http://66.225.205.104/LM20100402.mp3
President Barack Obama visited a manufacturer in Charlotte, North Carolina today to plug the success of the stimulus bill. Celgard makes battery components for electric cars and received a $49 million stimulus grant from the Department of Energy to hire nearly 300 employees. Mr. Obama told workers the new jobs numbers are encouraging, but there's still a long ways to go. In Charlotte, the unemployment rate is nearly 13 percent. The president said the government can't reverse the toll of the recession overnight. "What it can do is build the infrastructure and create the incentives that will allow small businesses to add workers, that will help entrepreneurs to take a chance on an idea, that will lead manufacturers to set up in places like Charlotte. And that's what we did last year with the recovery act," said Obama. Charlotte leaders are trying to lure energy companies like Celgard to the area to help boost an economy that has relied heavily on banking.