[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book II)]
[December 4, 1993]
[Pages 2119-2123]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to Employees at Rockwell International in Canoga Park
December 4, 1993

    Thank you very much, Mr. Beall, Mr. Paster, ladies and gentlemen of 
Rockwell and Rocketdyne. I am very glad to be here. I want to thank all 
of you for coming, the workers in this great facility. And some of my 
workers in the last campaign from the Inland Empire I know came here. 
They're here somewhere over there. I thank you for coming.
    I also want you to know that we're all a little embarrassed to be so 
late here, but if you got to watch the meeting that just occurred, you 
know that there were so many people with so many ideas about what we 
could do together to rebuild the California economy. Having asked them 
there, I could hardly walk away and not listen to them. I was so moved 
by the people who came and what they said and how very specific they 
were. It made me really have greater faith than ever before that 
together we can turn this economy around and get things going

[[Page 2120]]

again for California and for the entire country.
    I also want to say a special word of thanks to you for the sign that 
I walked under coming out here that said, ``Thank you, Mr. President, 
for the space station.'' We worked hard to save it. We're going to work 
hard to keep it. It's an important part of our future, and so are you.
    I ran for President, my fellow Americans, because I thought this 
country had two great problems: I thought we had to restore the American 
economy so that it worked again for middle class Americans and gave all 
Americans a chance to work their way into the middle class, and I 
thought we had to pull this country together again and make a strength 
out of our diversity, so that we can go into the 21st century as the 
greatest country in the world and so that every person can live up to 
the fullest of their ability.

[At this point, the President was interrupted by a noise in the 
factory.]

    What is that? That's not my hot air for a change. [Laughter] If you 
can hear me, I'll talk over it unless we're in some kind of danger.
    When I came to the White House in January, I had an economic 
strategy that I wanted to implement for all the country. And I knew 
there was a special problem here in California, the State that is not 
only our biggest State with our strongest economy but the State that by 
January was the most economically hurt because of a combination of 
factors: the decline in defense spending, the collapse of real estate, 
the stagnation of the economies to the East, which trade with California 
and which were not buying as many of our exports. All these problems 
combined at once to give terrible, terrible burdens to the people of 
California, much higher than average unemployment rates and an attitude 
that was dragging the whole country down. And it became clear to me that 
unless we could turn the economy of California around, we would never 
fully be able to lift the economy of America.
    I came here today, a year after I held a national economic summit in 
my home State to get the best ideas I could about implementing our 
national economic strategy, to have an economic meeting here in 
California to assess what we have done in the last year and what we need 
to do in the years ahead.
    I want to tell you first that I am convinced that this economy can 
recover for four reasons: first, because the national economy is now 
experiencing clear and consistent signs of recovery; second, because 
many of the things that we have done for the national economy will have 
a particular impact in California; third, because we are targeting 
resources to this State in programs that will help the economy, not by 
hurting other States but by giving California its fair consideration; 
and finally, fourthly, and most importantly of all for all of you, 
because we have committed ourselves in this administration to fight for 
a 5-year, $20 billion program of defense conversion so that we don't 
leave the people who won the cold war out in the cold, we invest in 
technologies for a commercial peacetime economy that can create jobs in 
California and jobs in this company.
    Let me take these issues one by one. When I became President, I 
committed to bring the deficit down, to get interest rates down, to keep 
inflation down, to get investment up, and to give people incentives to 
invest in this economy. The Congress after a lot of struggling, adopted 
an economic plan, which I had pushed very hard. And here's what the plan 
does. It does raise taxes on somewhat less than 2 percent of our people, 
the wealthiest Americans whose incomes went up while their taxes went 
down in the 1980's. It also cuts taxes on 15 to 16 million working 
families who work 40 hours a week, have kids in their house, and are 
barely above the poverty line, so they'll be working and not on welfare. 
It gives the potential of a tax break to 90 percent of the small 
businesses in this country if they'll invest more money in their 
businesses. It increases the research and development tax credit to help 
companies like this one. It changes the rules to help people restore the 
real estate economy in States like California.
    And in a year, look what's happened, look what's happened. We have 
historically low interest rates. Over 5 million Americans have 
refinanced their homes. We have low inflation rates. We have investment 
up. Housing sales were at a 14-year high last month. And we've had more 
jobs come in the private sector in the last 10 months than in the 
previous 4 years. We are moving in the right direction. Most Americans 
have not felt it yet, but you can't ignore the facts. The direction of 
the economy is good, not bad. We are coming back, and that will benefit 
the State of California and the people who live here.

[[Page 2121]]

    The second thing I want to say is, there are a lot of things we're 
doing that will really help California just because of how the economy 
is organized here. We are focusing on new markets. We are focusing on 
new products. We are focusing on new opportunities for the American 
economy. Not very long ago, we removed from export controls $37 billion 
worth of high-tech products and computers and telecommunications, one-
third of which are manufactured in this State. That will create tens of 
thousands of new jobs by permitting us to sell things abroad that we 
couldn't sell during the cold war. It will make a huge difference.
    We're helping to build a national information superhighway to 
computerize all kinds of information to facilitate economic transfers. 
California is in a remarkable position to take advantage of that. We 
have a whole new technology initiative that will enable us to do things 
that will benefit this State disproportionately.
    And finally, let me say, I know this is one of the more 
controversial things I've been involved in, but I have strongly 
supported efforts to increase trade, like NAFTA, because you can't keep 
and generate more high-tech jobs unless you have more customers. You 
know in this plant, don't you, that the American worker, under all the 
economic pressures of the 1980's, the American worker once again has 
become by far the most productive worker in the world. Now, we all know 
that.
    But what else do we know? You know it here. What does productivity 
mean? That means fewer people can produce more goods and services. That 
means you have to have more customers for your goods and services if you 
want more jobs and higher incomes. So productivity is good. It is a 
precondition of having a strong economy. But it is not enough. It is not 
enough unless the world economy is growing. Unless we are experiencing 
an opportunity to increase the sales of our products and services, we 
can't have more jobs and higher incomes, not in California, not in the 
United States. So, you betcha, I want to sell more to Mexico and the 
rest of Latin America. I want to sell more to Asia. That's why I invited 
the heads of 15 Asian nations to come to the United States to meet with 
me. I want to sell more around the world. That's why we're working hard 
to reach agreement by December 15th on a new worldwide trade agreement, 
because I know that's the only way in the long run I can protect good 
jobs and high incomes and create more jobs. And I hope you'll support 
that.
    We've also really tried to invest money in this economy. The most 
important thing we've done is to give American companies the chance to 
be partners with the United States Government in converting from a 
defense to a domestic economy in the technology reinvestment project, 
which this year alone awarded over $420 million in grants for new 
technologies for the future. Yes, the things we've done specifically for 
California are important, $300 million more to deal with the problems of 
education caused by the influx of immigration, another $500 million to 
help offset the health care costs of the State because of immigration, a 
$1.3 billion for an infrastructure project to extend that Red Line and 
create new jobs. Those things are important.
    But you know as well as I do, most of the new jobs in this country 
have to be created by people like you in the private sector. That's why 
the most important thing we can do is to help build new partnerships to 
take advantage of this wonderful technological wizardry that came out of 
all our defense investment and put it to work in the domestic economy, 
building a 21st century economy on high-tech commercial purposes based 
on the investments we've made in the cold war technology instead of 
letting them go to waste. We let that happen for too long. We started 
cutting defense in 1987. We didn't start rebuilding our economic base 
until 1993, but we're not going to let another year go by without doing 
it. I know that you know as part of this technology reinvestment 
project, Rocketdyne received an award for several million dollars to 
design and develop a portable environmental monitor to identify low 
concentrations of hazardous chemicals.
    This is a big deal. We will be able to assess the impact of toxic 
spills and auto emissions, chemical warfare agents on the battlefield. 
We'll be able to do something that is good for defense and something 
that is good for our domestic economy. We'll be able to do something we 
have all known for years we ought to be able to do, which is to create 
an enormous number of high-wage, high-tech jobs by cleaning up the 
environment and developing technologies we can then sell to other 
countries to create jobs in America cleaning up their environment.
    Rockwell also led two other winning teams, announced yesterday, one 
to improve the fuel efficiency of automobiles and heavy construction

[[Page 2122]]

equipment, at a potential fuel savings--listen to this--by as much as a 
billion dollars a year by the year 2000, another to allow medical 
personnel to monitor and diagnose trauma patients remotely, whether 
they're in rural clinics or far-off battlefields. Again, this is a huge 
deal. In America, rural health care is confronted with certain 
inevitable limits, whether it's in California or my home State of 
Arkansas or anywhere else. You cannot put all the high-tech equipment in 
the world in every rural area, but accidents occur there. If technology 
that has been developed to help people on the battlefields deal with the 
wounded, when only a medic is there and they need some high-tech 
connection, can be applied to rural health situations in America, it 
means again more jobs for Rockwell, a stronger economy for America, and 
a better quality of life. That is the sort of thing that this National 
Government should be doing to rebuild the economy of California and the 
United States and to move us forward.
    Let me just say in closing, I know it gets frustrating to see how 
long it takes to make these changes be felt in your lives. I know that, 
but just remember, just remember if you look at our two biggest 
problems--the economy, working Americans have been working harder for 
stagnant wages for 20 years now. We cannot turn it around overnight, but 
we can turn it around. If you look at what's happening to our society, 
the rising rate of crime, the continued breakdown of the family unit, 
the increasing number of children being born to children out of wedlock, 
all these things that are disintegrating our society, that has been 
going on for 30 years. It did not start overnight. We can turn it around 
if we begin now. It won't happen overnight, but we can do it.
    I just ask you to remember what can happen in a year. One year ago, 
the deficit was going up, not down, and interest rates were not dropping 
as they are now. A year ago, we didn't have the kind of bipartisan 
coalition passing bills like the Brady bill and a crime bill to put 
100,000 police on the street. This Congress, in a bill almost nobody 
knows about, revolutionized the student loan problem to lower interest 
rates on college loans, make the repayment terms easier. And they passed 
the national service bill which will enable 20,000 people this year and 
100,000 people 3 years from now to serve their community at the 
grassroots level solving problems and to earn their way through college. 
These are big changes that didn't happen a year ago.
    A year ago, we did not have a strategy to increase the exports of 
this country. We did not have the North American Free Trade Agreement, a 
new dialog with Japan, a real, intense effort to turn this whole trading 
situation around. If we can pass, by December 15th, if we can get the 
trading nations of the world to agree on a dramatic reduction of tariffs 
everywhere, what that means is that American manufacturing products will 
lead to creation of over a million new jobs in this country in the next 
10 years. We did not have that, and I hope we can get it in the next 10 
days. That is the kind of difference you can make in just a year. And 
it's just the beginning.
    These grants that were just announced to Rockwell--the idea was 
approved by the Congress a year ago, but there was opposition in the 
Pentagon and in the previous administration. They did not believe this 
Government had an obligation to help you convert from a defense to a 
domestic economy. I know we do, and I believe this money--10 years from 
now, 20 years from now you will look back on this and say this is the 
best money we ever spent. And next year there will be more of it. We are 
just getting warmed up. You are our partners in building an America for 
the 21st century.
    A lot of this may sound real detailed and complicated, but to me 
it's very simple. I think my job, as your President, is to get this 
country into the next century as the strongest nation in the world. I 
think my job, as your President, is to do everything I can to see that 
you have the opportunity and are challenged to assume the responsibility 
to build a community in this country that will enable every man and 
woman, every boy and girl to live to the fullest of their God-given 
capacities. That's my job. To do it, we're going to have to compete and 
win the global economy; we're going to have to educate and train our 
people; we're going to have to invest in those things that will produce 
jobs and incomes and opportunities; and we're going to have to take our 
streets, our communities, our families, and our neighborhoods back and 
do something about the terrible ravages of crime and violence that are 
consuming this country. But we can do it. We can do it.
    I ask you always to be impatient with me and with this country. Push 
us to do better. Push us to keep making progress. But also rec-


[[Page 2123]]

ognize we got in the fix we're in--20 years in the decline of wages, 12 
years in the explosion of the deficit, 30 years in the social problems 
we've got. We can turn it around. It won't happen in a day. But if we 
work together and we work hard, every year we can see progress. We can 
see progress. And we will look ahead to the 21st century as the best 
years our country ever had because we did our job now to rebuild 
America.
    Thank you for what you're doing. I'll stay with you. God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 1:50 p.m. on the main factory floor. In his 
remarks, he referred to Donald Beall, chairman, Rockwell International, 
and Robert Paster, president, Rocketdyne Division.