Internet Info 1994 March/Internet Info CD-ROM (Walnut Creek) (March 1994).iso/inet/nren/nii.1993/tech.initiative.speech

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       E X E C U T I V E   O F F I C E   O F   T H E   P R E S I D E N T



                             THE WHITE HOUSE

                      Office of the Press Secretary
______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                          February 22, 1993


                         REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
                          AND VICE PRESIDENT TO
                        SILICON GRAPHICS EMPLOYEES

                             Silicon Graphics
                      Mountain View, California


10:00 A.M. PST


        THE PRESIDENT:  First of all, I want to thank you all for the
introduction to your wonderful company.  I want to thank Ed and Ken --we
saw them last night with a number of other of the executives from Silicon
Valley -- people, many of them with whom I've worked for a good length of
time; many of whom the Vice President's known for a long time in
connection with his work on supercomputing and other issues.

        We came here today for two reasons, and since mostly we just want
to listen to you I'll try to state this briefly.  One reason was to pick
this setting to announce the implementation of the technology policy we
talked about in the campaign, as an expression of what we think the
national government's role is in creating a partnership with the private
sector to generate more of these kinds of companies, more technological
advances to keep the United States always on the cutting edge of change
and to try to make sure we'll be able to create a lot of good new jobs
for the future.

        The second reason -- can I put that down?  We're not ready yet
for this.  The second reason I wanted to come here is, I think the
government ought to work like you do.  (Applause.)  And before that can
ever happen we have to be able to get the people, the Congress, and the
press who have to interpret all this to the people to imagine what we're
talking about.

        I have, for example, the first state government in the country
that started a total quality management program in all the departments of
government, trying to figure out how we could reinvent the government.
And I basically believe my job as President is to try to adjust America
in good ways so that we can win in the 21st century, so that we can make
change our friend and not our enemy.

        Ed said that you plan your new products knowing they'll be
obsolete within 12 to 18 months, and you want to be able to replace them.
We live in an era of constant change.  And America's biggest problem, if
you look at it through that lens, is that for too many people change is
an enemy, not a friend.  I mean, one reason you're all so happy is you
found a way to make change your friend, right?  Diversity is a strength,
not a source of division, right?  (Applause.)  Change is a way to make
money, not throw people out of work, right?

        If you decentralize and push decisions made down to the lowest
possible level you enable every employee to live up to the fullest of
their ability.  And you don't make them -- by giving them a six-week
break every four years, you don't force them to make these sharp
divisions between your work life and your private life.  It's sort of a
^L
seamless web.  These are things we need to learn in America, and we need
to incorporate even into more traditional workplaces.

        So I'd like to start -- we'll talk about the technology policy
later, and the Vice President, who had done so much work, will talk a lot
about the details at the end of this meeting.  But I just want to start
by telling you that one of our missions -- in order to make this whole
thing work we're going to have to make the government work differently.

        Example:  We cut the White House staff by 25 percent to set a
standard for cutting inessential spending in the government.  But the
work load of the White House is way up.  We're getting all-time record
telephone calls and letters coming in, and we have to serve our
customers, too.  Our customers are the people that put us there, and if
they have to wait three months for an answer to a letter, that's not
service.

        But when we took office, I walked into the Oval Office -- it's
supposed to be the nerve center of the United States -- and we found
Jimmy Carter's telephone system.  (Laughter.)  All right.  No speaker
phone, no conference calls, but anybody in the office could punch the
lighted button and listen to the President talk.  (Laughter.)  So that I
could have the conference call I didn't want but not the one I did.
(Laughter and applause.)

        Then we went down into the basement where we found Lyndon
Johnson's switchboard.  (Laughter.)  True story -- where there were four
operators working from early morning till late at night -- literally,
when a phone would come and they'd say, "I want to talk to the Vice
President's office," they would pick up a little cord and push it into a
little hole.  (Laughter.)  That's today -- right?

        We found procedures that were so bureaucratic and cumbersome for
procurement that Einstein couldn't figure them out, and all the offices
were organized in little closed boxes -- just the opposite of what you
see.

        In our campaign, however -- we ran an organization in the
presidential campaign that was very much like this.  Most decisions were
made in a great big room in morning meetings that we had our senior staff
in, but any 20-year-old volunteer who had a good idea could walk right in
and say, "here's my idea."  Some of them were very good and we
incorporated them.

        And we had a man named Ellis Mottur who helped us to put together
our technology policy who said -- he was one of our senior citizens; he
was in his 50s.  (Laughter.)  And he said, "I've been writing about high-
performance work organizations all my life.  And this is the first one
I've ever worked in and it has no organizational chart.  I can't figure
out what it looks like on paper, but it works."

        The Vice President was making fun of me when we were getting
ready for the speech I gave Wednesday night to the Congress; it was like
making sausage.  People were running in and out saying, put this in and
take this out.  (Laughter.)  But it worked.  You know, it worked.
(Applause.)

        So I want to hear from you, but I want you to know that we have
hired a person at the Office of Management and Budget who has done a lot
of work in creating new businesses and turning businesses around -- to
run the management part of that.  We're trying to review all these
indictments that have been issued over the last several years about the
way the federal government is run.  But I want you to know that I think a
major part of my missions is to literally change the way the national
government works, spends your tax dollars, so that we can invest more and
consume less and look toward the future.  And that literally will
^L
require rethinking everything about the way the government operates.

        The government operates so much to keep bad things from happening
that there's very little energy left in some places to make good things
happen.  If you spend all your time trying to make sure nothing bad
happens there's very little time and money and human energy left to make
good things happen.  We're going to try to pare away a lot of that
bureaucracy and speed up the decision-making process and modernize it.
And I know a lot of you can help.  Technology is a part of that, but so
is organization and empowerment, which is something you've taught us
again today.  And I thank you very much.  (Applause.)
        We want to do a question and answer now, and then the Vice
President is going to talk in more detail about our technology policy
later.  But that's what we and Ed agreed to do.  He's my boss today; I'm
doing what he -- (laughter.)  So I wonder if any of you have a question
you want to ask us, or a comment you want to make.

        Yes, go ahead.

        Q       Now that Silicon Graphics has entered the supercomputer
arena, supercomputers are subject to very stringent and costly export
controls.  Is part of your agenda to review the export control system,
and can industry count on export regulations that will keep pace with
technology advances in our changing world?

        THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Let me start off on that.  As you may know,
the President appointed as the Deputy Secretary of Commerce John
Rollwagon who was the CEO at Cray.  And he and Ron Brown, the Secretary
of Commerce, have been reviewing a lot of procedures for stimulating U.S.
exports around the world.  And we're going to be a very export-oriented
administration.

        However, we are also going to keep a close eye on the legitimate
concerns that have in the past limited the free export of some
technologies that can make a dramatic difference in the ability of a
Gaddafi or a Saddam Hussein to develop nuclear weapons or ICBMs.
        Now, in some cases in the past, these legitimate concerns have
been interpreted and implemented in a way that has frustrated American
business unnecessarily.  There are, for example, some software packages
that are available off the shelves in stores here that are, nevertheless,
prohibited from being exported.  And sometimes that's a little bit
unrealistic.  On the other hand, there are some in business who are
understandably so anxious to find new customers that they will not
necessarily pay as much attention as they should to what the customer
might use this new capacity for.  And that's a legitimate role for
government, to say, hold on, the world will be a much more dangerous
place if we have 15 or 20 nuclear powers instead of five or six; and if
they have ICBMs and so forth.

        So it's a balance that has to be struck very carefully.  And
we're going to have a tough nonproliferation strategy while we promote
more exports.

        THE PRESIDENT:  If I might just add to that -- the short answer
to your question, of course, is yes, we're going to review this.  And let
me give you one example.  Ken told me last night at dinner that --he
said, if we export substantially the same product to the same person, if
we have to get one permit to do it we'll have to get a permit every time
we want to do the same thing over and over again.  They always give it to
us, but we have to wait six months and it puts us behind the competitive
arc.  Now, that's something that ought to be changed, and we'll try to
change that.

        We also know that some of our export controls, rules and
regulations, are a function of the realities of the Cold War which aren't
there anymore.  But what the Vice President was trying to say,
^L
and he said so well -- I just want to reemphasize -- our biggest security
problem in the future may well be the proliferation of nuclear and
nonnuclear, like biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction to
small, by our standards, countries with militant governments who may not
care what the damage to their own people could be.  So that's something
we have to watch very closely.

        But apart from that, we want to move this much more quickly and
we'll try to slash a lot of the time delays where we ought to be doing
these things.

        Q       Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, you've seen scientific
visualization in practice here.  As a company we're also very interested
in ongoing research in high-performance computing and scientific
visualization.  Can we expect to see a change in the national scientific
agenda that includes scientific visualization?  Right now I don't see the
scientific visualization as being represented, for example, on the FCCSET
committee.

        THE VICE PRESIDENT:  It is a good question.  One of the people
who flew out here with us for this event and for the release of the
technology policy in just a few minutes is Dr. Jack Gibbons, who is in
the back of the room -- the President's science advisor and head of the
Office of Science and Technology Policy.  And he will be in charge of the
FCCSET process.  That's an acronym that -- what does it stand for, Jack -
- the Federal Coordinating Council on Science and Engineering Technology.
And visualization will play a key role in the deliberations of the
FCCSET.

        We were actually, believe it or not, talking about this a little
bit with Dr. Gibbons on the way over here.  I had hearings one time where
a scientist used sort of technical terms that he then explained --it made
an impression on me.  He said, if you tried to describe the human mind in
terms applicable to a computer you'd say we have a low bit rate but high
resolution.  (Laughter.)  Meaning --this is one of the few audiences I
can use that line with.  (Laughter and applause.)

        But he went on to explain what that means.  When we try to absorb
information bit by bit, we don't have a huge capacity to do it.  That's
why the telephone company, after extensive studies, decided that seven
numbers were the most that we could keep in short-term memory.  And then
they added three more.  (Laughter.)  But if we can see lots of
information portrayed visually in a pattern or mosaic, where each bit of
data relates to all of the others, we can instantly absorb a lot of
information.  We can all recognize the Milky Way, for example, even
though there are trillions of points of light, stars, and so forth.

        And so the idea of incorporating visualization as a key component
of this strategy is one that we recognize as very important and we're
going to pursue it.

        THE PRESIDENT:  Let me just add one thing to that.  First of all,
I told the crowd last night that the Vice President was the only person
ever to hold national office in America who knew what the gestalt of the
gigabit is.  (Laughter.)  But anyway -- and now we're going to get some
very funny articles out of this.  They're going to make fun of us for
being policy wonks.  (Laughter.)

        Let me say something to sort of take this one step further.  This
whole visualization movement that you have been a part of in your line of
work is going to merge in a very short time with the whole business in
traditional education theory called applied academics.  We're now finding
with just sort of basic computer work in the elementary schools of our
country dramatic differences in learning curves among people who can see
the work they're doing as opposed to people who are supposed to read it.
And we're now finding that the IQs of young people who might take a
vocational track in school may not be
^L
all that different from kids that would stay in a traditional academic
track and wind up at Stanford, but their learning patterns are
dramatically different.

        And there are some people -- this is a huge new discovery,
basically, that's coming into the whole business of traditional
educational theory.  So someday what you're doing here will revolutionize
the basic teaching in our schools, starting at kindergarten and going
forward, so that the world of work and the world of education will begin
to be merged backwards all the way to the beginning.  And it's going to
be, I think, the most important thing we've ever done.  And very
important for proving that in a diverse population all people can reach
very high levels of achievement.

        MR. MCCRACKEN:  The President and Vice President have also come
here today to present a new national technology policy for the country.
Do you want to --

        THE PRESIDENT:  We'll answer some more questions.  (Applause.)
I'm going to forego my time and just let him announce the policy, so we
can hear some more questions.  Got to give the man equal time, I know.
(Laughter.)

        Q       I'd just like to say, I didn't vote for you; I wish I
had.  (Laughter.)

        THE PRESIDENT:  I hope you feel that way four years from now.
(Laughter and applause.)

        Q       Well, that's actually why I'm standing up -- I really see
a possibility in what you stand for and I really think this is why you
were elected.  That you say you stand for change; you said that during
your campaign.  I think the company believed that.  They're counting on
you -- I'm nervous -- and I just want to say we're really with the
country behind you.  I think that's why the statistics are saying that
we're willing to have our taxes increased, we're willing to have cuts,
because you say you're really going to do it this time and decrease the
deficit.  I hope to God that you do.  We need it not just for this
present time, but by your actually fulfilling on this it will make a
major change in how we feel about government; that when government says
they're going to make a difference and they really come through, it will
make a huge impact for the future.  And I'm really personally behind you
all the way.  I wish I'd voted for you.  (Applause.)

        THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  I really appreciate that.  Let me
make one comment in response if I might.  I think it's important -- and
you can help others understand this -- to understand why we have to
reduce the deficit, which is something that is normally not done when
unemployment is high.  And unemployment is still too high.  Even though
we're in an economic recovery, most of our recovery is due to high
productivity from firms that, in turn, this time are not hiring new
people for all kinds of reasons.

        And we have to reduce the deficit for two reasons:  Number one,
if we don't -- we're already spending 15 percent of your tax money just
to pay interest on past debt.  If we don't change present patterns we'll
be over 20 cents by the year 2000.  That's money we should be spending on
education and technology in the future.

        Number two, the more money we take out of the pool of funds for
borrowing the more expensive it is for companies like this and other
companies that have to go into the markets and borrow to borrow.  Just
since the election, since we made it clear we were going to try to bring
the deficit down, long-term interest rates have dropped .7 of one
percent.  That is a huge savings for everybody that is going to borrow
money or that has a variable interest rate on a loan, whether it's a
^L
home mortgage or a business loan or a car loan or whatever.  That's
important.

        The second thing we're trying to do that I know you will also
appreciate is to shift the balance of money we do spend more away from
consumption toward investment.  Investments in education technology,
environmental cleanup, and converting from a defense to a domestic
economy.  That one of the bizarre things that happened to us in the '80s
is that we increased the deficit first through defenses expenses and then
through exploding health care costs and increasing interest payments.
But we reduced our investments in the future and the things that make us
richer.

        So those are the changes we're trying to effect.  Let me just
make one other point.  I will not support raising anybody's taxes unless
budget cuts also pass.  (Applause.)

        Q       One of the things that Silicon Graphics has been really
successful is selling into the international markets, approximately 50
percent of our revenues come internationally, including a substantial
market in Japan.  What types of programs does your administration plan to
help the high-growth companies of the '90s sell to the international
markets?

        THE PRESIDENT:  Two things.  First of all, we intend to try to
open new markets and new markets in our region.  That is, I believe that
high-growth companies are going to -- to keep America growing, I believe
high-growth companies are going to have to sell south of the border more.
And to do that we have to negotiate trade agreements that will help to
raise incomes in those countries even as we are growing.  That's why I
support, with some extra agreements, the NAFTA agreement; and why I hope
we can have an agreement with Chile, and hope we can have an agreement
with other countries like Argentina that are making a serious effort to
build market economies.  Because we want to build new markets for all of
you.

        With Japan, I think what we have to do is to try to continue to
help more companies figure out how to do business there and keep pushing
them to open their markets.  I don't want to close American markets to
Japanese products, but it is the only nation with which we have a
persistent and unchanging structural deficit.

        The product deficit with Japan is not $43 billion, which is our
 overall trade deficit, it is actually about $60 billion in product, in
manufactured production.  So we have -- we've got a lot of problems we
have to work out there.

        With Europe, we sometimes are in surplus, we're sometimes in
deficit, but it's a floating thing.  So it's more or less in balance.
With developing nations like Taiwan and Korea, those countries had big
surpluses with us, but as they became richer they brought them down, so
that we're more or less in balance.  We have our biggest trade
relationship with Canada and we're more or less in balance.

        So we have to work on this Japanese issue while trying to help
more of you get involved.  Let me make one final comment on that.  I
think we should devote more government resources to helping small and
medium-size companies figure out how to trade, because that's what the
Germans do with such great success and why they're one of the great
exporters of the world.  They don't waste a lot of money on the real big
companies that have already figured it out, but they have extra efforts
for small and medium-size companies to get them to think global from the
beginning of their endeavors.  And I think we're going to have to do more
of that.

        Q       In addition to concerns about the economy, Silicon
Graphics employees are also concerned about the environment.  Your
^L
economic plan does a great job of promoting R&D investment.  Are there
any elements that are specifically targeted to promote the application of
Silicon Graphics' technology to environmental-friendly initiatives such
as the electric car or the -- train?

        THE PRESIDENT:  I think I should let the Vice President answer
that since it's his consuming passion.  And if I do it, his book sales
will go up again.  (Laughter.)  You see, we devoted a lot of time and
attention to that because -- for two reasons.  One is the environment
needs it.  Secondly, we think it's wonderful economics, because I believe
that all these environmental opportunities that are out there for us
represent a major chunk of what people who used to be involved in defense
technologies could be doing in the future if we're going to maintain a
high wage base in America.

        So I'd like for the Vice President to talk a little about the
specifics that we're working on.

        THE VICE PRESIDENT:  That goal is integrated into the technology
plan as one of our key objectives.  The Japanese and the Germans are now
openly saying that the biggest new market in the history of world
business is the market for the new products, technologies and processes
that foster economic progress without environmental destruction.

        Some have compared the drive for environmental efficiency to the
movement for quality control and the quality revolution in the '60s and
'70s.  At that time, many companies in the United States felt that the
existing level of product quality was more or less ordained by the forces
of supply and demand and it couldn't be improved without taking it out of
the bottom line.  But the Japanese, taking U.S. innovations from Dr.
Demming and others, began to introduce a new theory of product quality
and simultaneously improved quality, profits, wages, and productivity.

        The environmental challenge now presents us with the same
opportunity.  By introducing new attention to environmental efficiency at
every step along the way, we can simultaneously reduce the impact of all
our processes on the environment, improve environmental efficiency and
improve productivity at the same time.  We need to set clear specific
goals in the technology policy, in the economic plan.

        And, you know, both the stimulus and the investment package focus
a great deal on environmental cleanup and environmental innovation.  And
whereas, we've talked a lot about roads and bridges in the past, and
they're a big part of this plan also, we're putting relatively more
emphasis as well on water lines and sewer lines and water treatment
plants and renovating the facilities in the national parks and cleaning
up trails; taking kids from inner cities and putting them to work
cleaning up trails in national parks, for example, as part of the summer
jobs programs.

        So you'll find when you look at both the technology plan and the
economic plan an enormous emphasis on the environment.  (Applause.)

        THE PRESIDENT:  Go ahead sir.  They say we have to quit in a
minute.  I'll take one more question after this.

        Q       Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, the news stories and
articles that the public has access to regarding the budget and the
economy are very often confusing and contradictory.  I might explain it
in the same terms you used:  the information is delivered low-bit rate,
but the problem is huge and requires the high-road's view.  So my
question is I wonder if you're using Lyndon Johnson's computer to analyze
the budget and the economy -- whether or not you might be open to using
some of the things you've seen here to get the bigger picture and also
communicate that to us.  (Laughter.)

^L
        THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  There are two things I'd like to
respond to on that and I'd like to invite you to help.  I'd like to
invite you to help and I'd like to invite you to help on two grounds:
One is the simple ground of helping to decide which visual images best
capture the reality of where we are and where we're going.

        Senator Moynihan and I went to Franklin Roosevelt's home in Hyde
Park, New York, just a couple of days ago.  You may have seen the press
on it.  And on the way back he said to me that the challenges that we
face are different from those that Roosevelt faced, but just as profound.
Unemployment was higher and America was more devastated when he took
office, he said, but everybody knew what the problem was.  Therefore, he
had a lot of leeway working with the Congress in the beginning to work
toward a solution.  Now, he said, we are facing severe challenges to a
century of economic leadership and it's not clear to every American
exactly what the dimensions of the problem are.

        The capacity you have to help me help the American people
conceptualize this is quite significant:  showing the trends in the
deficit, showing the trends in the investment, showing how the money is
spent now and how we propose to spend it.

        The second big problem we have you can see if you look at the
front page of USA Today today, which shows a traditional analysis,
yesterday's analysis -- of the business section -- of the economic
program.  It basically says, oh, it will bring unemployment a little and
it will increase economic growth a little if we do this, but not all that
much.  Now, why is that?  That's because traditional economic analysis
says that the only way the government can ever help the economy grow is
by spending more money and taxing less.  In other words, traditional
changing economics will run a bigger deficit.

        But we can't do that.  The deficit is already so big, I can't run
the risk to the long-term stability of this country by going in and doing
that.

        This analysis doesn't really make a distinction between
investment and consumption; doesn't take any account of what we might to
with the technology policy or a trade policy to make the economy grow
faster; has no way of factoring in what other good things could happen in
the private market if you brought long term interests rates down through
the deficit.

        So you could also help us to reconceptualize this.  A lot of the
models that dominate policymaking are yesterday's models, too.  I'll give
you just one example.  The Japanese had a deficit about as big as ours
and they were increasing spending at 19 percent a year --government
spending -- back in the early '70s when the oil prices went way up and
they were more energy-dependant than we were on foreign oil.  And they
just decided they had change it, but they couldn't stop investing.

        So they had a budget which drew a big distinction -- a literal
distinction -- legal distinction between investment and consumption and
they embarked on a 10 or 11-year effort to bring the budget into balance.
And during that time they increased investment and lowered unemployment
and increased growth through the right kind of spending and investment.

        And I want to lead in, if I might, and ask the Vice President
before we go to give you some of the specifics of this technology policy
by making one more pitch to you about this whole economic plan.  This
plan has 150 specific budget cuts.  And I will be welcome -- I'm welcome
to more.  I told the Republican leadership if they had more budget cuts
that didn't compromise our economy, if they helped us, I would be glad to
embrace them.  I'm not hung up about that, but I did pretty good in four
weeks to find 150.  And I'll try to find some more on my own.
^L

        It also has the revenue increases that you know about.  It also
has some spending increases and there will be debate about that.  There
will be people who say, well, just don't spend this new money, don't
immunize all the kids, don't fully fund Head Start, don't pay for this
technology policy, don't invest in all these environmental cleanup
things, and that way you won't have to raise taxes so much.

        The problem is, if you look at the historic spending trends, we
are too low on investment and too high on the deficit -- and both are
problems.  And secondly, we've got to have some of these economic
cooperations in order to move the economy forward.

        So I want you to listen to what the Vice President says in that
context.  Because what you will hear is, we don't need to do what we
think we should do in this area.  If we don't, I think we'll be out of
competition.  People like you will do fine because you've got a good
company here, but the country as a whole will fall behind.  And you can
help on both those points.

        So would you proceed?

        THE VICE PRESIDENT:  I want to give you just a few of the details
of this technology policy.  There will be a printed copy available and
you will be able to see for yourself all of the goals and all of the
elements of it.

        But I want to start by describing how it fits into the
President's economic plan.  You know, some of the special interests who
oppose the President's plan are saying to the American people, don't pass
this plan because everything is fine just the way it is.  Well, anybody
who says everything is fine with our economy hasn't been to California
lately.  We need some change.  We can't stand the status quo.
(Applause.)

        California has to participate in the recovery in order for
America to have a recovery that is worth the name recovery.  So that we
 can start creating new jobs.  And many of the high-skill, high-wage jobs
of the future are in technology areas.  And that's why a key component of
the President's economic plan is the technology policy that we're
announcing here today.

        It starts with an appreciation of the importance of continuing
basic R&D, because that's the foundation for all of the exciting products
that this company and others like this company come up with.  It
continues with an emphasis on improving education, because in order for
companies like this one to survive and prosper in the world economy, we
as a nation have to have highly educated, well-trained young men and
women coming out of colleges on to campuses like this -- it's not called
-- you call it a campus, right?  That's the term that's very common now.

        We also have to pay attention to the financial environment in
which companies like this have to exist.  In order for this company to
attract investors for the kind of products that you are building here,
you have got to be able to tell them that the interest rates are not
going to be too high if they're borrowing money to invest; you've got to
be able to tell them, look, President Clinton is making permanent the R&D
tax credit, for example, and there are going to be specific new
provisions in the law to  encourage investment in high-risk ventures that
are very common in the high-technology area.

        And then this plan makes specific investments in something called
the national information infrastructure.  Now, infrastructure is a five-
dollar word that used to describe roads, bridges, water lines, and sewer
lines.  But if we're going to compete in the 21st century, we have to
invest in a new kind of infrastructure.

^L
        During the Industrial Revolution, the nations that competed most
successfully were often ones that did the best job of building deep-water
ports; those that did the best job of putting in good railway systems to
carry the coal and the products to the major centers where they were
going to be sold and consumed.  But now we are seeing a change in the
definition of commerce.  Technology plays a much more important role.
Information plays a much more important role.

        And one of the things that this plan calls for is the rapid
completion of a nationwide network of information super highways.
(Applause.)  So that the kind of demonstrations that we saw upstairs will
be accessible in everybody's home.  We want to make it possible for a
school child to come home after class and, instead of just playing
Nintendo, to plug into a digital library that has color-moving graphics
that respond interactively to that child's curiosity.

        Now, that's not the only reason to have such a network or a
national information infrastructure.  Think about the importance of
software.  If we could make it possible for talented   young software
writers here in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the United States to sell
their latest product by downloading it from their desk into a nationwide
network that represented a marketplace with an outlet right there in that
person's home or business, we would make it possible for the men and
women who are interested in technology jobs here in the United States to
really thrive and prosper.

        And in keeping with one of the questions that was asked earlier
about how we can export more into the world marketplace and how we can be
more successful in world competition, one way is by making our own
domestic market the most challenging, most exciting, with the most
exacting standards and levels of quality of any nation in the world.  And
then we will naturally roll out of our domestic marketplace into the
world marketplace and compete successfully with our counterparts
everywhere in the world.

        Now, there are some other specific elements of this package which
you can read for yourself when you see the formal package.  Let me just
list them very briefly:  A permanent extension of the research and
experimentation tax credit; completion of the national information
infrastructure; specific investments in advanced manufacturing technology
with measures such as -- (applause.)  And in response to one of the
questions that was asked over here, there is a specific program on high-
speed rail to do the work necessary, to lay the foundation for a
nationwide network of high-speed rail transportation, and a specific
project to work cooperatively with the automobile companies in the United
States of America to facilitate the more rapid development of a new
generation of automobiles that will beat all the world standards and
position our automobile industry to dominate the automobile industry of
the future in the world.  (Applause.)

        We also have a specific goal to apply technology to education and
training.  Dr. Gibbon* and others have given a tremendous amount of
thought to this because, after all of the dashed hopes and false
expectations for computers in schools, ironically, we now have a new
generation of educational hardware and software that really can make a
revolutionary difference in the classroom, and it's time to use it.
(Applause.)

        And we are going to save billions of dollars each year part way
through this decade with the full implementation of environmental
technologies and energy efficiency technologies, starting with federal
buildings.  We're going to save a billion dollars a year in 1997 just in
the energy costs of federal buildings around the United States by using
off-the-shelf technology that has a four-year payback on the investment.
And then we're going to encourage the use of those technologies around
the country, and we're going to invest in the more rapid creation of new
generations of that technology.
^L

        Now, the other details of this technology program will be
available in the handout that's going to be passed out here.  And any of
you who have ideas on how we can improve it and make better use of
technology, we invite you to contact us and let us know how we can
improve this program as we go along.

        But one final word.  The President's economic program is based,
as he said, on cutting spending; reducing the deficit over time,
including with some revenue increases that are progressive and fair; and
also investing in those things which we know will create good, high-wage,
high-skilled jobs here in the United States.  You all are pioneers in a
sense, showing how that can be accomplished.  We want to make it easier
for working men and women throughout this company and other companies to
follow your example and to create more jobs in high technology.

        And that is the focus of this economic -- of this technology
policy, which is part of the overall plan to create more jobs for the
American people and get our economy moving again.  (Applause.)

        THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  (Applause.)

                            END10:41 A.M. PST