Remarks in a discussion at Southridge High School in Beaverton, Oregon

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, August 23, 2004

I appreciate you coming. Chris is one of the tallest soldiers in the army of compassion. [Laughter] Proud you're here. I want to thank you and Christine for coming. It's great to see you again.

A stronger America is one in which people can find work and our economy is vibrant. Listen, we've been through a lot together when you think about it. Over the past 3 1/2 years, we have been through an awful lot. We've been through a recession. That means things are going backwards. [Laughter] We've been through a corporate scandal. By the way, we passed tough laws. It ought to be abundantly clear to CEOs in corporate America that we expect there to be honesty in the boardrooms of our country. We got attacked, and all of this affected our economy, affected our psychology as well.

But we've overcome these obstacles. We've overcome them because we've got a great workforce. We've overcome them because the entrepreneurial spirit is strong, and we're going to talk to some entrepreneurs here in a minute. We've overcome it because we got great farmers and ranchers in this country. You know, we've overcome a lot because the soul of this country is strong. I think--I will argue strongly that we overcame these economic problems as well because of well-timed tax cuts.

Nationally, the economy is strong. It's getting strong. We've added about 1.5 million jobs. Nationwide, the unemployment rate is 5.5 percent. Here in the State of Oregon, you've been struggling. After all, your resource industry got hit hard. High-tech got hit hard. The recession hurt. Your unemployment rate, however, has gone from 8.7 percent to 6.8 percent. It's getting better, but there's more work to do. There's more work to do. And I want to share with you some of the things that I think we ought to be doing to make sure this economy continues to grow so people can find a job and to make sure jobs stay here in America.

First, we've got to make sure we got reasonable energy policy. We've got to be less dependent on foreign sources of energy. I've come to your State several times, and I said one thing we must not do is to destroy the hydroelectric power of the State of Oregon and the State of Washington in order to have a reasonable energy policy. Turns out we're capable of preserving the dams and protecting the fish, and we're showing people we're able to do so.

In order to make sure we keep jobs here, we've got to have health care, reasonable health care policies that make health care available and affordable. I'm going to talk to these small-business owners, and you're going to hear from--maybe not from these, but I can assure you you'll hear from other small-business owners that they're having trouble meeting the health care demands. Health care costs are going up. I think one way to handle that is to allow small businesses to pool risk across jurisdictional boundaries so that they can afford insurance at the same rates as big companies are able to do.

We will continue to expand community health centers; those are places where low-income Americans can get primary care. We'd rather help people who need help in clinics rather than emergency rooms of hospitals, in order to help the cost of health care.