The World of Computer Software/World_Of_Computer_Software-02-387-Vol-3of3.iso/c/clinspch.zip/CLINDEF.TXT

Text File | 1992-08-24 | 15KB | 271 lines

Article 4413 of alt.politics.clinton:
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Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton
Subject: CLINTON SPEECH TEXT: DEFENSE
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Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Monday, 17 Aug 1992 17:59:34 CDT
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Speech to the National Steel and Shipbuilding Company
Governor Bill Clinton
San Diego, California
May 18, 1992

         Thank you very much. Don't leave me guys. It's lonely up here. I
         want to thank Richard for that fine introduction and I want to
         thank Peter and Robert to being here.

         I have looked forward to this day for a long time. I'm excited
         about being here because I think this company represents a lot of
         what America ought to be working toward: an employee-owned company
         with seven different unions where you've proved that it's possible
         to be   pro-business and pro-labor at the same time by working
         together.

         I look out across this sea of great faces, all different racial
         and ethnic groups and men and women here together, and I think
         about what America could become if we had the kind of partnership
         we need, the kind of partnership between business and labor and
         education and government, really committed to compete and win in
         the global economy.

         I've spent some time in this campaign talking about the last
         eleven years and how it's been bad for working people and how we
         need to even the playing field. I have strongly supported as I
         talked with Peter and Robert and the others in the meeting we had
         just a moment ago, the striker replacement legislation now in the
         Congress. But I believe it is important to remember that if you're
         trying to even up the rules you still may be playing defense. And
         what I want to do is see the American economy go on the offensive
         again.

         I want to talk to you today about your job and the jobs of
         millions of Americans just like you all across this country and
         what's going to happen in the aftermath of the Cold War and the
         reduction of the defense budget.

         First, let's put that on the table. We won the Cold War and we
         should be celebrating it. You won it. Every ship that you built
         helped to win it. And it was a remarkable achievement. If anyone
         had told you just three years ago that the Berlin Wall would fall
         and all the Communist governments in Eastern Europe would be wiped
         away, the Soviet Union itself would collapse, and they would cut
         their own defense budget fifty percent in one year, no one would
         have believed that.

         And it happened because you and millions of Americans like you
         stood for freedom and democracy and stood against tyranny. And you
         should be proud of it. But now that we won it, what are we going



         to do with our victory? Is it going to be a source of strength or
         weakness?

         At the end of World War II, we had a big reduction in defense
         overnight. And it created even more jobs in the American economy.
         Why? Because at the end of World War II, we stood alone in the
         world with an economy that no one could compete with and all the
         people who came out of the military went immediately into the
         domestic economy and found jobs. That will not happen today.

         Why is that? You could retrain everybody if you reduce defense and
         there still will not be enough jobs unless we plan for the future.
         Why? Because today, we are not alone on the world economic stage.
         Today, we are competing with other high wage nations. Where
         governments work much harder to build a partnership with workers
         and with business to generate high wage jobs. So if we just cut
         defense now, in the aftermath of the Cold War, we'll have a
         weakened economy, we'll have even more people who used to have
         good jobs who don't have good jobs anymore, and we'll be doing
         terrible damage to the fabric of America's real national security
         which is our economic strength at home. That is already happening
         in this country.

         You can see in Southern California, in Texas, in Florida, all
         across this country where we are beginning to cut defense with no
         plan to reinvest that money and put those people back to work. How
         terribly it's going to hurt the American economy. So, what I want
         to talk about today are just two or three things that we ought to
         do to make sure that we generate more jobs and not fewer jobs at
         the end of the Cold War.

         Let me tell you that the good news is, everybody who has studied
         this problem says that if we seriously reinvest the money that we
         have cut from the defense budget into a domestic, industrial
         strategy, we can create more jobs than are lost - but only if we
         are careful with it. What should we do?

         Let me just make some suggestions. First of all, we've got to
         decide that we are going to have a partnership in this country
         between government and business and labor and education just like
         our competitors do. Only 16% of our people are now working in
         manufacturing just like you. In Germany: 32%, Japan: 28%.

         Only 18% of our gross product is coming out of manufacturing. In
         those countries: over 30%. And it's not because we are over paid.
         We have dropped from first to tenth in the world in wages over the
         last ten years even as our people are working harder. It is
         because we have not had the kind of partnership we need to compete
         in the global economy.

         So, we've got to use this as an excuse or a reason to build that
         kind of partnership. Look what happened to shipbuilding. In 1981,
         when President Reagan took office, all subsidies for shipbuilding
         were eliminated. That sounds great, except we didn't ask any of
         our competitors to eliminate theirs. So what happened?

         This is the only place in America where a ship is being built.
         Why? Because at least the Jones Act says some ships have to be
         built in America. What happened? Japan is still building ship,
         Korea is building ships, other nations are doing it and paying
         higher wages and benefits than we are because they have a
         partnership.

         I don't believe in unilateral disarmament on the economic
         battlefield any more than I believe in unilateral disarmament in
         national defense. This is our national defense.

         Let me just suggest some things we ought to do as we cut defense.
         Number one, we ought to say that we are going to transfer this
         money, dollar for dollar, into investing into America's economy.
         If we reduce defense research, we ought to put it into civilian
         research, dollar for dollar, to think about how to convert new
         ideas into manufacturing jobs.

         Number two, we ought to plan right now to put a lot of this money
         into an infrastructure for the 21st century. If we are going to
         build fewer defense planes and ships and armored vehicles, we
         ought to build a high-speed rail network, we ought to build the
         best highway system in the world, we ought to build modern waste
         water systems and sewer systems and deal with our solid-waste
         problem and we ought to do it with technologies that will put
         people to work who used to make money in defense.

         We ought to build the best transportation system in the world. We
         ought to build more short airlink plane capacities. We have a
         defense weapon now, the V-22, which will take off and come down, a
         propeller plane, almost like a helicopter. That can be used for
         short-haul air traffic to relieve the congestions in airports. We
         ought to be developing it for that purpose.

         We ought to finish and push ahead with the Fast Sealift Capacity,
         which would help you. The United States Congress has appropriated
         almost three billion dollars to deal with what was plainly a
         problem during the Gulf War, our incapacity for fast sea lift. We
         should push ahead with that and recognize that it will have
         commercial as well as military benefits.

         And in that connection, we also should recognize that we should
         not continue further unilateral dissarmnament. Let me just mention
         two things. The Jones Act will require the oil companies in this
         country to buy double-hull tankers from you under federal
         legislation passed a couple of years ago if we don't weaken or
         repeal the Jones Act. And I want you to know I support leaving it
         the way it is.

         I also believe we should support Congressman Sam Gibbon's bill,
         which says to other countries, "you want to dock your ships at our
         ports, you have thwarted three long years of efforts by the United
         States Trade Representative to reduce the subsidies that foreign
         ship governments give their ship builders. If you don't do it we
         are going to take action and we'll take action now. We've tried
         three years of talking and talking didn't work, let's have
         action."

         Our wages and benefits are now below that of some of our
         competitors in ship building and we still can't get the business.
         Not because of competition but because of government subsidies.
         Let's demand an equal playing field for the people of this country
         who work in manufacturing.

         The same opportunities are available in communications. This
         nation needs a digital network, it needs a fiber-optics network.
         It needs interconnecting computer systems of all kinds. We ought
         to build those and we ought to give defense workers first crack at
         doing that work.

         We need other industrial technologies in commercial aviation, in
         biotechnology, in computers. All of these things will be built and
         done, this work, by people, somebody somewhere. These
         technologies, we know right now what workers just like you in
         twenty years will be doing for a living in manufacturing. The only
         difference is, all these countries we're competing with, they're
         working in partnership - hand in hand - government, business,
         labor, education to stake out a position for their workers in the
         future.

         Only the United States is saying, "We don't have to do that. As
         long as we keep taxes low on corporations and upper-income
         individuals, everything will be fine." Well everything won't be
         fine. We have to plan for the peace dividend. If we don't do it
         we'll lose jobs. If we do it, we'll generate jobs. That is a major
         issue.

         Let me say that we ought to begin by doing something simple. We
         ought to say right now, we ought to have a national inventory of
         the capacity of every operation like this one in the United States
         and every manufacturing plant in the United States: every airplane
         plant, every small business subcontractor, everybody working in
         defense.

         We ought to know what the inventory is, what the skills of the
         work force are and match it against the kind of things we have to
         produce in the next twenty years and then we have to decide how to
         get from there to there. From what we have to what we need to do.
         Now, that's what we need to do with the peace dividend.

         This is a big issue in this election folks. Whether I win or not
         is not nearly important as whether you work or not. And whether
         other people throughout this country work or not. And this is not
         a partisan, political issue. This has very little to do with
         Republicans or Democrats and everything to do with what America is
         going to do to compete with other countries in the world and take
         advantage of these opportunities.

         Now, when World War II ended - I was born - that was the year I
         was born, 1946, the year after the war was over. That spawned the
         twenty greatest years this nation ever had. Why? Because we took
         all that energy we put into making war and put it into the
         domestic economy. This could be the beginning of the twenty best
         years this country ever knew: diversity being a source of
         strength, opening America to the rest of the world, being able to
         compete and win and increase trade, and help our trading partners
         while we help ourself.

         But, I will say again, it will only happen if there is a
         partnership for cooperation in investment and education between
         government, business, labor, and education. It doesn't work to say
         keep taxes low on corporations and the wealthy and get out of the
         way. You've got to get your hands dirty, role up your sleeves, and
         do what it takes to compete and win with these other countries in
         the world. That is one of the biggest questions the American
         people face in this election.

         So, I ask you to think about that as you vote on June the second
         in the primary and again in November. And as you go home and talk
         to your family and you look at your children and you think what
         kind of America you want them to grow up in, this ought to be the
         greatest country in the world well into the next century. But you
         can't make it so unless we do what it takes to compete and win.

         This is all about competition. We have not won the Cold War to
         lose the aftermath. Let's restore the American dream by doing what
         it takes to bring this country together again, to compete and win
         again.

         Thank you very much and God bless you all.