President Obama touted Monday the administration’s green-energy efforts in rural communities—when asked about 15 percent unemployment in Martinsville and Henry County, Va., in an interview with local affiliate WDBJ.
WDBJ REPORTER: Mr. President, the last time you were visiting the Martinsville, Henry County area, one of the things you told those folks is that if you were voted into office, you would think about them every day. Unemployment still well over 15 percent—why should they reelect you? Why should they give you four more years?
OBAMA: Well, obviously, it’s been a huge challenge since I was last in that region. We’ve gone through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and everybody I think has been impacted by the economic crisis that followed. The good news is that we’re starting to see progress. For example, one of the things I talked about in that region was the possibility of us really doubling down on clean energy—wind, solar—I think it’s a huge opportunity for rural communities. We have been able to almost double our investment in clean energy; that’s something we’re going to continue to push not just in the southern regions of Virginia, but all across the country. The rural economy generally has been moving in the right direction. We’ve seen high commodity prices—the highest that we’ve seen in a very long time; high exports, which is helping to accelerate business investment in the region. But obviously we’ve got a huge amount of work to do. One of the things we can still do in that region as well is work through the community colleges to make sure that workers who are displaced, folks who are still out there looking for work, that they’re able to get trained for some of these new jobs in the future.