[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
[October 10, 1996]
[Pages 1797-1803]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks in Knoxville, Tennessee
October 10, 1996

    Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for that wonderful 
reception. It's nice for me to be in Knoxville, sort of riding along on 
Al Gore's coattails. I enjoy being here. [Laughter]
    I want to thank everyone who has been a part of the program today. 
Dr. Parker, thank you. And Mildred Buffler, thank you. And I want to 
thank our great Secretary of Education, Dick Riley, my former colleague 
when we were Governors together. And I think unquestionably

[[Page 1798]]

history will record him as the most effective Secretary of Education our 
country has had to this point.
    I thank the students who are behind us. I thank Dr. Clinard for her 
fine remarks and her fine work. Dr. Al Trivelpiece from the Oak Ridge 
labs is here. I thank you for being here, sir. I want to say a special 
word of thanks to Sumner Redstone and to Lynn Forester. Thank you, Lynn, 
and to all the other business leaders who have agreed to help us on this 
truly monumental but terribly important project.
    I'm very, very glad to be here. The Vice President--last night I 
called to congratulate him on his debate, and I said that Mr. Kemp found 
out something that I found out a long time ago: It's just as well not to 
be on the other side of an argument with Al Gore. Although I did think 
it was rather ungracious of him to mention our annual bet on the 
Arkansas-Tennessee football game here in the backyard of the University 
of Tennessee. [Laughter]
    Actually, we have a lot to be grateful to the University of 
Tennessee for. One of the most important members of our administration, 
Nancy-Ann Min, I believe was the first female president of the student 
body here. The band came out to the airport to play for us, which was a 
wonderful thing; it woke us both up this morning, got us off to a good 
start. [Laughter]
    Anyway, we always come back around to this football game, you know. 
And the last few years have been pretty good for Tennessee and not so 
good for Arkansas, and so I figured that Al's hubris would get the 
better of him, and since we were in Knoxville I could get more points on 
the game today. [Laughter] And I'm lobbying. So you're proud of your 
football team, aren't you? [Applause] So what am I entitled to? Twenty-
eight points on the spread? I mean, what do you think? [Laughter]
    We got to talking about Tennessee football players, and I pointed 
out that one of the greatest football players Tennessee ever produced 
still has ties here in Knoxville, is still playing very well, Reggie 
White of the Green Bay Packers. He's a good man. I visited Reggie and 
the Packers not very long ago, and they are truly impressive. But as 
good as Reggie is, last night it was Al Gore who sacked the quarterback. 
[Laughter]
    Let me say to all of you that the Vice President and I have worked 
very closely together; we've been a good team. We've worked hard for 4 
years to basically change not only the way the National Government works 
but the way our country is thinking about the future. We want everyone 
in America to have a vision of what America should be like in the 21st 
century.
    And I ask all of you to think about it when you leave here and you 
go about your business today, just think about it: If you had to set 
down in a paragraph, sort of say what you think your country ought to be 
like as we start a new century and a new millennium, in a time where we 
have radical, breathtaking changes in the nature of work and 
communications and how we relate to each other and the rest of the 
world, what would that vision be for you if you were writing it down? I 
encourage you to do it tonight when you get home. It would be a good 
exercise. Talk to your spouses, your kids, your parents about it. And 
think about what do you want for your country when we start this new 
century.
    For me, it's this: I want us to take advantage of these changes so 
that the American dream will be alive and well for everyone who is 
willing to work for it. I want us to be a country that is coming 
together, respecting our diversity, and clinging to our shared values 
instead of being torn apart by our differences, as so many countries all 
around the world are. Now, who would have thought 15 or 20 years ago at 
the height of the cold war we could ever see the threat of communism 
fade from the world, that we would see the ugly rise of old racial and 
ethnic and religious hatreds consuming people all around the globe? We 
can beat that rap here, and we're determined to do it, and I think we 
will do it.
    The third thing I want is for the United States to continue to be 
the world's strongest force for peace and freedom and progress and 
prosperity in the entire world. I think that is important for other 
people in the world who have their aspirations and who need to have the 
chance to grow up strong and free, the chance to develop the minds that 
God gave them and the spirits of their children.
    To do that, we have followed a simple strategy. We have tried to 
create as much opportunity as possible. We have tried to demand 
responsibility from all of our citizens and do things that would 
encourage more of that. And we've tried to build this American community 
and stand against those forces that would under-


[[Page 1799]]

mine it. We tried to change the fundamental way the Government works, 
and Al Gore has been our leader in that regard. We have downsized the 
Government now by 240,000 people or so. It's the smallest it's been 
since President Kennedy was in office. But we have also tried to change 
the way it works, to make it less bureaucratic and more oriented toward 
working in partnerships with citizens to give people the tools they need 
to make the most of their own lives.
    That is the context in which I ask you to see what I believe we 
should be doing with science and technology and basic research. It has 
to do with what I want America to look like when we start this new 
century, what I want it to look like when people like me, when our 
children are our age, and indeed when our grandchildren are our age.
    If you have that vision, there is no better way to make it real than 
by continuing to preserve America's leadership in research and 
technology and science. Of course, as Al said, there could be a great 
digital divide. If we don't broadly share the knowledge and the 
technology that is developing, it could work to promote inequality, 
frictions, anxieties among people. But if we do it right, it can be a 
great force to help us meet our challenges and protect our values 
together.
    Continuing to push back on the frontiers of knowledge has always 
been one of the measures of America's greatness. For the last half 
century, this State of Tennessee has been a living map of how those 
kinds of investments can produce growth and opportunity. Sixty years 
ago, the TVA lifted an entire region out of poverty. Today, it is still 
shining its light, illuminating homes and communities. During the cold 
war, the Oak Ridge Laboratory harnessed the power of the atom in the 
service of our Nation's defense. Today, its nuclear science is yielding 
the isotopes that help doctors trace heart disease. Our interstate 
highway system, built with the leadership of Senator Al Gore, Sr., 
literally remade the landscape of America and connected us all more 
closely. And today it is still bringing Americans together.
    Technology is clearly transforming our world, and it is creating a 
range of possibilities for the young people behind me and the young 
people in this audience that are literally unimaginable. Many of you 
people who are students at the University of Tennessee who are here and 
the younger students from high schools and the middle schools, the 
elementary schools, you will be doing work that has not been invented 
yet. Some of you will be doing things that have not even been imagined 
yet. And it is up to us to see that every one of you has the best 
possible chance to develop your talents and to live out your dreams.
    This is what has been happening: change at a rapid rate. Again, even 
if you look back on it, it's almost unimaginable. Consider this: There 
is today more computer power in a Ford Taurus you drive to the 
supermarket than there was in Apollo 11 when Neil Armstrong took it all 
the way to the Moon. Isn't that amazing? Cell phones, faxes, laptop 
computers, pagers: they were the stuff of science fiction a few years 
ago. They're now everywhere, and if you don't have one, don't know how 
to work one, you're sort of out of step. These days you can take notes 
on a computer pad which converts it into a typed text and sends it to 
the Internet and transmits it to a computer all across the world.
    The young people today will live out their lives, in short, in a 
century that will change like this constantly. And that's why I say they 
will do work that not only has not been invented yet but some of it has 
not been imagined yet.
    Our cutting edge industries like microchips, biotechnology, and 
aerospace once again lead the world. I'm proud of that, and that's good 
news for Americans. When it comes to these new technologies, our Nation 
is on the right track, and that's one of the reasons we're the world's 
leading exporting country again, one of the reasons we have as many jobs 
as we do, one of the reasons that more than half of our new jobs are in 
higher wage categories, because we are on the cutting edge of positive 
change.
    So let me say again, we must stay on the cutting edge of positive 
change. I am determined that we will continue to invest in science and 
technology. More research in America--most research is conducted by 
businesses and universities, but we all know that Government has an 
important role to play.
    Of the 12 Americans who won the Nobel Prize last year, all 12 had 
received Government support for their research. This year, the Nobel 
Prize winners have just been announced in physics and chemistry. Of the 
three who won this year in physics and two who won in chemistry, all 
five received Federal funding from the National Science Foundation. 
Cutting back on re-


[[Page 1800]]

search at the dawn of a new century where research is more important 
than it has been even for the last 50 years would be like cutting our 
defense budget at the height of the cold war. We must not do it, and we 
will not do it. We must protect the future of the young people here in 
the audience.
    One of the marvelous things we have learned about research is that 
it's not necessarily going to benefit just a particular category in 
which it was undertaken, that ideas don't stay in boxes anymore, that 
they all become more interrelated, the more you know and the more you 
learn. For example, the Department of Defense has a dual applications 
program that makes military research available for commercial use. The 
Commerce Department has an advanced technology program that works with 
hundreds of high-tech firms to create jobs and new technologies, and let 
me just give you one example of this.
    The research we've done in defense and intelligence and in our space 
program on imaging, which is very, very important, knowing exactly where 
you are and what you're seeing, is playing enormous benefits in the 
medical research area, and it may help us to identify incipient cancers 
before they develop to a problem stage in a way that may drastically 
improve the cure rate for cancer and almost get the identification down 
to the point where cure and prevention become merely indistinguishable 
in the moment. This is the sort of thing we have to be thinking about 
all of the time.
    I tell this story all the time, but I think it's important. We just 
formed a partnership with IBM to produce a supercomputer over the next 
couple of years that will do more calculations in one second than you 
can do at home on your hand-held calculator in 30,000 years. Now, that 
should give you some indication of how quickly things are changing and 
how we will be rewarded if we stay on the cutting edge and how we can be 
punished if we don't.
    I just talked a little bit about health care, but technology is 
really making enormous strides there, and research is. During the time 
the Vice President and I have been in office, we've increased research 
on breast cancer at the National Institutes of Health by almost 80 
percent. And just last year, an NIH scientist discovered two of the 
genes that cause breast cancer, giving hope for treating and preventing 
the second leading cause of cancer deaths among women. We've increased 
NIH research on AIDS by 39 percent. And I'm convinced we're in the 
process of helping to turn a relentlessly fatal disease into a chronic, 
manageable illness. The life expectancy of those with HIV and AIDS has 
nearly doubled since I took office because of medical advances in 
research. We've come up with the first-ever treatment for strokes, the 
third biggest killer in America, something no one ever thought we would 
ever be able to do very much on.
    And just the other day--well, a lot of you were moved, I know, by 
Christopher Reeve's speech at the Democratic National Convention. And he 
called for a recommitment to research. At almost the same time, either a 
couple of days before or a couple of days after Christopher Reeve gave 
that speech, for the first time ever, laboratory animals whose spine had 
been severed had movement in their lower limbs because of nerve 
transplants to the spine from other parts of the body. We can do things 
that we have never imagined if we continue to work and go forward.
    Last week I signed budget legislation increasing the NIH budget $2.4 
billion over what it was on the day I took office. These investments 
will make possible further advances. They will lead to sophisticated 
computer imaging systems to help us treat cancer, to help us deal with 
Alzheimer's. They will enable us to continue certain extraordinary 
initiatives going on there. One of my favorites is the human genome 
project, which is literally on the verge on mapping out a genetic code 
of life. I think it won't be too many years before parents will be able 
to go home from the hospital with their newborn babies with a genetic 
map in their hands that will tell them: Here's what your child's future 
will likely be like. Therefore, if you want your child to live as long 
and as well as possible, here is the diet you should follow, here is the 
exercise program you should follow, here is the medical treatment you 
should follow. It will be an incredible thing.
    I know that all of you believe in this, but I think it's important 
that we have--that ordinary citizens have at their fingertips three or 
four examples that people can identify with of why these investments of 
your money--because, after all, this is all your money, these are just 
things that we do together as a people because we couldn't do them 
individually--and I think it's important that you have these at your 
finger-


[[Page 1801]]

tips so that you can talk to your friends and neighbors about why this 
matters. I know you can make a good speech about it here because you've 
got Oak Ridge up the road, and it's a lot of good jobs. But it's 
important to understand why it matters to everyone wherever they live 
and how it can change our common future for the better.
    We all know that changes in technology are transforming the way we 
work, too. For a long time people were worried about that; we all were. 
Everybody wondered: Well, there's so much computer technology, all of 
the big organizations, the big bureaucracies can downsize. Will there be 
more people dislocated than we can create new jobs? Even if we create 
new jobs, will the new jobs not be as good a job as the ones we're 
losing? These are legitimate worries that have plagued people in the 
past and that still trouble individuals in our country, but we now know 
that we are creating jobs that on average are in the higher wage 
categories. We know we can do it right.
    But there is another thing that we ought to look at, which is how we 
can use technology to help people who have children at home succeed at 
home and at work. When I became President--and I think it's still true, 
we don't have any updated figures--but when I became President, there 
was a study that came out that said that people were working harder in 
1994, the second year I was in office, than they had been 25 years 
earlier in 1969. The average working person was actually spending more 
hours a week at work. And yet there were a higher percentage of parents 
in the work force in 1994 than there were in 1969. That means that 
nearly every family, whether it's a family working for a very modest 
wage, a family with a solid, middle class existence, even a lot of upper 
middle class, better-off families are dealing with these competing 
pressures of trying to do a good job raising their children, which is 
our most important job, and trying to succeed in the workplace.
    That's why the Vice President and I worked so hard for the Family 
and Medical Leave Act, why we believe it ought to be expanded, and why 
we think there ought to be more flextime in the workplace. But again, I 
think technology, if we keep working on it, will bring it back around to 
us, and a lot of people will be able to benefit from it. The number of 
Americans who are now working from their home at least part of the week 
and telecommuting has doubled over the last 5 years to 12.1 million.
    The Small Business Job Protection Act that I signed this summer 
included an increase in the minimum wage for 10 million working 
Americans. But it also did something else: It completed a job the Vice 
President and I started in 1993. We have, since 1993, increased the 
amount of capital a small business can expense from $10,000 a year now 
to $25,000 a year. And I believe more and more companies should use this 
expense to buy computers and other equipment for their employees to use 
at home, especially if the employees have young children. We have to 
work harder to make our businesses work well, our employees succeed, and 
people be able to be good parents.
    Finally, let me say the explosion of information has changed 
everyone's life, nowhere more than on the Internet. Now, think about the 
Internet, how rapidly it's become part of our lives. In 1969 the 
Government invested in a small computer network that eventually became 
the Internet. When I took office, only high-energy physicists had ever 
heard of what is called the World Wide Web. When I took office, January 
of '93, only high-energy physicists had heard of it. Now even my cat has 
his own web page. [Laughter]
    The number of people on the Web has been doubling every 8 months. 
Think about that. The number of people on the Web has been doubling 
every 8 months. Today, there are at least 25 million people on the 
Internet. By 1998, that number will reach 100 million. The day is coming 
when every home will be connected to it, and it will be just as normal a 
part of our life as a telephone and a television. It is becoming our new 
town square, changing the way we relate to one another, the way we send 
mail, the way we hear news, the way we play.
    Every citizen can now read the Congressional Record. If you have 
insomnia, I recommend it. [Laughter] Every citizen can get the text of 
what's in a new law the very day it passes. Art lovers can go to the 
Louvre. Baseball fans can pay an on-line visit to Cooperstown. Everyone 
can find a passage in the Bible or in Shakespeare with the click of a 
mouse. Most of all, the Internet will be the most profoundly 
revolutionary tool for educating our children in generations.
    I want to see the day when computers are as much a part of a 
classroom as blackboards

[[Page 1802]]

and we put the future at the fingertips of every American child. That 
sounds great, but think about the implications for our American 
democracy. If you want to go into the 21st century with the American 
dream alive and well for everyone, everybody has a chance to live up to 
the fullest of their abilities and, I might add, to be less shackled by 
whatever disabilities they have, if you believe we can create a 
community where everybody has a role to play, think about the 
implications for this.
    What does this mean, hooking up every classroom? It means if you 
have the right computers and the right education equipment, software, 
the right educational software, and properly trained teachers, and then 
all of these connections are made to the Internet and the World Wide Web 
and all of the other networks that will be exploding out there, think 
what this means. This means for the first time ever in history, children 
in the most rural schools, children in the poorest inner-city school 
districts, children in standard, middle class communities, children in 
the wealthiest schools, public or private, up and down the line, will 
have access in real time to the same unlimited store of information. It 
will revolutionize and democratize education in a way that nothing ever 
has in the history of this country. Think about what it means.
    In the State of the Union Address, I challenged the American people 
to make sure that all of the libraries and classrooms in the country 
were hooked up to the information superhighway by the year 2000. I am 
very, very grateful for the work that has already been done. Businesses, 
communities, governments, schools have worked all across this country, 
thousands of schools have been hooked up on NetDays from California to 
Florida, and today we are taking three more steps to make sure we 
achieve that critical goal.
    First, the announcement that has been made by Mr. Redstone. The 
business community is committed to taking the lead in putting 
educational technology into our classrooms. CEO's from our top 
telecommunications firms are joining together to help us achieve that 
vision. Sumner Redstone, Lynn Forester, also Robert Allen of AT&T, Larry 
Ellison of Oracle, Gerry Levin of Time-Warner, Brian Roberts of Comcast, 
Steven Case of America Online, and there will be many more--they're 
going to make sure that we have the computers in the classrooms, that 
the teachers are properly trained, that the educational software is the 
best available, and that all these connections are made to democratize 
education. They will help to raise private sector contributions to match 
the technology literacy challenge fund that we have created. And let me 
say again to Sumner, to Lynn, to all the others: We owe them our thanks, 
and we need more to follow their lead. This is the only way we can get 
this done in a short time. [Applause] Thank you.
    The second thing we have to do is to make sure that all of the 
schools and the libraries in the country can afford to connect to the 
Internet. Today, the cost of using the Internet can price some schools 
out of cyberspace. Fees can be inconsistent, with the highest rates 
often hitting places with the fewest resources.
    Soon, all this will change. Under the new telecommunications law I 
signed a few months ago, the Federal Communications Commission will 
require that telecommunications service providers give to schools and 
libraries affordable rates for Internet access. The FCC will vote on how 
to do this on November 8th--how to provide what we call an E-rate, an 
education rate. Today I call on the FCC, when it votes, to give every 
elementary, middle, and high school and every library in the country the 
lowest possible E-rate: free basic service to the Internet. For more 
sophisticated services like teleconferencing, the FCC should require 
discounted rates with the deepest discounts going to the poorest schools 
and areas. I urge the FCC and the State regulators who have a say in 
this to make the E-rate a reality for our schools.
    And again, I want to thank the Vice President and Secretary Riley, 
Assistant Secretary of Commerce Larry Irving, who's worked with us on 
this, and there are a number of Members of Congress. The Senators that I 
would like to mention are Dorgan, Exon, Kerrey, Rockefeller, and Senator 
Snowe, and Congressman Markey. They have all helped us on this.
    This is a big deal. Wouldn't it be a shame if we did all this work 
and there were schools that literally could not access the Internet, if 
there were libraries in little rural communities that couldn't do it? It 
is not necessary. This will pay for itself over and over again by 
increasing the users, the knowledge. It will explode, and we have to do 
this.
    Finally, let me say, to keep going we have to keep the Internet 
itself up to speed. I know

[[Page 1803]]

it's hard to imagine that the Internet could be getting too old. I find 
that about myself from time to time. [Laughter] But believe it or not, 
everything ages, and the Internet is straining under its growing 
popularity. Like any other piece of critical infrastructure, it has to 
be repaired and upgraded to meet all our education, medical, and 
national security needs. It is now time to invest in the next generation 
of Internet. Today I am pleased to announce our commitment to a new $100 
million initiative in fiscal year 1998 to improve and expand the 
Internet, paid for under our balanced budget plan line by line, dime by 
dime. America must have an Internet that keeps pace with our future. So 
let's give America Internet II, the next generation Internet. We have to 
keep it big enough and fast enough to connect all of our people.
    Now, this initiative will help universities and research 
institutions expand the amount of information that Internets can carry 
through ultra-fast fiber-optic networks. It will develop software to 
eliminate bottlenecks. It will expand the number of addresses on the 
Internet. It will create powerful new switching computers to create 
power--to enable universities to communicate with each other 100 to 
1,000 times faster than they can today. It will develop the software to 
carry sound and video from one end of the world to another in real time. 
It will be capable of transmitting the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in 
less than a second.
    These improvements will make the Internet a more important and 
remarkable part of our own lives. They will enable our Defense 
Department to send intelligence instantly to our troops on the ground 
anywhere in the world. They will let doctors in rural areas scan their 
patients for cancer by tapping into supercomputers at university 
hospitals a long way away. They will allow Americans to take any class 
anytime, anywhere, in any subject. They will expand the reach of 
education programs right here, like the Oak Ridge Education Network and 
Adventures in Supercomputing. So let us reach for a goal in the 21st 
century of every home connected to the Internet, and let us be brought 
closer together as a community through that connection.
    Let me close with a word of caution that I know I don't need for 
anybody in this audience in east Tennessee. We cannot idealize 
technology. Technology is only and always the reflection of our own 
imagination, and its uses must be conditioned by our own values. 
Technology can help cure diseases, but we can prevent a lot of diseases 
by old-fashioned changes in behavior. And we know that as well. 
Technology can give us a lot of information about why we should act 
rationally in certain cases. But continuing to hate our friends and 
neighbors because of their differences--religious, racial, tribal, or 
ethnic differences--that is an affair of the human heart. And we know 
that as well.
    So today let us resolve to keep faith with our future by passing on 
to our children an information superhighway that will help them to live 
out their dreams. But let us also resolve to make sure that their dreams 
are the right dreams so that when we get to this great, grand new 
century and this remarkable age of possibility, the vision we all share 
for our future can become real.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at approximately noon at the Knoxville 
Auditorium Coliseum. In his remarks, he referred to Eugene Parker, who 
gave the invocation; Mildred Buffler, who led the Pledge of Allegiance; 
Lillian A. Clinard, deputy director, data systems research and 
development, Lockheed Martin Corp.; Alvin Trivelpiece, director, Oak 
Ridge National Laboratory; Sumner M. Redstone, chief executive officer, 
Viacom, Inc.; and Lynn Forester, chief executive officer, Netwave, Inc.