Obama Tries to Engineer a Comeback

The business community may yet prove to be President Barack Obama’s best friend, if it can put Americans back to work.

Today, the president’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness proposed some ideas on how to create 1 million new jobs over the next couple of years. Business leaders dominate this council, which is chaired by General Electric Co. chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt.

Obama traveled to the Durham, North Carolina, campus of Cree Inc., today for the second meeting of his jobs council. Cree, which manufactures energy-efficient LED lighting, is a favorite tour stop for Obama administration officials. Obama visited the facility during his presidential campaign in 2008, and Vice President Joe Biden stopped by in March 2010 to highlight the jobs created there by a tax credit for domestic advanced manufacturing, which was funded by the economic stimulus bill.

North Carolina also happens to be one of the key states in the president’s reelection strategy.

Obama, however, said Cree was an appropriate place for the jobs council to meet for another reason.

“You’re helping lead a clean-energy revolution,” he told Cree employees. “You’re helping lead the comeback of American manufacturing. This a company where the future will be won.”

To win that future, however, American companies will need a lot more high-skilled workers. Cree benefits from its location in the Research Triangle, home to Duke University, the University of North Carolina and North Carolina State University. Durham has created an engineering school at one of its high schools.

“Because you’ve got these great schools, you can hold your own talent draft—not just in basketball, but when it comes to highly skilled workers,” Obama said.

There’s a shortage of engineers in most of the country, however. “We’re falling behind in the very fields that we know are going to be our future,” Obama said.

That’s why the president and his jobs council today announced a new goal of training 10,000 new American engineers every year.

This won’t be another Washington spending program—this drive will be led by the private sector. Businesses will promote science, education, technology, and math education, and provide students with incentives to get degrees in these fields. They’ll hire more summer interns with STEM majors and provide funding to universities to boost their programs, Obama said.

Cree’s energy-efficiency credentials also made it an appropriate place for Obama to push his Better Buildings Initiative, a proposal that aims to reduce energy consumption in commercial buildings by 20 percent by 2020. This could be done by strengthening tax incentives for retrofitting buildings and providing guaranteed loans for these projects, according to the White House.

More than 114,000 new jobs would be created by this initiative, according to a study released today by the Real Estate Roundtable, the U.S. Green Buildings Council and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Many of these jobs would be in the hard-hit construction industry.

The jobs council today outlined other steps the federal government could take to boost employment in the short term: streamlining the permit process for infrastructure projects, making it easier for foreigners to travel to the United States, and expanding access to Small Business Administration loans.

The council will now turn its attention to longer-term strategies, such as fostering the growth of entrepreneurship and attracting more foreign investment in the U.S.

Business groups applauded the council’s efforts so far.

“We are encouraged by many of the council’s proposals,” the Business Roundtable said.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is confident the council “will make, solid, practical recommendations to spur job growth and economic recovery,” said chamber President and CEO Tom Donohue, a frequent critic of Obama.

“Ultimately job growth is going to be driven by the private sector,” Obama told the council, before his speech at Cree. “But we can make some smart decisions to encourage businesses to feel like this is the right time to invest, and that America is the right place to invest.”

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Kent Hoover is the Washington bureau chief for bizjournals.