India, China growing much rapidly, says Obama

Washington, Jun 24 (PTI) US President Barack Obama has
said that countries like India and China are on the move and
growing much rapidly, warning that America is facing stiff
competition from these nations.
"There are rapidly growing nations like China and
India - they're hungry; they're on the move," Obama said at a
fund raiser event in New York wherein he disclosed that one of
the reasons why he ran for presidency in 2008 was because it
is now a world where America is facing stiff competition for
good jobs.
"For a long time we were told that the best way to win
this competition was to undermine consumer protections,
undermine clean air and clean water laws, hand out tax breaks
to millionaires and billionaires, and everything would work
out just fine. It did not work out well. In fact, if you look
at our history, you'll see that philosophy has never worked
our very well," Obama said.
At another speech in New York, Obama said a lot has
changed since then.
"I am a little grayer. My daughters say it makes me
look distinguished. And Michelle says it makes me look old.
But I think back to that day in Grant Park on Election Day,
and speaking to the American people and trying to absorb this
incredible honor. And I said to so many of you that as special
as this night was, this was not the end; this was just the
beginning," he said.
"The reason I said that was because I had decided to
run for President because I thought the gap had grown too
large between the country we know we can be and the country as
it was. We'd gone through a decade in which incomes and wages
for ordinary people had actually gone down," he said.
"We had gone through a decade that had seen a
hemorrhaging of manufacturing in this country. We had gone
through a decade in which the costs of everything from health
care to college tuition to gas were going up and too many
families were just treading water. We'd gone through a decade
of two wars, a diminished respect for America around the
world," he said.
Obama said his track record of the last two and a
half years is one that he could not be prouder of.
"But what is also true is we've got so much work left
to do, because there are still millions of people across the
country who are hurting. I hear from them every day. People
who send out 16, 30, 50 resumes, and haven’t gotten an answer
back and are starting to feeling they will never find a job
again. People who have lost their homes. People who have seen
their small business and their life savings lost in the
crisis," he said.
"Some of the big projects that we set for ourselves
during the campaign have not yet been done. We still don't
have an energy policy that is suitable for the 21st century...
We still have that project to deal with climate change in a
serious way. Those things haven’t changed," he said.
"We still have so much more work to do on education.
We have made great strides, but we have to hit the goal that I
set that once again we will have the highest proportion of
college graduates of any country in the world," Obama said.
"Every single young person who is willing to apply
themselves can afford to go to college without taking on
hundreds of thousands of debt. That is still something that
we've got to accomplish," he said.