    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [May 17, 1993]
    [Pages 674-677]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 674]]

    Remarks to the Community in Los Alamos, New Mexico
    May 17, 1993

        The President. Thank you very much. Governor King, Senator Bingaman,
    Senator Domenici, Congressman Richardson, Congressman Schiff, Dr.
    Hecker, and the other directors of the other wonderful labs here
    present, Dr. Narath and Dr. Ruckolls; and my distinguished Secretary of
    Energy, Hazel O'Leary, who is celebrating her birthday with all of you
    here in Los Alamos today.
        I want to say a special word of thanks to the students from Los
    Alamos High School here behind us. I love the T-shirts, and I was so
    gratified to be invited to come to the high school commencement. I
    didn't make it, but this is almost as good, don't you think? I'm really
    glad to be here.
        I want to say, too, a special word of appreciation to all those who
    spoke here before me today for what they said. I thought Senator
    Domenici did a pretty good job of gliding over our differences and
    getting right in there. I want to tell you how grateful I am for the
    national leadership that Congressman Richardson has given not only to
    the Congress but to the efforts I made to become your President. And I
    can't say enough about the work that Senator Bingaman has done on the
    issue I came here to talk about today, which is giving us a good high-
    wage, high-growth future through the wise and sensible investment in
    technology. You should be very proud of these people, all of whom
    represent you in the United States Congress. I want to say a special
    word of thanks to Congressman Schiff. Since he's not here in his home
    district, he actually gave up the opportunity to speak, which may make
    him the most popular person here today. You can't tell.
        Bruce King told you the truth. We were Governors in the seventies,
    the eighties, and the nineties. Made an old man of me, but he still
    looks pretty good. [Laughter] He was the first Governor to endorse my
    campaign, and New Mexico was the next to the last stop I made on
    election day when I stayed up all night long.
        I want to say I've come back here today in the light of day, and a
    beautiful day it is, to celebrate with the Los Alamos Lab the 50th
    anniversary of a genuine, remarkable American success story. For the
    first half century of Los Alamos' service, it was the leading edge of
    our Nation's security. And now as we go into the next half century, Los
    Alamos will be, as Senator Bingaman said, the leading edge of our
    prosperity, developing and nurturing the technology that will put all
    these young Americans who are here in this great crowd today at the
    front of a new race, the race to compete and to cooperate in a world
    that is getting smaller, richer, more diverse, but very, very rigorous
    in its challenges.
        New Mexico should be very proud to be the home of Los Alamos and
    Sandia. America, indeed the entire democratic world, owes an enormous
    debt of gratitude to Los Alamos, to Sandia, and to the Lawrence
    Livermore Laboratory in California. When we needed the military muscle
    to end a global war, the answer was the Manhattan Project. When we
    needed the muscle to win the cold war, the long and costly effort to
    contain and then to triumph over communism, the ideas that made that
    possible came out of these laboratories. That struggle gave us a focus
    not just in how we spend our defense dollars but how we invested in
    everything from our children's education to the Interstate Highway
    System. These labs were at the core of that effort, providing our
    nuclear deterrent. From the Berlin crisis in 1948 to the Berlin
    celebration in 1989 when the Wall came down, the work of this laboratory
    helped to ensure America's might, America's security, and in the end, a
    total triumph for democracy and freedom and free-market economics in the
    cold war. You should all be very proud of that. That's a good 50 years
    of work if I ever heard it.
        Now we are in the post-cold-war effort. Most of the young people
    here present will live more of their lives in the 21st century than they
    have in the 20th. And we need a new focus for our efforts. Our job today
    is to preserve the American dream and America's leadership in the world
    that America has done so much to make. We have to prove that we can
    compete and win in this highly complex and rigorous world. We have to do
    it so that all the young people here will not be the first generation of
    Americans to grow up to do worse than their parents. We have to do it so
    that we can continue to be a beacon of hope, so that we can prove

    [[Page 675]]

    that freedom and free enterprise and democracy work.
        We have to begin by putting our own house in order, by bringing down
    our enormous deficit, dealing with our health care crisis which has
    produced a system that costs way too much and covers too few and leaves
    too many in the insecurity of daily living, knowing that any moment they
    might lose the insurance they have. We have to follow policies that
    enable us to educate and train our people for a lifetime and then
    promote economic growth so that they will have jobs that they're
    educated for. These are the things we have to do in this time to be
    worthy, worthy successors to the American legacy we have inherited.
        I've asked the Congress to reduce the deficit by $500 billion over
    the next 5 years, with a combination of spending cuts and tax increases,
    none of which are popular, especially, in particular. Everybody's for
    deficit reduction in general. It's the details that swallow us alive. I
    have asked that all this money be put into a trust fund by law so that
    nothing can be done with it but to reduce the debt, so that the children
    of our country eventually will be able to get out from under the burden
    their parents and grandparents have left for them. I have committed to
    all the Members of Congress and to the American people without regard to
    party that this is just a down payment, that reducing the deficit
    doesn't begin to bring the debt down until you get it down to zero. And
    we have to keep working until we do that. We owe that to the young
    people here.
        But we also owe you something more. We have to think about the
    challenges that are here before us. And when they require us to invest
    in education and technology and new jobs, we have to do that as well,
    for we have to remember that the thing which enables us to bring our
    debt down is the economic strength which reduces working people and
    incomes from people who then can pay taxes, who can then deal with less
    Government supports, who don't need the Government spending as much
    money if they all have jobs and incomes in a strong free enterprise
    system. That is our obligation to you and to your future.
        So the question I came here to discuss today for all of you, and
    hopefully it will reverberate throughout the United States to people who
    have never been to New Mexico and may not have even known of the
    existence of Los Alamos, is what is the opportunity we have right here
    to revolutionize the economy, not just for those thousands of you who
    are here but for every American family, for every American young person?
    Can you affect the future of America as you have the past? I think the
    answer is a resounding ``yes.'' If we are going to march confidently
    into the 21st century, we will have to do it on the minds and with the
    creativity and with the investment represented here in this laboratory
    and in others like it around the country and with the spirit of
    partnership between Government and the private sector that pervades so
    many of the efforts now underway here.
        At Los Alamos alone, there are 100 partnerships with industry.
    Technology has led to the creation of 30 new companies. Before coming
    here today I took a look at some of the projects underway at a plant
    facility that handles--listen to this--plasma ion implantation. Now,
    that sounds like something a plastic surgeon would do, but it has
    nothing to do with the human body. Instead, it involves a steel vacuum
    chamber containing high-energy ion which can be pumped into metal
    surfaces or plastic surfaces and used to harden them so that they will
    last longer and do better work. This could revolutionize America's
    ability to manufacture automobiles and other machines to keep going and
    to have higher productivity longer and lower costs, so we can once again
    begin to grow high-wage manufacturing jobs. And if it happens, it will
    happen because of the ideas that started here in the kind of
    partnerships we need for America's tomorrows. And this technology was a
    direct outgrowth of the research done on the strategic defense
    initiative, the so-called star wars initiative, which means that no
    matter whatever happens there and whatever happens to the final shape of
    that project, something good came out of it because people were looking
    to break down frontiers in the human minds and to explore unexplored
    territory.
        This defense technology is now being used as part of a 4-year
    partnership with General Motors. Another project involves GM in helping
    to build a clean car. Think of it: What if we could build a car that
    operated on energy sources provided here in this country, that reduced
    our dependence on foreign oil, reduced air pollution, increased energy
    efficiency, and helped us to become a partner in the effort to save the
    global environment, at the same

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    time exploding American jobs and economic opportunities? If that
    happens, it will be because of what began here. I saw biomedical
    technology, analyzing and sorting single biological cells using lasers,
    with valuable applications for AIDS and leukemia diagnosis, a technology
    that has already led to an $800-million-a-year business for three new
    companies. There are projects underway for efficient oil recovery,
    environmental cleanup, the analysis of air pollution. With these
    partnerships and others like them, we can find the technology-based
    answers for the jobs of tomorrow.
        In this economic chain reaction, the result will be high-paying jobs
    here in New Mexico. I saw one project today which is projected to
    produce 2,000 jobs in New Mexico within the next 3 or 4 years. But there
    will be jobs all across this Nation, in wide-ranging fields, ever more
    critical to our future. Supercomputers developed to design nuclear
    weapons are now being used to improve the fuel efficiency of engines, to
    help the oil industry find more oil in less time here in the United
    States at lower cost. They're used to educate youngsters in ways we
    could never have dreamed of just a few years ago. I met some of those
    bright students earlier today. They were actually developing programs
    for energy conservation, using the world's largest supercomputer, having
    won a contest in the use of computers sponsored statewide in New Mexico
    and held here at Los Alamos. You could be very proud that you have
    students like that who can use a facility like this.
        We are counting on our Nation's labs to make real contributions in
    these and other areas of needs that arise out of our energy and national
    security missions. In these tasks, the laboratories will be helping not
    only Americans but our fellow citizens around the world. If we can find
    ways to make the American people healthier and lower health care costs,
    it will benefit us enormously economically, it will provide personal
    security to millions of American families. But we will not keep those
    things as secrets here in our own borders. They will spread around the
    world and make the world a better and safer and healthier place.
        Let me also say that there is still a national defense mission for
    these labs. We have to continue to maintain the safety and reliability
    of our nuclear deterrent until all the nuclear weapons in the world are
    gone. We have to make sure that we can focus on new technologies to
    counter proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons by
    other irresponsible countries around the world. There are still too many
    nations who have not learned the lesson of the cold war and how much
    money was diverted by the United States and the Soviet Union from other
    important efforts. There are still too many nations who seem determined
    to define the quality of their lives based on whether they can develop a
    nuclear weapon or biological or chemical weapons that can have no other
    purpose than to destroy other human beings. It is a mistake, and we
    should try to contain it and to stop it.
        And so my fellow Americans, there is a peacetime commercial mission
    for these labs. And there is a national defense mission for these labs.
    And the line between those two missions is coming down fast. And there
    is a partnership with the private sector which will spread and grow and
    strengthen America's support for and understanding of what is done here.
    These labs are our great national minds' treasure, the world's finest
    scientists and engineers, more Ph.D.'s per capita here in Los Alamos
    than any other place on the planet. It's pretty humbling when you're a
    President and you walk into a room and you realize you're lowering the
    average IQ of the room just by going in the door. [Laughter] You have
    the world's most powerful computers and lasers and accelerators, some of
    the world's best materials facilities, the most sophisticated
    diagnostics. You are our crown jewels in technology and science.
        Under the technology policy I have proposed, this lab at Los
    Angeles--Los Alamos----
        Audience members. Boo-o-o!
        The President. I'm going there tomorrow, and if I say Los Alamos,
    will you cheer when I'm in Los Angeles? I owe you one. This lab will
    work with the Departments of Energy and Defense and Commerce to sustain
    constant innovation. We're going to have to reorganize a lot of things
    to get that done. We can't just have the money coming in for specific
    projects from--some from defense and some from the Energy Department.
    We'll have all kinds of dislocations. And we had some great
    conversations today about how we can make a flexible and always
    available pool of funds there for the kinds of projects that need to be
    done. And our administration has pledged to do that.
        So I say to you again, we must change the whole notion we have of
    the Federal Govern-

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    ment. We're going to have to cut a lot of spending. We're going to have
    to change a lot of things we have taken for granted. But we will still
    have to find a way to invest in our future. Our competitors are
    investing in their futures. There is a race to tomorrow, which is partly
    cooperation, but make no mistake about it, largely competition. And if
    we want all of these young people to have the chance to go as far as
    their efforts and their God-given abilities will take them, we have to
    do both: We've got to bring this deficit down and sharply invest in
    things like these laboratories so we can grow the economy for tomorrow.
        The reductions in the defense budget, made possible by the end of
    the cold war, have presented some great challenges to the laboratories,
    to the defense plants, to the wonderful men and women who have served
    our Nation in uniform. We owe all of them the opportunity to convert to
    success in the commercial private enterprise world of America. We have
    earmarked, this year alone, over $1.7 billion for defense conversion,
    and I propose to invest about $20 billion in it over the next 5 years.
    It is a good beginning. It is a good beginning.
        I ask you today, as I close, to consider the alternative. If we
    refuse to bring our deficit down and we still continue to squeeze these
    areas critical to our investment future, the alternative will be a
    rising deficit, a declining rate of investment, more unemployment and
    more stagnant incomes, longer work weeks for less funds, and continued
    insecurity for America's working families. We must change our priorities
    no matter how difficult it is. That is the challenge of this day, and we
    must meet it. As has already been said, President Kennedy stood in this
    very spot just over 30 years ago and saluted the great patriots of Los
    Alamos. He said in part, and I quote, ``We want to express our thanks to
    you. It is not merely what was done in the days of the Second War but
    what has been done since then, not only in developing weapons of
    destruction which, by irony of fate, helped maintain peace and freedom,
    but also in medicine and in space, and all the other related fields
    which can mean so much to mankind if we can maintain the peace and
    protect our freedom.''
        Well today, maintaining the peace and protecting the freedom seem
    more secure than they did when President Kennedy uttered those words.
    And so, today I come here to thank Los Alamos, not merely for what was
    done in the cold war and what has been done since but for what you can
    and will do to secure a stronger, brighter future for all the American
    people. If we do our job, then perhaps 30 years from now another
    American President will be able to come to this very site, and some of
    you who are now children will be here with your children. And you can
    say, again, thank you, thank you to the labs, thank you to the men and
    women who used their minds to advance the cause of learning. Thank you
    for the contributions you have made to the progress of the American
    dream. May it never stop.
        God bless you, and thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 1:05 p.m. at Los Alamos High School.