TROY, N.Y. — President Obama called on Monday for "a new generation of innovation," releasing what he described as a strategy to build on more than $100 billion in economic stimulus funding to promote progress in such areas as clean energy, health care and basic research.
"As we emerge from this current economic crisis, our great challenge will be to ensure that we don't just drift into the future," Obama said in a speech at Hudson Valley Community College. He said his strategy was aimed at building an economy better equipped to compete internationally, avoid cycles of boom and bust and create "the jobs of the future."
Accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden's wife, Jill Biden, a community college professor in Northern Virginia, Obama also used the occasion to promote his education goals, notably the opportunities offered by two year community colleges.
"By 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world," he predicted to applause from assembled students, faculty, lawmakers and local officials. "We used to be No. 1.We should be No. 1 again."
Pledging to strengthen the U.S. commitment to research and development, Obama said his administration intends to reverse a steady decline of federal investment in the sector over the past four decades as a share of national income. He noted that basic research in the past had led to such breakthroughs as solar panels, CAT scans and global positioning systems, and he declared a goal of putting funds equal to 3 percent of U.S. gross domestic product into research and development.
After the speech, Obama headed to New York City to launch a week of global diplomacy at the United Nations, facing fresh evidence from one of his top generals of the burdens and difficulties of America's international responsibilities.
In New York, Obama planned to tape an appearance on the Late Show With David Letterman, becoming the first sitting president to do so, before starting his participation in a three-day session of the United NationsGeneral Assembly. Later, he travels to Pittsburgh to host the Group of 20 economic summit.
He will hold individual discussions with several world leaders during the international forum and will deliver a speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday. Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Obama will lay out "his view of international cooperation in the 21st century and the need to move beyond old divisions."
On Thursday, Obama will chair a meeting of the 15-member U.N. Security Council.
The war in Afghanistan is likely to dominate many of Obama's side discussions, which come in the wake of revelations that U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal concluded in a memo to the president that the war will not succeed unless he gets significant additional troops soon.
"Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term(next 12 months) - while Afghan security capacity matures - risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible," McChrystal says in the report, which was obtained by The Washington Post.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 09/22/2009