[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book II)]
[October 22, 1993]
[Pages 1801-1803]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks on the Technology Reinvestment Project
October 22, 1993

    Thank you very much, Mr. Vice President. General Short, Admiral 
Pelaez, Dr. Alam, Dr. Dinis, Senator Mitchell and distinguished Members 
of Congress. And let me say a special word of thanks to my good friend, 
Senator Bingaman, and to Pat Schroeder, for the work they have done on 
this.
    When I started running for President, one of the core ideas that 
animated my campaign and that got me really committed to the long 
endeavor of 1992 was the commitment that we had to find a way as we 
built down defenses to build up a new economy for America with new 
partnerships between defense technologies and the commercial future that 
we all seek for our country.

[[Page 1802]]

    I'd like to put this at least briefly into a larger context. All of 
you know we are living in a time when all the wealthy nations of the 
world are having great difficulty creating new jobs. We are now in the 
fifth year in which the average annual growth among the wealthiest 
nations has been under 2 percent. And as we look toward the future and 
we ask ourselves what is it that will regenerate the American economic 
engine in a new and highly competitive global economy in which 
technology and money and management are mobile, and in which many people 
in different parts of the world will do certain things for wages our 
people can't live on, it is perfectly clear that there are three things 
we have to do: We have to better educate and train our work force; we 
have to find new markets for our products and services; and we have to 
more rapidly develop new technologies, so that technology can continue 
to be what it has always been for our country and for the world, a net 
job generator.
    We know that technologies reduce the number of people necessary to 
perform traditional services in everything from agriculture to 
manufacturing. But technology has historically been a net job generator 
because every time it's done that, it's opened up new ways for people to 
make a living.
    There are significant barriers to that today in this country and in 
all wealthy countries. The reason I believe so strongly in this project, 
and the reason I believe someday this will become an integral part of 
our economic policy, not just a way of converting from a defense to a 
domestic economy, is because we have to find a way to create more new 
applications for more new technologies more quickly so that we can 
create more jobs.
    I am very, very happy about this day, and I want to thank all of 
those who had anything to do with bringing it about. I also want to say, 
to echo the Vice President, that the first awards in our Technology 
Reinvestment Project were definitely made on the merits. They were made, 
not surprisingly, largely in areas that had large technological bases 
related to defense technology where people have suffered very greatly 
from cutbacks and are very aggressively looking for alternatives. That 
provided a big incentive for those folks to be very active in trying to 
build a new future. But that is, after all, I'm sure what Senator 
Bingaman had in mind and what the Congress had in mind in funding this 
program.
    If we're really going to guarantee the security of America--the 
national security of America--we have to be more economically secure. We 
have to invest in projects that will create these jobs with new ideas 
and new technologies. That is the only way, I believe, to keep our 
Nation strong.
    This effort responds to two challenges left in the wake of the end 
of the cold war. The first is that you simply can't leave the men and 
women who won the cold war out in the cold. It is wrong to walk away 
from them. From southern California to Long Island to Connecticut, there 
are communities, companies, and employees who've depended on defense who 
now are desperately looking for new ways to make a living. And they can 
help to make America the strongest country in the world, economically, 
even into the 21st century.
    The second challenge we have is one that is often ignored, but must 
not be. And that is to meet our continuing military needs in a world 
which still contains dangers to our interests, our values, our security 
in a time when we may and we want to spend a smaller percentage of our 
national income every year on defense but when we know we still have to 
maintain our lead in defense technologies. So this effort really not 
only helps us to create new jobs in the civilian sector, it is very good 
for traditional national defense concerns.
    The purposes we are promoting are illustrated by the projects that 
are being supported today. And let me just mention a couple of them. A 
California-based team is seeking to demonstrate how advanced composite 
materials developed for high-performance military aircraft can offer 
major advantages for repairing and replacing our Nation's aging bridges. 
I have seen some of the preliminary work on a recent trip to southern 
California. It's a very, very impressive idea, with enormous potential 
in a Nation like the United States which has woefully neglected its 
infrastructure for 15 or 20 years now, and which has a huge number of 
bridges which desperately need repairing.
    This technology will also help the Army Corps of Engineers build 
lightweight and mobile bridges in combat situations or following natural 
disasters such as the one we recently had in the Midwest flood, where so 
many bridges were wiped out and so many working people were literally 
cut off from their jobs or faced four-


[[Page 1803]]

hour one-way drives just to get to their jobs.
    Another example: A small defense firm is adapting its pyrotechnic 
technology for use in emergency rescue equipment. You might ask, ``How 
can you have explosive technology used in rescue?'' Most people are 
rescued from that. [Laughter] This effort can, nevertheless, create a 
whole new generation of jaws-of-life rescue devices that can save time 
by making hydraulic equipment much easier to operate. The reductions in 
weight and cost will make these devices available even to small rescue 
teams.
    I can tell you as a former Governor of a State with a lot of rural 
communities, I spent an enormous amount of time just trying to figure 
out how to get this kind of equipment out to people and then how to make 
sure there were people there trained to use it. This could be a very 
significant thing in managing traumatic situations in rural communities, 
especially those that are isolated. By commercializing this technology 
we'll help to preserve a part of the pyrotechnic industry that is 
important to our Nation's defense, as well as solving the problems of 
Americans here at home.
    We're working with a team of companies and research labs to 
determine how the high-powered lasers that have been developed for the 
military can be adapted to make civilian products. The technology will 
offer higher precision and greater tooling speeds. This can help 
American industries from automobiles to aerospace, agricultural 
equipment, electronics, ship building, all these industries compete and 
win around the world. And after more than a decade in which our machine 
tools have suffered significant setbacks in the global economy, this 
offers a real chance for us to take back a significant sector of 
international trade.
    We're also supporting retraining programs for scientists, engineers, 
and other defense workers all across the country, in Alabama, Arizona, 
California, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and 
Washington. Our world is being transformed by technological, economic, 
and political change. This project is a part of our overall strategy in 
this administration to make those changes our friend instead of our 
enemy.
    Whether we're cutting the national deficit or investing in a whole 
new education and training program, or reforming the welfare system, or 
providing health security, or expanding trade, we know that all these 
things have to be done if we're going to really allow the American 
people to live up to the fullest of their potential.
    We're working hard here in the Government to set an example, under 
the Vice President's leadership, to give this reinventing Government 
effort a technological twist that maybe some of you ought to contribute 
to also in this project. And we want to set an example, but we also want 
to help lead the country to make the changes that will help us all to 
change our lives for the better.
    We know that doing nothing is not an option. And I want to say in 
closing that this is one idea that has really caught on with the 
Congress. I think because of the debates that have been held over the 
last couple of years and because of the pressures that have been brought 
to bear in areas all across America, from the dislocations, the painful 
dislocations, from defense cuts, there's a real commitment. And I want 
to thank the Congress here that even in the closing days in our debates 
over the budget, when we have cut and cut and cut so many areas, this 
program was dramatically increased for next year so that we can maintain 
the pace of these projects. And I hope we'll be able to increase it 
year-in and year-out as long as there are new ideas, new technologies, 
new jobs, and new movement for the American economy.
    Thank you all very much.

Note: The President spoke at 10:47 a.m. in Room 450 of the Old Executive 
Office Building. In his remarks, he referred to Lt. Gen. Alonzo E. 
Short, Jr., USA, Director, Defense Information Systems Agency; Rear Adm. 
Marc Pelaez, USN, Chief of Naval Research; M. Kathleen Alam, technical 
staff member, Sandia National Laboratories; and Antonio Dinis, president 
and chief executive officer, J. Muller International.