    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
    [February 24, 1996]
    [Pages 332-336]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Community in Shoreline
    February 24, 1996

        The President. Thank you very much.
        Audience member. [Inaudible]
        The President. You know, we've listened to you, now it's my turn.
    [Applause] Thank you very much.
        I want to thank Monica, not only for that introduction, which she
    did very well, but for her example, which millions of Americans will
    need to follow in the next few years. Let's give her another hand; she
    was great. [Applause]
        I thank President Oertli, and I thank Senator Murray, your former
    faculty member here and a remarkable public servant who is--yes, you can
    clap for that, it's all right--[applause]--she's here along with
    Congressman Dicks and Congressman McDermott. Let me say that we've done
    a lot of good things in the last 3 years, and we've made one or two
    mistakes under the law of unintended consequences. And one of them was
    the unintended and unwarranted consequence of the way that timber rider
    has been carried out. And Patty Murray is going to help us fix it, and I
    thank her for that. I thank her for that.
        I want to thank Mayor Connie King of Shoreline and my friends Mayor
    Rice of Seattle and King County Executive Gary Locke and Governor Lowry.
    They all came with me today, and we've had a wonderful experience here.
    I want to especially thank Bill Gates and Microsoft for this remarkable
    donation. I hope this word goes out all across the country and others
    try to match him, because this is the sort of thing that we need here.
    This is a shining example of the kind of partnership between businesses
    and public institutions that we need more of in America.
        Let me say to all of you that when I became President I had a very
    straightforward vision. I wanted this country to go into the 21st
    century under circumstances in which every single American could live
    out his or her dreams and everybody who was willing to work for it could
    have their shot at the American dream. I wanted to go into the 21st
    century with a country that was coming together, not being driven apart,
    and a nation that was still the strongest force in the world for peace
    and freedom.
        Now, to do that it is abundantly clear that we have to meet the
    challenges of this present moment and that we have to meet them
    together. One of the reasons I am here today is because I believe the
    community college in the United States is the daily model of how we are
    all going to have to behave if we hope to open up the opportunities of
    the information age to all Americans because it works by cooperation. It
    is completely democratic--small ``d''--everybody is able to come and
    fulfill their own desires by working together, and everybody

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    cooperates. And if we all did that in every other way, we would be much
    better off.
        I was here, you know, in Washington just a few days ago when I
    landed at Portland and just flew over the State line and visited a
    community that was ravaged by the flood. And I was in this little
    community of Woodland, walking down the streets, and I went into the
    home of a man--he and his wife were about 70 years old, and they had
    lost everything they had. They had lived in this house for 30 years;
    they had lost everything. He was hard of hearing; even his hearing aid
    was washed away. So I walked in, you know, really not knowing what to
    expect. I thought these people would be devastated. And this gentleman
    shook my hand, and he said, ``You know, I'm 70 years old, and you're the
    first President I ever met. It was nearly worth it to lose my home.''
    And then he said--[laughter]--I thought that was pretty remarkable. And
    then he said, ``Not only that,'' he said, ``I wouldn't have been fit to
    welcome a President before now. But come in here, look, I can offer you
    an indoor swimming pool.'' [Laughter] I was stunned.
        I got out of the car and shook hands with a fellow who was up in his
    sixties. He was retired from the local utility company, a naturalized
    American, an immigrant from Norway, who operated a jackhammer in doing
    his part to try to help deal with the flood. And he operated this
    jackhammer for 8 hours with a cracked rib. I don't know if any of you
    have ever tried to hold a jackhammer in place. I'm above average size
    and not entirely weak, and that's hard work. And that man did that for 8
    hours with a cracked rib.
        Anyway, when I got ready to leave the 70-year-old fellow said to me,
    ``I have just loved this. You know, as awful as this is, people came in
    here and tried to help us at least save some of our pictures and our
    records and our personal effects, tried to help us save a little
    furniture. They've been here every day since this flood happened.'' He
    said, ``Don't you just wish we could behave this way all the time?'' I
    say that because if you look at the challenges we face to give everybody
    a shot at the American dream, to grow together instead of be divided,
    and to maintain the world's strongest force for peace and freedom, we're
    going to have to do more of working together all the time.
        How do we want that? How do we propose to do that? Well, just
    imagine what we have to do. In the State of the Union I was outlining
    the challenges to America. We want people to succeed at home and at
    work, so we have to build strong families and strong work places. We
    want people to have a decent quality of life, so we need safe streets
    and a clean environment. We know that there will be all kinds of changes
    in this economy, so we have to address the need for greater education
    and economic security that does not undermine the strength and the
    dynamism of this economy. We know that we have to do certain things to
    continue to lead the world. And we know that, just like every other
    organization, the Federal Government cannot be big and bloated and
    bureaucratic. So it needs to be smaller and less bureaucratic, but it
    doesn't need to be weak. It needs to be strong where it should be strong
    so it can be a valuable partner.
        And if you look at all this, the most important areas to building
    the future we need are two that can be melded together that you are
    melding together here. One is every single American has got to have
    educational opportunity that is excellent and that is there for a
    lifetime--for a lifetime. And the second is we have to maintain the
    dynamism and the strength of the American economy, but give every
    American who is willing to work for it the chance to achieve economic
    security.
        Now, before I came in here, I met with a number of students at this
    community college and some teachers and a labor leader and a businessman
    who were supporting the activities here. And I want you to just think a
    minute about the meaning of what Bill Gates did here today. I have
    worked very hard to increase the educational opportunities available to
    the America people, based on a simple theory: We should have high
    standards, high expectations, high technology, and access, access for a
    lifetime. That's why I believe if we're going to have a tax cut in this
    budget debate, the first and most important one we could give would be
    to give a tax cut for the cost of college tuition, a deductibility for
    that.
        If we are here celebrating the work that is going on in this
    institution, its key to the 21st century, and opportunity for all, then
    we should stand by those things that are working. We should keep the
    student loan program and strengthen it. We should keep the Pell grant
    program and strengthen it. We should keep the

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    national service program, AmeriCorps, and strengthen it. We should do
    these things.
        But I want to put before you the dilemma that I saw in the lives of
    these people that a lot of you have experienced. If I were to have told
    you 3 years ago when I became the President, ``Look, here's what's going
    to happen in our country. Just listen to this. In 3 years we will have
    nearly 8 million new jobs, and all the other advanced countries in the
    world together will have a net of zero. The other six big economies,
    they'll have--a few will create a few jobs, and a few will lose a few,
    but they'll net out no new jobs. We'll have nearly 8 million. And in
    each year of the next 3 years, we'll have a record number of new
    businesses, and we'll be at a 15-year high in homeownership. We'll have
    a record number of new self-made millionaires, not people who inherited
    it, people like Bill Gates, people that went out and made it on their
    own. We will have the lowest rates of unemployment, inflation, and home
    mortgages combined that we've had in 27 years''--you can clap for that.
    That's the good news. [Applause] ``Our exports will be at an all-time
    high, and we will turn around the trade situation so that for the first
    time in many years our exports will be growing faster than our imports.
    We will do that. We'll be opening closed markets in Asia, selling
    everything from Washington apples to computers to auto parts. We'll be
    doing these things. But half the American people will be working harder
    than they were 3 years ago for the same wages they were making 10 years
    ago.'' Now, you would say, ``Well, how could that happen?''
        Well, it's because of the changes we're going through. You heard
    Monica talk about it. We are changing the nature of work. There's more
    mind and less muscle in all work. We're changing the nature of the
    workplace. The information revolution means you don't need as many
    people in the middle passing orders down and information up. And by the
    way, these changes are the most profound we've seen in 100 years. The
    last time this country changed this much was when most people moved from
    living on the farm to living in towns and cities, and most people moved
    from working on the farm to working in factories and in businesses
    necessary to support them. It's a 100-year change.
        In addition to that, communication is changing so rapidly. You heard
    Mr. Gates talk about it. In his book he says the digital chip is the
    most important change in communication in not 100 years but in 500
    years, since Gutenberg printed the first Bible in Europe.
        Now, you cannot go through that sweep of change--and understand that
    the markets in the world where people exchange goods and services and
    money are changing; the money markets and the goods and services markets
    are now all global--you can't go through a change like that without a
    great uprooting.
        Now, we have two choices. We can either bore our way through this
    change until it benefits all Americans, or we can pretend that we can
    repeal the laws of change and suffer the consequences. I can tell you--
    you heard what Bill Gates said--remember what I said, for all of our
    challenges in America, we have 8 million more jobs nearly, and we'll
    have more than that by the end of this year, and we have a much lower
    unemployment rate than most of our competitors. Our exports are growing
    faster than our imports. We're starting record numbers of new jobs. For
    all the corporate downsizing, listen to this, businesses owned by women
    alone have created more jobs than the Fortune 500 have laid off in the
    last 3 years.
        So what we have to do--[applause]--but the challenge--that sounds
    great, but if you're one of those people who hasn't had a raise, if
    you're one of those people who gets downsized, or if you live in a
    remote rural community or an inner-city neighborhood that has no new
    jobs, it sounds great, but it doesn't ring true to you.
        So our challenge is not to back up, not to give up, it's to go
    ahead. If you look at technology, today in our public schools where our
    children are becoming computer wizards in elementary schools, nobody
    sees technology as a threat. Technology is the equalizer. Technology is
    the tool that means that poor kids and rich kids can learn together and
    access the future together. Technology is a tool that I have seen with
    my own eyes bringing immigrant families into the mainstream of American
    educational life.
        I was in a poor school district in New Jersey all the way across the
    country a few days ago where the student body is below the national
    average in per capita income and many of them come from immigrant
    families. But a company there, Bell Atlantic, worked with the school
    district and others to put computers in the classrooms and computers in
    the homes. And you have people who didn't even live in this country

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    20 years ago now E-mailing the principal to find out how the kids are
    doing in school. And this school district, which was on the verge of
    educational bankruptcy, literally about to be taken over by the State,
    within 2 years had an attendance record, a graduation record, and test
    scores above the State average. Technology was the great equalizer. We
    saw that.
        So we have to finish that job. One of the goals we have is to do the
    four things that was up on one of those charts that Mr. Gates had: Put
    the computers in every classroom and every library in America, have good
    software, train the teachers, and then hook them all up to the Internet.
    We want every classroom and every library in every community in the
    United States on the Internet by the year 2000. And I think we're well
    on the way to getting that done.
        But the significance of what we are here today about is this: The
    gift that Microsoft is giving to the community colleges, the work that
    the community colleges are doing, the people that come to places like
    this fine institution who have been downsized and now no longer feel
    diminished but feel empowered, that shows us the way to the future. The
    way to the future is not to back up on the technology revolution but to
    embrace it, work through it, and don't stop until every single American
    citizen benefits from it instead of being punished by it. That is what
    we have to do as Americans.
        When we knew changes would have to be made here in the Pacific
    Northwest in logging practices in order to preserve the old growth
    forest, preserve the quality of the water, preserve the salmon
    population, preserve the quality of life, and still permit an acceptable
    amount of logging to go on, we knew there would be great dislocation in
    a lot of these small towns and rural areas, just like there has been in
    all the communities that lost their military bases when we downsized
    after the cold war.
        So the Congress, with the leadership of the people in your
    delegation whom I just mentioned, appropriated over $1 billion for
    communities in the Pacific Northwest for the kind of economic transition
    that Monica is going through. That is what we have to do more of. But we
    have to do it in a way that makes technology our friend, not our enemy.
    At least two of the students that I met with here were downsized purely
    because you can do more work with fewer people because of computers.
        The same thing is going on in the Federal Government. The Federal
    Government is 205,000 people smaller today than it was the day I took
    office. And I might add, I'm proud of the fact that we've worked very
    hard to help all these people not feel like they were downsized but feel
    like they were given an opportunity to go on to a better and more
    productive life. But we can do more work than we used to be able to do
    with fewer people, with less regulatory hassle, less bureaucratic
    hassle. The Federal Government is today as small as it was in 1965. And
    that's a good thing. But it's also a good thing that these people are
    going to have a chance to do something else that's more exciting, that's
    more fulfilling, that society needs done, that the marketplace says,
    hey, we need, and that they can get a good wage doing.
        So I will say to you again: Our great challenge is to take what we
    know is true in the schoolroom, that technology is the great equalizer,
    and take it into the workplace. And that will happen through the
    community college. That will happen through partnerships. That will
    happen if we continue to invest in student assistance programs, to
    invest in technology partnerships, to invest in economic transitions, to
    invest in the people. And it will happen if we continue to work
    together.
        One of the worst things about contemporary political life is that
    the further you get away from a grassroots political office where
    everyone knows all the candidates running, the more likely politics and
    campaigns are to be used to divide people instead of to unite them. When
    we are together, America never loses, and we will not lose this.
        So I ask you to continue to support Shoreline Community College, to
    continue to support investments in education, to continue to insist that
    we move forward into the future and that we not stop until the benefits
    of technology are available to everyone. We cannot go forward as a
    country where half of us are growing and half of us are stuck. But we
    cannot pretend that we can return to a time that does not exist anymore.
        We have no choice but to do what Americans have always done, to take
    on the challenges of the present and to march right through them. We can
    create more high-wage jobs. The Telecommunications Act will create tens
    of thousands of high-wage jobs. I want you to be trained to hold them.
    We can win in global

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    competition if we insist on having an open but fair trading system. We
    can move into the future. And we have to do it by working together.
        More than any other institution in the United States of America
    today, the promise of technology with a bright future for all Americans
    is embodied by the way the community colleges work. I want America to
    work that way, and I want every one of you to remember what that 70-
    year-old man in Woodland, Washington, said to me: ``That's the way we
    ought to behave all the time.'' And if we do, there is no limit to
    America's future.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 6:13 p.m. in the gymnasium at Shoreline
    Community College. In his remarks, he referred to Monica Walker,
    student, and Gary Oertli, president, Shoreline Community College; Mayor
    Norman Rice of Seattle; and Gov. Mike Lowry of Washington.