    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [February 22, 1993]
    [Pages 180-183]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to Boeing Employees in Everett, Washington
    February 22, 1993

        Thank you very much, Chairman Shrontz, Speaker Foley, Senator
    Murray, Governor Lowrey, and Member of the congressional delegation, and
    most of all to the men and women of Boeing. I have looked forward to
    coming here for a long time. And I guess what I ought to begin by saying
    is, thank you for Air Force One.
        You know, everywhere I go in that airplane, I am the second most
    important celebrity. People really just want to see the plane.
    [Laughter] And I know I can make all my friends and supporters happy,
    even my mother, just by taking them on the plane and letting them look
    at your magnificent work.
        You should also know that it enables me on these flights across the
    country and going across the world to continue to work with a full staff
    almost as if I had never left the office. And it is a real tribute to
    all of you, and a magnificent set of planes--you know, there are two of
    them. I know a lot of you made them both, so you know that. But I'm
    grateful to you for that.
        I also think you may know, but I should say that after this meeting
    with you, I'm going to go to another room and meet with a lot of folks
    who have come here to meet with me and with our national leaders about
    the health of the airline industry, about the commercial airline
    companies themselves, and about the airline manufacturers, the chief of
    which obviously is Boeing, but including other companies as well. So
    when I leave you, I'm going to go and meet with them for about an hour
    to talk about where we're going from here.
        I want to begin by saying that there's an interesting book, which
    has been written by a very famous economics writer named Lester Thurow
    called ``Head to Head.'' And Thurow's argument in this book is--it
    affects your lives, so I'm going to tell you about it--his argument is
    that there may be a limited number of highway jobs available over the
    next 20 years, and that seven major technologies will provide most of
    the growth in those jobs, a lot of them are, as you might suspect, in
    the computer and electronics field.
        I was just down in Silicon Valley before I came here at a
    magnificent little company named Silicon Graphics that does some work
    for you, to talk about a technology policy to accelerate the growth in
    areas where we're doing well. But one of those seven areas is aero-

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    nautics and the manufacturer of airplanes and in the provision of
    airline services to commercial travelers.
        It is indeed ironic that the United States which, for so long has
    led the world in the production of airplanes and in the development of
    sophisticated consumer-oriented services through commercial carriers,
    has had 3 years in which more money has been lost than was made in the
    previous history of the airline industry. And I can tell you from my
    study, very little of that is your fault. A lot of it has to do with the
    fact that other nations follow targeted strategies of partnerships to
    pierce markets which you had dominated under a free market system but
    with which you could not compete in Europe's subsidized airbus to the
    tune of $26 billion, for example.
        I want to talk to you today about the whole economic plan, the tough
    parts as well as the good parts. But I want you to know that one big
    part of my economic strategy is to try to identify all those areas that
    can really provide high-wage, high-growth futures for Americans and
    their families and make sure that we are there, competing and winning,
    that people have a chance to work and make a living. And we can't begin
    by giving up on the production of aircraft, which is what we have come
    dangerously close to doing by sitting by and letting our competitors do
    things that we did not do to meet the competition. And I believe we can
    do better. I hope this meeting today is the first step in that regard.
        I also want to say a special word of appreciation to the Speaker and
    to the leaders of Congress. In the next few days, the Congress will
    produce a bill establishing a national commission on the condition of
    the airlines industries in America; one that will require the House and
    the Senate to appoint five members each and the President to appoint
    five members; and unlike a lot of commissions, will require them to
    report back within 90 days with a tight time table with a specific set
    of recommendations to take to the country to preserve and promote the
    economic health of the industry that you've done so much to make the
    world's best.
        The second thing I want to say is that my trade ambassador, Mickey
    Kantor, will be closely monitoring the agreement which was made finally
    last year with regard to limiting European subsidies to airbus to allow
    a level playing field. We'll be seeking tough new discipline on those
    subsidies, both in our attempts to get an agreement on the general
    agreement on trade, as well as the specific aircraft code.
        You know, I've seen these agreements made for years. I've seen
    people promise us they'd do this, that, and the other thing, and then
    nothing ever happens. And I think you and I know deep in our heart that
    most of these layoffs--maybe not all, because the airline industry
    itself has problems which are bleeding back on to you, the commercial
    carriers--but a lot of these layoffs would not have been announced had
    it not been for the $26 billion that the United States sat by and let
    Europe plow into airbus over the last several years. So we're going to
    try to change the rules of the game.
        I can't promise you overnight miracles. We didn't get into this fix
    overnight. But I can say that we have to turn the direction of this
    country around, and we need a commitment, not to shield ourselves from
    competition but to reward ourselves when we fairly compete and win.
        We need a commitment to meet the competition around the world in a
    global economy in which the things that really pay off are high levels
    of education and skills, high levels of investment in appropriate
    technologies, a very close amount of cooperation within each workplace
    among workers and between workers and management, and in the national
    sense between Government and business and labor. The countries which do
    that win; those which don't are punished. And we can no longer afford to
    wait for 10 years while someone does something to us that we do not
    respond to. And I want to turn that around, not with overnight miracles
    but with a disciplined approach to put the American people and their
    economic future first in the policymaking of the United States
    Government. It's your country, and I'm doing my best to give it back to
    you.
        I ask each of you to express to your Congressmen and your Senators
    support for the national economic plan which I announced to the Congress
    on last Wednesday. It is a plan which seeks to do two things that we've
    never done in the history of America before at the same time. It seeks
    to reduce this awful Government debt and to increase investment in our
    future at the same time. And it's hard to cut your debts and increase
    your investment at the same time. It's hard if you're Boeing. It's hard
    if you're the United States Government.
        But we have no choice, because in the last

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    12 years, we have quadrupled the debt of the Government, which means
    we're spending 15 cents of every dollar you give us in taxes right now
    just paying interest on yesterday's debt, 15 cents of every dollar you
    pay in taxes that we can't put into an investment incentive for an
    airline company, for an education for your children, for better health
    care for America.
        It also means we're taking so much money out of the pool of money
    available that if Boeing or a small business or somebody wanting to buy
    a car or a home has to borrow money, their interest rates are higher
    than they otherwise would be. So we've got to bring the debt down, but
    we also have to look over the last 12 years. Your country has reduced
    its investment while our competitors have increased their investments in
    critical areas of education and training and new technologies and in
    building the kinds of things that put people to work and make a country
    rich. So to do it, we have to cut spending, raise some more tax money,
    and target some new investments, not in consuming things but in things
    that will build jobs and incomes in the years ahead.
        I have offered the Congress in good faith an honest spending cut
    program with 150 specific reductions in spending cuts, including a 25
    percent cut in my own staff, the biggest, as far as I can tell, in the
    history of the Republic, certainly in the 20th century, and a $9 billion
    cut in the administrative costs to the Federal Government, and asking
    the Federal employees who work for you to have a pay freeze this year
    and to have their pay go up at less than the rate of inflation for the
    next 3 years, which will save that much again. We are cutting spending
    where we can.
        I have also made it clear that I don't want to raise one penny of
    tax dollars until I know those cuts are in effect. We shouldn't raise
    money until we cut spending. We should do them together.
        Seventy percent of the burden of this tax program will fall on
    people whose taxable income, not net income, taxable income is above
    $100,000. But some of it will fall on people with incomes of between
    $30,000 and $100,000, and I want to level with you about that. For years
    there have been those who say we ought to reduce the deficit by raising
    the gas tax a whole lot. That's fine if you live in the city and ride
    mass transit to work. It's not so good if you live in the country and
    drive yourself to work. There are a lot of working people in America
    today that have no access to mass transit and can't carpool; so I
    rejected a big gas tax.
        Then there were people who said, ``Well, the best thing to do
    environmentally is to tax carbon.'' That's a funny way of saying coal.
    The problem with that is, there's a lot of people just like you in
    Pennsylvania and West Virginia and places like that who make their
    livings in and around the coal mines. And it didn't seem fair to me to
    put such a burden on them that they would be in trouble.
        So we decided to pick what seems to be the environmentally best
    thing that doesn't hurt so many people, and that is a tax on the energy
    capacity of all forms of fuel, of gas and oil and coal, called a BTU
    tax, which amounts to about 2 cents on a gallon of gasoline, and will
    cost the average family with an income of $50,000 about 15 bucks a month
    at the outside if they have a family of four and drive a lot. And I
    think that is a fair way to go.
        I didn't want to even do that, but after the election I was told
    that the Government deficit was going to be about $50 billion a year
    bigger than we had been told before the election. And so my choice was
    not to ask for an additional contribution from the middle class, let the
    deficit get out of hand, and have your interest rates go up, or try to
    deal with this debt and try to face the fact that we need to invest some
    more money too. I hope you'll support that.
        But I also hope you will support spending some more money in the
    areas that will create jobs. And let me just mention two or three. This
    plan contains tax incentives to business and direct investments in
    things like roads and environmental cleanup and airport construction
    that will create a half a million jobs in the next year and a half. This
    plan contains $8 billion in new investments in aeronautics, in
    technology, in research and development, the development of new products
    over the next 5 years. It contains a major new general technology
    initiative that the Vice President and I announced today in Silicon
    Valley to create high-wage jobs. It contains $9 billion in new
    investments in high-tech products all across the Government, including
    the attempt to develop an environmentally clean car and new high speed
    rail technology that could dramatically alter the economics of living on
    the Pacific Rim of our country. It contains new incentives to businesses
    to cre-

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    ate jobs and especially to small business.
        Let me tell you that all the big companies in the country together
    reduced jobs all during the 1980's, but little companies created more
    jobs than big companies lost until about 2 years ago when the cost of
    health care, the unavailability of credit, and the decline of the
    economy stopped small business in its tracks. So we have to not only
    help big manufacturing operations; we've got to have a climate where
    people can start small businesses and keep them going. Because we know
    that even if we do very well in the aerospace industry, for example,
    there will be other very big companies that will have to downsize and
    restructure. And we've got to do something for small business to try to
    help them to go and to grow.
        These things are very important. And let me say one other thing that
    affects Boeing, at least a little bit, and that is we propose to put a
    lot more money into the space program, but to restructure it so that we
    not only have a space station but we also have a lot of new investments
    in other kinds of aeronautics research that will generate even more jobs
    in America in the years ahead. And we've proposed to spend more money on
    domestic research and development than we reduce in defense research and
    development.
        These are the things that made your company great, and these are the
    kinds of things that will make America great again. And so I ask you to
    support not just the spending cuts, the revenue increases, and the
    deficit reduction but also these very targeted investments in our
    future.
        I also ask you to support immunizing every child before the age of 2
    in America, for a change, Head Start for the kids that need it, and
    making college loans available to all middle class, as well as low-
    income people, and letting them pay those loans off as a percentage of
    their income.
        Now, a lot of people will say--there's a lot of ways you can debate
    this--a lot of people will say, I didn't cut spending enough. To them, I
    say give me more spending cuts. I've just been there 4 weeks, and I'm
    sure there are more, and I'll find more. Then there will be those that
    say we cut too much. Some will say we didn't raise enough money. Some
    will say we've raised too much. And then some will say you shouldn't
    spend any new money.
        But remember what I said: A country now is like a big company in the
    global economy. If you don't invest in the right things, you don't grow.
    So we not only have to reduce this deficit; we've got to turn our
    spending priorities on their head. We've got to invest more and consume
    less so the country can grow, just like you want this company to grow.
        I believe with all my heart that the years ahead can still be the
    best years this country ever had. But you know what you're going through
    now. Just look at it. We are living in a world where change is the law
    of life, where the average 18-year-old will change work eight times in a
    lifetime. And we will be judged harshly by our children if we permit the
    kinds of things to go on that are happening today, which make change our
    enemy and not our friend.
        My whole goal in this economic program is to try to change the
    priorities of this country so people can pursue what the Founding
    Fathers wanted, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, by making
    change our friend. I can't promise you and no politician can, to repeal
    the laws of global competition. I can't promise you that you won't have
    to work not only harder but smarter than ever before. Nobody can do
    that.
        But I think you know that your Government has been inadequate to the
    task of preparing you to win if you play by the rules, if you do your
    part, if you're highly productive. That's my job. That's what this
    plan's designed to do. I hope you will support it. I think it will
    secure the American dream for you and your children.
        Thank you very much, and God bless you all.

    [At this point, the President was presented with a gift.]

        Thank you.
        I want to say two things. First of all, it was very diplomatic of
    you not to give me a bigger shirt than you gave Vice President Gore.
    [Laughter] And secondly, I don't think anyone who sees me running in
    this will really believe I'm about to fly. [Laughter] But I will wear it
    and enjoy it every day.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:02 p.m. in Hangar 40-23 at Boeing. In his
    remarks, he referred to Frank Shrontz, company president and chief
    executive officer.