Bush in Ohio today

What's ahead:


THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary
(Cleveland, Ohio)
___________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release July 10, 2007


PRESS GAGGLE BY
SCOTT STANZEL

Aboard Air Force One
En Route Cleveland, Ohio


9:59 A.M. EDT

MR. STANZEL: Good morning, everyone. We are on our way to Cleveland, Ohio. I'll give a run through of the President's day, and then take your questions. The President had his normal briefings this morning at 8:00 a.m. On Air Force One today we have Representative Steve LaTourette, Republican from Ohio.

At 10:45 a.m. the President visits GrafTech International, Ltd. GrafTech manufactures carbon and graphite products for industrial applications, and they also engineer and are developing new fuel cell components from natural graphite. So the President will take a tour there. At 11:40 a.m. the President will have some lunch with community leaders in Cleveland. We'll announce that location once we get closer to that. You should all have the list of participants for that lunch already.

At 1:00 p.m. the President is visiting Cleveland Clinic. The Cleveland Clinic, as you're probably all familiar, is a not-for-profit, multi-specialty academic medical center that integrates clinical and hospital care with research and education. And the President will take a tour there and have an opportunity to discuss with the leaders at the hospital how they are working to improve quality of care through information technology and outcome measurements.

At 1:45 p.m. the President will make remarks to the Greater Cleveland Partnership, with is a association of companies in Northeast Ohio. And they have approximately 16,000 members. And there will be about 400 invited guests to that, including members of the partnership of the Cleveland Clinic and local business leaders.

So that's the President's day. And with that, I'll take your questions.

Q Scott, in the speech, can you give us a preview of what the President is going to address related to Iraq?

MR. STANZEL: First of all, the President is coming to Cleveland today -- he'll talk about a number of things. This is really an opportunity to have a deep dive on the important issues that the President believes are impacting the American people. The President will talk about the issue of Iraq and the war on terror. He'll also talk about how Congress should move forward on energy legislation, and also on health care and how we empower individuals to have greater care -- greater ability and authority to make their own health care decisions. So much in the way that we did last year in Miami and Chicago in June and July, this is an opportunity to take a deep dive.

On the issue of Iraq, the President will continue to talk about the things that he has discussed in the past, and that is why it's important to continue to take the fight to the terrorists. The surge, as we've noted, is just a couple weeks underway, in terms of the full complement of troops.

As you may have heard him talk about on the 4th of July, you know, we all want to get to a day when we don't have 159,000 American troops on the front lines. We want to get to a time when the Iraqis are better able to account for their own security and have made progress on the economic and political fronts. So there will be an opportunity for the President to talk about that today, as well.