President Barack Obama tours the Jacksonville Port Authority (JAXPORT), in Jacksonville, Fla., July 25, 2013. President Obama is accompanied by, from left: Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx; Dennis Kelly, TraPac Regional VP & General Manager; Roy Schleicher, CEO, Jacksonville Port Authority; and Fred Wakefield, International Longshoreman's Association representative. (Official White House Photo by Amanda Lucidon)

In Jacksonville today, President Obama continued making the case for his vision for an economy that grows from the middle out, not the top down.

“Yesterday, in Illinois, I talked about what we need to do as a country to build a better bargain for the middle class and everybody who’s trying to get into the middle class -- a strategy that we’ve got to pursue, together, to make sure that everybody who works hard has a chance to get ahead in this 21st century economy,” he said.

"But I’m here today to specifically talk about the cornerstone, the essence of middle-class security, and that’s a good job in a growth industry”

We’ve got to help more manufacturers bring more jobs back to America. We’ve got to keep creating good jobs in manufacturing. We’ve got to create good jobs in wind and solar energy. We’ve got to tap into this natural gas revolution that’s bringing energy costs down in this country, which means manufacturers now want to locate here because they’re thinking that we’ve got durable, reliable supplies of energy. We’ve got to create more jobs today doing what you’re doing right here at JAXPORT -- and that’s building this country’s future. We need modern schools for our kids. We need modern power grids and fuel networks that can withstand stronger storms. And we need modern ports so we can move more goods made in America out to the rest of the world. If you want to create jobs right now, but also jobs that will have impacts for years, here’s the way to do it. We know strong infrastructure is a key ingredient to a thriving economy. That’s how the United States became the best place in the world to do business. In a couple of years, new supertankers are going to start coming through the Panama Canal. Those supertankers can hold three times the amount of cargo. We want those supertankers coming here to Jacksonville. If we’ve got more supertankers coming here, that means more jobs at the terminals. That means more warehouses in the surrounding area. That means more contractors are getting jobs setting up those warehouses. That means they’ve got more money to spend at the restaurant. That means the waitress has more money to spend to buy her iPod. It starts working for everybody.

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