[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.