Please, everybody have a seat. It is wonderful to be with all of you today. I want to make just a couple of quick acknowledgments. First of all, we have one of the fine senators from the great state of Maryland, Ben Cardin, in the house. Where's Ben? There he is right here. (Applause) Prince George's County Executive Rushern Baker is here. (Applause)

I want to thank Rick Wuest, the CEO and owner of Thompson Creek Manufacturing, and all the employees here at Thompson. Thank you so much for your hospitality and the great work that you're doing. (Applause) And I want to acknowledge the family and guests of those who are standing behind me today.

It is wonderful to be here at Thompson Creek, and I want to thank Rick for showing me how you manufacture more efficient windows at this factory. This is, as he explained to me, a family business. Rick was just 13 when his father Fred opened the company. And back then, his family lived above the store, and Rick started out sweeping the floors. Three decades later, Thompson Creek has expanded. It's already outgrown this new 80,000 square-foot facility that it moved into just three years ago. And I'll bet sometimes Rick still feels like he's living at the plant. (Laughter) That's what happens when you're in charge.

But building this business has been an extraordinary accomplishment for the Wuest family. And it speaks not only to him - it also speaks to all the employees here today, the hardworking men and women who make this company work. And it speaks to the promise of America. It's the idea that if you've got a dream and you're willing to work hard, then you can succeed.

That promise is at the heart of who we are as a people, and it's at the heart of our economic might. It's what helps give an entrepreneur the courage to start a business, or a company the confidence to expand. It's what leads to new products and new ideas, and technologies that have not only made us the world's largest economy, but also the most innovative economy in the world. Making it possible for businesses to succeed is how we ensure that our economy succeeds and all our people succeed. It's how we create jobs.

And that's what's guided my administration for the past two years. Government can't guarantee Thompson Creek or any business will be successful, but government can knock down barriers like a lack of affordable credit or high costs for investment or high costs for hiring - we can do something about that. Government can remove obstacles in your path.

And that's why we cut taxes for small businesses over the last two years. For example, with a tax break for hiring unemployed workers, Thompson Creek was able to grow its workforce from 200 employees to nearly 300 employees in just one year. And it took advantage of the tax credits that we put into place. We also passed a tax credit for products like energy-saving windows, and that led to a 55-percent boost in the sales at this firm.

Rick was telling me that when that tax credit got into place, the marketing arm of Thompson Creek got busy. (Laughter) And that's the right - that exactly what we intended. That's exactly what we wanted to see, is explaining to the American people you can save money on your energy bill, this is a smart thing to do, take advantage of it.

So incentives like these are helping companies across America. And the jobs numbers released this morning reflect that growth. The economy added more than 100,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate fell sharply.

Now, we know these numbers can bounce around from month to month. But the trend is clear. We saw 12 straight months of private sector job growth. That's the first time that's been true since 2006. The economy added 1.3 million jobs last year. And each quarter was stronger than the previous quarter, which means that the pace of hiring is beginning to pick up. We're also seeing more optimistic economic forecasts for the year ahead, in part due to the package of tax cuts I signed last month, including a payroll tax cut for workers and a series of tax cuts to encourage investment and innovation and hiring.

And I fought for that package because, even though our economy is recovering, we've still got a lot to do. This was a brutal recession that we went through, the worst in our lifetimes. It left a lot of destruction in its wake. More than 8 million jobs were lost. So even though we've created 1.3 million jobs and we saved a whole lot of jobs, you've still got a whole bunch of folks who are out there looking, still struggling. We've got a big hole that we're digging ourselves out of.

And so our mission has to be to accelerate hiring and to accelerate growth. And that depends on making our economy more competitive so that we're fostering new jobs in new industries, and training workers to fill them. It depends on keeping up the fight for every job and every business and every opportunity to spur growth. And so standing with me here today are men and women who will help America fulfill in this mission. Let me just introduce each of them.

We're joined, first of all, by Gene Sperling, who I have appointed Director of the National Economic Council. Give Gene a big round of applause. (Applause) Now, Gene has been an extraordinary asset to me and this administration over the past two years. He's been working with me. He led our efforts to pass the small business jobs bill to help companies all across America. He also helped negotiate the tax compromise that we passed at the end of this year. He's a public servant who has devoted his life to making this economy work