new sectors of our economy, and in the process, creating good jobs here in America. In fact, the two point four billion dollars from the electric vehicle program leverages up dollar for dollar partnering with private investment to increase the American footprint in this industry. Now last year the U.S. had only two factories manufacturing advanced vehicle batteries. And the produced less than two percent of the world’s advanced vehicle batteries. While the investment from the re, with the investment from the Recovery Act, by twenty-twelve thirty factories are expected to come online with capacity to produce more than twenty percent of the world’s advanced batteries, enough batteries and components to support five hundred thousand plug-in and hybrid electric vehicles.

The economics of all this are very compelling right now. The American middle class needs robust job growth, but that’s not all. In order to tap the productive potential of the greatest workforce in the world and create lasting opportunities for working Americans, the ones they need and deserve, our firms and our industries must overcome a set of steep market barriers to entry and expansion that they currently face, including tight credit, high fixed costs, scale economies, and highly aggressive competition from abroad. Programs like the advance battery grants can help businesses overcome these barriers and that leads to good jobs here at home. That in turn leads to higher living standards for working families as they finally have a clean shot at claiming their fair share of the growing economy, something that has eluded them for decades as economic growth was too often a spectator sport for the middle class. It’s a whole other dimension of the Recovery Act at work and we’re excited to see it unfold as the new economic expansion gets underway. Uh, Matt.

Matt Rogers, Senior Advisor to Energy Secretary Chu: Thank you Jared and, and thanks to that, uh, good, uh, overview of where we are overall in the Recovery Act. Smith specifically received a thirty-two million dollar grant under the Recovery Act. They matched this with thirty-six million dollars in their own, uh, private capital as part of a project to build five hundred all electric trucks in Kansas City. This was all part of the two point four billion dollars in battery and transportation electrification awards we announced last August. And these are, again, all electric trucks that will be used by Coca-Cola, AT and T, Staples, Frito Lay, Pacific Gas and
Electric, and Kansas City and Power and Light in their fleets. These all electric trucks have a hundred mile range. They can carry sixteen thousand pounds, making these vehicles very well suited for stop and go short haul circuits for delivery, equipment installation, uh, and maintenance, uh, service truck fleets. Like those, uh, we mentioned earlier.

These all electric trucks should deliver significantly lower fuel costs, lower operating costs, less particulate [inaudible] and CO2 pollution than the largely diesel  powered vehicles that they will replace, uh, in these fleets. Smith’s assembling these vehicles in an eighty thousand square foot facility at Kansas City International Airport that used to actually be a jet engine overhaul, uh, facility. Smith has three assembly lines, uh, in operation, uh, today. Uh, total employment for this facility under this contract, uh, will grow to seventy, but we expect there is a large market for these, uh, electric trucks. And we expect demand to grow as the market proves out the economics for these vehicles.

Importantly this investment is part of the administration’s major push to restructure the transportation sector, reducing our dependence on oil, improving our environment, developing god jobs, uh, today, and laying the foundation for long term economic growth by positioning the United States as a leader in high growth markets like the electric vehicle, uh, markets for the twenty-first century. This is also an important part of a Kansas City story, where Kansas City is building out a, uh, very attractive smart grid network, also under the Recovery Act, uh, and it developed a, a , uh, green zone within Kansas City that is bringing in, uh, renewables, more transportation electrification, uh, and doing a whole set of things around energy efficiency within the, within the community there. So it’s a great story about growing on a national basis and it’s also a very good story about, uh, Kansas City….

We plan on plenty of coverage of the two events tomorrow.