President Obama has high hopes for the clean-energy industry going forward in the U.S. While visiting a battery maker in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin Monday, Obama said the government’s commitment to clean industry, which includes plenty of incentives, will produce more than 800,000 jobs by 2012.

“And that’s not just creating work in the short term,” Obama said, according to the Associated Press. “That’s going to help lay the foundation for lasting economic growth.”

The government’s commitment to clean-energy was a major portion of the government’s $862 billion stimulus enacted at the height of the recession. Republicans remain skeptical of the plan, but Obama countered the Republican plan was what led to the country’s worst recession since the Great Depression.

“What we don’t need, the worst thing we could do, is to go back to the very same policies that created this mess in the first place,” he said. “The most important thing we can do right now is to keep moving forward.”

Obama’s three-day cross-country tour, designed to promote his economic plan as well as raise money for Democrats facing elections November, will continue to Los Angeles and Seattle tomorrow, followed by Columbus, Ohio on Wednesday.