    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [October 18, 1995]
    [Pages 1625-1627]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on Presenting the National Medals of Science and Technology
    October 18, 1995

        Thank you very much, Mr. Vice President, Senator Glenn, Senator
    DeWine, distinguished members of our administration involved in science
    and technology and research and development, to our honorees, their
    friends, and other distinguished visitors to the White House today. I
    was looking at the Vice President, listening to him eloquently lay the
    case out and thinking to myself how fortunate we are to have a Vice
    President who knows so much and cares so much about these issues and
    wishing that you could all do something for him, those of you who are
    being honored today. You see, since Sunday, he has been in Haiti, Texas,
    and Tennessee, and I have been in Connecticut, Texas, California, Texas,
    and back here. And what we need is some nonbiologically damaging way to
    stay awake and on the job today. If any of you could come up with an
    idea before you leave today with your medals, we would be immensely
    grateful to you. [Laughter]
        Today it is a great honor for both the Vice President and me to
    honor outstanding Americans whose contributions to science and
    technology have enriched not only the United States but the entire
    world. Through persistence and focused intellectual energy, they have
    stretched our horizons, expanded the frontiers of knowledge, peeled away
    the secrets of nature, cured disease, created new industries such as
    that of optical storage. Through technologies like virtual reality, they
    will let doctors treat soldiers on the battlefield and let children on
    our prairies learn from teachers in our cities.
        They have even affected the lives of people of this country in more
    direct ways. They have invented the adhesive used for Post-Its. All of
    them have performed research that will pay off richly for the United
    States in the 21st century. In whatever their field or specialty, their
    spark of genius has lighted the landscape of human knowledge and pushed
    back the shrouds of ignorance.
        We are proud of all of you and what you have done. Your achievements
    give us confidence that the United States will continue to lead in
    science and technology for many years to come.
        In a year when seven of nine Nobel laureates for science and
    mathematics were Americans, we can feel assured that our scientific
    leadership is unchallenged. We can also feel proud that every one of
    these Nobel Prize winners has been supported in their research efforts
    by the United States Government.
        In honoring these pioneers, we must ask and answer a fundamental
    question: At the edge of the 21st century, how will we ensure that
    America remains the strongest nation in the world? How can we pass on to
    every child the American dream of opportunity?
        The world is changing rapidly from the industrial to the information
    technology age, from the cold war to the global village. We live at a
    time of remarkable promise, when dazzling new technologies are poised to
    transform how we work, how we learn, how we get information, indeed, how
    we organize our patterns of living. Consider that at the turn of the
    century, nearly half of American people were living on farms. At the
    midpoint of the century, 4 of 10 of us worked in industries. At the end
    of this century, most of us will be knowledge workers. That remaking of
    the economic landscape will only accelerate in the years to come, as we
    morph from the machine age to the information age.

    [[Page 1626]]

    Al told me to say that. Did I do okay? [Laughter] You promised you
    wouldn't laugh if I'd say it, and then there you are. It's part of my
    training in virtual reality, which is becoming the norm around here.
    [Laughter]
        Our ability to offer people opportunity clearly depends upon our
    ability to spread the fruits of our knowledge. In other words, our
    leadership depends upon our commitment to science, to technology, to
    research, to learning. We have always revered science and its implicit
    promise of progress. We are in a way a whole nation of inventors and
    explorers and tinkerers. We believe in technology, and we are determined
    to pursue technology in all of its manifestations. These things seem to
    me to be deeply embedded in our national character and our national
    history. We also recognize that these benefits are far from abstract,
    for throughout our history, from the steam engine to the telegraph, from
    the assembly line to the microchip, our prosperity has surged forward on
    wave after wave after wave of technological change. Since World War II,
    innovation has been responsible for clearly as much as half of our
    national economic growth.
        The private businesses represented here today will always be the
    most important investors in research and development. But throughout our
    history, we have recognized that Government, working in partnership with
    the private sector, does have a critical role to play.
        The defense and space programs help make America the world's leader
    in aircraft, aerospace, and electronics. Because our troops are equipped
    with the world's most sophisticated weapons, our Nation is secure. The
    work of the National Institutes of Health led to new drugs and therapies
    that have made America a leader in biotechnology. And a unique
    partnership between Government, business, and university researchers
    spawned the Internet, a pathway for knowledge and creativity, the likes
    of which our parents could only have imagined, and some of us who are
    parents today can just barely imagine. [Laughter] Sales of products
    through on-line services will soar from $200 million this year to $4.8
    billion in 1998.
        Today, global competition and rapid change have made technology
    clearly more central to our future than ever before. And because it is
    so often difficult for individual firms to reap the benefits of
    discovery and innovation, the public sector must continue to play a
    role.
        Since I became President, I have continued this commitment to invest
    in science and technology. Our comprehensive economic strategy began by
    reducing the deficit by a trillion dollars over 7 years, which lowered
    the cost of capital and freed up funds for investment. But we
    strengthened our investments in basic science research. And we put in
    place pragmatic industry-led efforts such as the Commerce Department's
    advanced technology program, manufacturing extension programs, and our
    work to enhance market-led solutions to our Nation's environmental
    challenges.
        Throughout our history, at least throughout modern history when
    we've been clearly aware of these scientific matters, this future and
    this kind of policy has been broadly supported by members of both
    parties. It has been a part of our national common ground, a part of our
    sense of who we are, what our security requires, and what will bring us
    the best future. Today that commitment is at risk in the great debate
    over balancing the Federal budget.
        I have proposed a balanced budget plan that sustains our investment
    in scientific endeavors, in technology, in research and development. The
    plan now being considered by the Congress will cut vital research and
    development by a third and any number of other related endeavors by that
    much or more. We could have a balanced budget to show for it tomorrow,
    but a decade or a generation from now our Nation will be much the poorer
    for doing that.
        At a time of real and crushing budget pressures, the Congress
    deserves credit for its commitment to balance the budget and to slow the
    rate of growth of medical inflation. But it is tempting to cut other
    things without considering what the consequences are, including
    investments in science and technology, which may not have the biggest
    lobby here in Washington.
        The future, it is often said, has no constituency. But the truth is,
    we must all be the constituency of the future. If we want a future in
    which the world's libraries are at every child's fingertips, in which
    gene therapy enables us to cure diseases like cystic fibrosis, in which
    a car can travel across the country on one tankful of gas with virtually
    no pollution, then we must strengthen, not weaken, our investments in
    science, technology, and research. We must sustain our universities, a
    critical national resource and still the envy of the entire world. We
    must allow ourselves always to see the world through

    [[Page 1627]]

    fresh eyes. We must never allow those who fear change to subvert
    progress. And we must resist these drastic cuts, for constant churning
    innovation is the key to economic growth and national strength in the
    21st century.
        If we're going to make real the promise of the American dream to all
    Americans, which would plainly do a lot to help us deal with the kind of
    racial difficulties that we began so bravely as a nation to come to
    grips with this last week, we have to go further in this area.
        Those of us in this room who care about science and technology, all
    of us have a duty to ensure that every child has the chance to take part
    in the new information age. Technological literacy must become the
    standard in our country. Computers can enrich the education of any child
    but only if the child has access to a computer, good software, and a
    competent, good teacher who can help that child learn how to use it.
    Preparing children for a lifetime of computer use is just as essential
    today as teaching basic skills was a few years ago.
        Over the past month I have been gratified that so many leaders of
    the high-tech industry have joined with us to launch a national effort
    to connect every classroom by the year 2000, a plan that rests upon four
    pillars: modern computers in every classroom accessible to all students;
    connections from every classroom to the incredible educational resources
    flowing throughout the world; teachers in every classroom who are
    trained to make the most of the technology; and a rich array of
    educational software and information resources.
        Already, significant progress is being made. In California, a
    voluntary private effort will provide Internet access to every
    elementary and secondary school by the end of the decade and will wire
    one out of every five classrooms by the end of this year. That is an
    astonishing achievement led by private sector companies in California.
        These goals are important to our future. And this balanced budget
    debate has to be seen in that context. It is a very good thing to
    balance the budget if we do it in a way that is consistent with our
    values and our clear long-term goals of strengthening our economy,
    growing our middle class, shrinking our under class, keeping America the
    world's greatest home for entrepreneurs. If it's consistent with our
    values and our economic interests, that's what we ought to do. We can't
    do that if we destroy the public responsibility in these critical areas.
        I, however, have to tell you I am basically optimistic, maybe
    because I am genetically programmed that way. [Laughter] We are going
    through sort of a tortured version of a scientific method now. It
    reminds me--I say tortured because, unlike the scientific method, it
    ignores the experiments of the past. [Laughter] But still, it's sort of
    like that.
        And I'm reminded of what Winston Churchill said about the United
    States when we were trying to decide in the Congress whether to support
    the Lend-Lease Act and help Britain when Britain was alone in World War
    II. And there was a great question about whether President Roosevelt
    could pass the Lend-Lease Act through Congress because many thought it
    was a backdoor way of getting the United States into the war. And Mr.
    Churchill said, ``I have great confidence in the judgment and the common
    sense of the American people and their leaders. They invariably do the
    right thing, after they have considered every other alternative.''
    [Laughter]
        So I urge you to inject some rigor into this scientific
    experimentation. I thank you for your achievements and your
    contributions. I do believe that the 21st century can be a golden age
    for all Americans and that we can help to lead the world to a new era of
    freedom and peace and prosperity, if we make the right decisions in this
    critical time of change.
        Your very achievements, the example of your life work have increased
    the odds that we will do exactly that. And on behalf of all Americans, I
    thank you and congratulate you.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:54 p.m. in the East Room at the White
    House.