HILLSBORO, Oregon: President Barack Obama vowed Friday to make America “the best place on Earth to do business,” making his case for investments that have sparked a raging budget battle with Republicans.

Obama traveled to Intel's most sophisticated semiconductor plant in Oregon to tout his plans to invest in science and education despite seeking ways to rein in spending in other areas to deal with a ballooning deficit.

“In a world that is more competitive than ever before, it's our job to make sure that America is the best place on earth to do business,” Obama said,

“Even as we have to live within our means, we can't sacrifice investments in our future,” Obama said.

“If we want the next technological breakthrough that leads to the next Intel to happen here in the United States -- not in China or not in Germany...then we have to invest in America's research and technology, in the work of our scientists and our engineers.”

Obama's budget released on Monday would shift billions towards technology and green energy sectors, and into transportation systems, while imposing spending freezes and trimming unaffordable projects.

But Republicans complain Obama is wasting money on big spending programs while doing little to bring the deficit, forecast to reach $1.65 trillion this year, under control.

Since his State of the Union address last month, Obama has been trying to convince Americans that their country can only compete with nations like China and India with a burst of innovation and new investment.

“If we want to make sure Intel doesn't have to look overseas for skilled, trained workers, then we've got to invest in our people -- in our schools, in our colleges, in our children,” Obama said in Oregon.

“Basically, if we want to win the future, America has to out-build, and out-innovate, and out-educate and out-hustle the rest of the world. That's what we've got to do.” At the Intel plant, Obama inspected the company's Transmission Electron Microscope Lab, and later admitted he had trouble getting his brain around the advanced science on display.

He also marveled at a high school science project he was shown, in which students made programmable robots with Lego bricks.

“I'm thinking, now this is more my speed, I used to build some pretty mean Lego towers when I was a kid,” Obama joked, before adding that the students were doing highly sophisticated work.

Obama also named Intel chief executive Paul Otellini to his jobs council on Friday, in a move to harness the power of innovation to ignite economic and employment growth.

The move was the latest sign of Obama reaching out to business leaders with whom he had a testy relationship during his first two years in office, dominated by the aftermath of the worst economic meltdown in decades.

Otellini will serve on the president's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, an advisory board, headed by General Electric chief executive Jeffrey Immelt, that is dedicated to finding new ways to boost growth, hiring and the education and training of US workers.

Intel announced plans separately to invest more than five billion dollars to build a new chip manufacturing facility in Arizona.

Intel said the new Arizona factory will be the “most advanced, high-volume semiconductor manufacturing facility in the world,” creating transistors with a minimum feature size of 14 nanometers.

Late on Thursday, Obama dined in San Francisco with a hall of fame of Internet pioneers including ailing Apple CEO Steve Jobs, before traveling to Oregon.

The group also included Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Yahoo president and CEO Carol Bartz, Twitter CEO Dick Costello and Google chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt.