[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
[February 4, 1999]
[Pages 162-167]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks on Presenting the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards
February 4, 1999

    The President. Thank you very much. I must say I always love coming 
to this; this is the fifth time I have participated in the Baldrige 
Awards in the 6 years I have--this is the seventh year of my 
Presidency--I've done this five times. And I like it because this group 
is always so restrained, laid back, unexpressive, you know. [Laughter] 
Amazing.
    I want to thank Secretary Daley for his 
truly outstanding service. And this is the first time he's told me he 
intended to stay the whole 2 years; I appreciate that. [Laughter]
    I want to thank Roger Ackerman, who is 
genuinely devoted to the Baldrige Awards. And I thank all of those who 
are responsible for the program. We're glad to have Tish 
Baldrige here today. I thank Barry 
Rogstad, Bob Jones, Ernie Deavenport. I 
thank the National Institute for Standards and Technology.
    I want to also thank my Adviser for Science and Technology, Dr. Neal 
Lane, who is here; and Congressman Jay 
Inslee from Washington State, who came to wave 
the flag for Boeing. And I congratulate Boeing Airlift and Tanker, Solar 
Turbines, and Caterpillar and Texas Nameplate, all of you, for your 
great recognition today.

Kosovo

    Let me say to all of you--I have to ask your indulgence for a 
moment. This is the only opportunity I will have to be before the press 
for the rest of the day, and I know that you have been following the 
events in the Balkans and Kosovo and the work we're doing there to try 
to promote peace and avert another ethnic slaughter in the former 
Yugoslavia. And Secretary Albright's 
going to say something about this later today, but I need to take just a 
minute or two to speak not only to you but through you, to the American 
people about this subject.
    We have worked for years to restore peace in the former Yugoslavia. 
Three years ago--I am very proud of the role the United States played in 
ending the war in Bosnia with our NATO allies, with Russia, and other 
allies--we sent 28,000 troops to that country, then. There are fewer 
than 7,000 today, and we are continuing our drawdown. But the peace 
process has taken hold.
    I just came from the annual Presidential Prayer Breakfast that 
Congress sponsors, something I never thought I'd live long enough to 
see: the Prime Minister of the Serbian Republic within Bosnia--you know, there's a Serbian Republic, 
and then there is the other republic, which is basically made up of the 
Croatians and the Muslims--the head of the Serbian Republic came to the 
Prayer Breakfast and looked at me, after all the battles we've fought, 
and he said, ``You know, we wouldn't be at peace today if it weren't for 
the United States.'' And it could have--[applause].
    But I would like to say to all of you, to the American people, what 
I said to the American people 3 years ago. The Balkans are an explosive 
area. They touch other difficult areas. And unless we can contain and 
ultimately defuse the ethnic hatreds in that region, they could embroil 
us, ultimately, in a much larger conflict with much more human loss.
    Now, the biggest remaining danger to our objective of peace and 
stability in Europe has been the fighting in Kosovo. Unlike Bosnia, 
Kosovo is actually still legally a part of Serbia. But it is supposed to 
be autonomous under their law. Interestingly enough, Kosovo, which is 
primarily made of Albanian natives, is where the fighting in the former 
Yugoslavia began over a decade ago. We have an interest in seeing that 
that is where it ends.

[[Page 163]]

    If it continues, almost certainly it will draw in the neighboring 
countries of Albania and Macedonia. Both of their Prime Ministers came here 
today to meet with me and urge me to have the United States help to stop 
this war. It could potentially involve our NATO allies Greece and 
Turkey. It could spark tensions again in Bosnia and undo what we just 
spent 3 years trying to do.
    Certainly, if this conflict continues we'll see another massive 
humanitarian crisis; there will be more atrocities, more refugees 
crossing borders, more people crying out for justice, and more people 
seeking revenge.
    Our experience in the Balkans, and specifically in Bosnia, which all 
of you will remember, teaches us a sobering lesson: Where you have these 
smoldering ethnic hatreds, where you know they can get out of hand and 
destabilize millions and millions of other people, violence begets 
violence. If you don't oppose the violence, it just gets worse and worse 
and worse, until finally you do oppose it at a much, much higher price, 
under more dangerous conditions. Therefore, the time to stop this 
conflict in Kosovo is now, before it spreads, and when it can be 
contained at an acceptable cost.
    We have agreed with our allies on a strategy that we believe can 
bring peace and to back that strategy with the threat of force by NATO. 
If a settlement--and it's a big if--if a settlement is reached, a NATO 
presence on the ground in Kosovo could prove essential in giving both 
sides the confidence they need to pull back from their fights. If that 
happens, we are seriously considering the possibility of our 
participation in such a force. We are discussing it now with Congress 
and our allies. No decision has been reached.
    Our willingness to contribute troops will depend upon a number of 
things, and I'd like to outline them:
    Number one, a strong and effective peace agreement: If both parties 
haven't committed to stop killing each other, there's no point in our 
sending Americans and other NATO forces and other allied forces into a 
situation where we can't succeed.
    Number two, the parties must demonstrate a commitment to 
implementing the agreement and to cooperating with NATO and any other 
people who go in with us.
    Number three, we have to have a permissive security environment, 
with the withdrawal of enough Serbian security forces and an agreement 
restricting the weapons of the Kosovar paramilitaries.
    And finally, we have to have a well-defined NATO mission with a 
clear exit strategy. Our European allies and partners will have to 
contribute a substantial majority of the troops. But NATO is a 
partnership, and they have a right to expect the United States, which 
has been the leader of NATO for 50 years now, to be a part of that. For 
now, we don't have to reach that question because the peace talks will 
begin on Saturday in France.
    I would like to give a message, I believe, on behalf of all 
Americans, to both sides. For the Kosovar Albanians, I'd like to say 
that this is a chance not just to stop your people from getting killed 
but take control of your destiny, where your rights, your faith, and 
your culture are respected and you have the autonomy you have been 
promised by law.
    For the Serbs, this is a chance to prove Kosovo can remain part of 
your country while regaining its autonomy and peace. For the people of 
both communities, this is a chance to stop wasting your energies and 
your lives on a useless war and to start conserving them for building a 
more open and prosperous future for your children. I hope that the 
people will take this chance. The United States will do what we can to 
support them.
    Thank you very much.

Baldrige Awards

    I do love the Baldrige Awards. I love it when all the employees are 
up there cheering. I think people ought to like what they do. Do you 
ever think about how many fewer problems we'd have in this country if 
everybody was happy at work every day? [Laughter] You laugh, but you 
think about it. How would you feel if you came here and you didn't feel 
like waiving those handkerchiefs?
    You know, it's a great joy for me and for Secretary Daley--he alluded to this--to have had the opportunity to 
serve our country at a time when we got out of debt and we went into 
surpluses and we drove interest rates down and we had all this new 
investment and all these new jobs. And now we've got the longest 
peacetime expansion in history and the lowest peacetime unemployment 
rate since 1957 and the lowest minority unemployment rate among African-
Americans and Hispanics ever recorded,

[[Page 164]]

since we started doing that in '72, and wages rising at twice the rate 
of inflation and the highest homeownership in history, and for the first 
time, even in our cities, there are more homeowners than renters--never 
happened before.
    It's wonderful for us to have been a part of that. But we know that 
what we in Government do is to create the conditions in which all of you 
create those jobs and create that economic activity. In fact, one of the 
things that I'm proudest of is that the Government's share of this 
economic expansion has been lower than any previous one since World War 
II. We have a smaller Federal Government than we've had at any time 
since President Kennedy was here. And I see every day fresh evidence 
that it is not only the changes in the direction of the Government, it 
has been changes in the direction of American business that has brought 
America back.
    Boeing Airlift and Tanker, Texas Nameplate, Solar Turbines, you're 
showing the world that you can enhance competitiveness and make 
companies better places to work. You're showing the world that you can 
be good at what you do and happy while you do it. The employees are true 
stakeholders in the progress, not only of their companies but of our 
country, with new ideas and sharing in results.
    I was particularly impressed to hear about how the winning companies 
helped employees enhance their skills, because that is a particular 
obsession of mine--that many have provided on-site GED and English-as-a-
second-language classes, reimbursed for college in advanced degrees, 
even paid for books. We have worked very hard to create a system in 
America of lifetime learning, but companies have to be a big part of it.
    I'd also like to thank one of our honorees, Dale 
Crownover for going back to college at the 
age of 42 to get his degree and setting a good example for his 
employees.
    Now, as I said, you have brought America back, you and companies 
like you. When the Baldrige Awards started, our country was having 
difficulty in the international marketplace, and the vision of the 
Baldrige Awards was to show that there were American companies who were 
operating at world-class levels, and they ought to be honored, and then 
they ought to be emulated. And I think that you can take a great deal of 
pride in knowing that both those things have happened.
    I heard a remarkable statistic--I hope it's true, because I'm fixing 
to say it. [Laughter] Normally, when somebody digs up a fact for me, 
it's so. Listen to this: Stock in companies that have won Baldrige 
Awards has surged at nearly 3 times the pace of the S&P 500 as a whole.
    Now, when you consider the fact that the stock market has nearly 
tripled since January of '93, the fact that the stock in the companies 
winning the Baldrige Award has gone up 3 times faster than the S&P 
index, I think that's pretty darned impressive. And it shows you that if 
we can--one of the things that I hope always comes out of these Baldrige 
Awards, I hope that they'll be in business publications and in 
newspapers and on television stations all over America, and I keep 
hoping that all of you get hit on, then, all year long, after you get 
off this stage, from people wanting to know how you did what, because I 
hope that everybody will be out there trying to follow your lead and 
figure out how to do better, as you have done.
    Because in spite of the fact that we have the lowest unemployment 
rate in peacetime since Boeing introduced the 707 in 1957, we know that 
the world is changing rapidly. And as every businessperson knows, once 
you slow down, the competition catches up. So this is not a time for 
America, with its prosperity, to slow down. It's a time to bear down and 
look at the long-term challenges facing us in the 21st century.
    I would just like to briefly mention three points. Our economic 
success as a nation has come from a commitment to fiscal discipline, 
investing in our people, and expanding our markets. And I believe we 
have a great deal more to do in all areas. And let me just briefly say, 
in the State of the Union Address, I made what I expect to be an 
increasingly controversial proposal. I said, ``We've got the first 
surplus in 30 years now. We project that we will average big surpluses 
over the next 25 years. I recommend that for 15 of those 25 years, we 
actually save almost 80 percent of the surplus and save it because when 
the baby boomers become the senior boom when we all retire, there will 
only be about two people working for every one person drawing Social 
Security.''
    Audience member. [Inaudible] [Laughter]
    The President. And--did you laugh at me or what you said? [Laughter] 
Listen, as one of

[[Page 165]]

them, I don't think it's too funny, myself. [Laughter]
    And the Social Security payroll tax will not be sufficient to cover 
Social Security payments by 2013. By 2032, the Trust Fund will run out 
of money. Meanwhile, we're all living longer and depending more on 
sophisticated technology, so Medicare is projected to not cover its 
costs by 2010.
    Now, I believe we can debate within the Congress, within the 
Democrats and Republicans, exactly how we're going to fix Medicare and 
how we're going to fix Social Security, but I know one thing: You're not 
going to fix big, sweeping demographic changes like this without some 
money. And so what I propose to do is to save this portion of the 
surplus, about a little over 60 percent for Social Security, 15 percent 
for Medicare for 15 years, and while we're doing it, to buy back the 
public debt with the money we're saving, because we don't need to spend 
it right now.
    Now, if we do that, we will not only be able to save Social Security 
and Medicare in a way that will prevent the baby boomers from putting an 
impossible burden on our children and our grandchildren, which I can 
tell you as the oldest of the baby boomers is something that my 
generation constantly worries about, that when we all retire the cost of 
our retirement will be too burdensome on our children and their ability 
to raise our grandchildren. It will not only do that. It will enable us 
to pay down our debt.
    Now, if anybody had ever told you 5 or 6 years ago we'd even have a 
conversation about paying down the debt, you'd probably thought they had 
slipped a gasket. But I'd like to tell you why it's important. We just 
presented a budget to Congress. Before we do anything with that budget, 
we have to pay interest on the national debt. The national debt 
quadrupled between 1981 and 1993. When I took office, it was taking over 
14 cents of every dollar just to pay interest. Every time you pay a 
dollar in tax to the Federal Government, before we can spend it on the 
United States military--including the Army Band who were magnificent 
today--before we can spend it on education, before we can spend it on 
the environment, before we can spend it on health care, before we can 
spend it on a tax cut, before we can do anything with it, we had to take 
over 14 cents on the dollar and pay interest on the debt. And they told 
me, my economists, that it wouldn't be anytime until we'd be up to over 
20 cents on the tax dollar in interest.
    Now, if you save this much money for 15 years, it will take our 
public debt from 50 percent, where it was when I took office, of our 
annual income, down to 7 percent of our annual income. It will be the 
lowest it's been since 1917, just before we entered World War I. And it 
will take debt service down to 2 cents on the dollar. And then our 
successors, the people that are up here running the show 15 years from 
now, they can do whatever they want with that 11 cents. They can give it 
back to you in a tax cut. They can invest it in education. They can 
invest it in whatever else we need. They can make sure we keep 
modernizing our military. They can do whatever is the right thing then. 
But I know it is the right thing to prepare for the retirement of the 
baby boomers and to stabilize these programs and to get this debt down.
    There's something else I'd like to say. A lot of you compete in 
international markets. On the way in today--just today--Roger and I were talking about the difficulty of--and 
Secretary Daley--we were talking about the 
importance of trying to keep these Asian markets open, with all this 
financial turmoil over there and their not having enough money. You 
know, Secretary Rubin and I, we worked very 
hard to keep the financial crisis in Asia from spreading to Latin 
America. Thirty percent of our growth has come from exports.
    Now, we don't know what's going to happen beyond our borders. But I 
know this: No matter what happens, we'll be better off. Interest rates 
will be lower; there will be more money to spend on new plant and 
equipment; there will be more money to invest in American economic 
growth if we pay down this debt and we keep your interest rates low. 
Then if the world takes off again--and we're working for it--we'll do 
even better. And if there are problems in the world, we won't get hurt 
nearly as badly as we otherwise would have been.
    So I implore you, if we want more and more stories like the ones we 
celebrate today, I hope you will support our efforts to save a 
substantial portion of this surplus until we have secured Social 
Security, stabilized Medicare, and guaranteed low interest rates for 
another 15 years. It's important for America.
    The second thing I'd like to say is that just as you make 
investments in your employees, we

[[Page 166]]

must make more investments. America has had for many years a budget 
deficit and an investment deficit. While we have cut the deficit, we've 
almost doubled our investment in education and training. But 88 percent 
of the companies--listen to this--88 percent of the companies in 
manufacturing today are having trouble finding qualified applicants to 
fill at least one kind of job. One in five companies report that they 
cannot expand because they have not been able to have workers with the 
right mix of skills to support the expansion.
    That's why I'm so grateful, as I said before, for the example that 
you were setting in your workplace and why our administration, the Vice 
President and Secretary Daley, Secretary Riley, and others, have worked 
so hard to set up a system of lifetime learning, to open the doors of 
college to all with tax credits and scholarships and much lower cost 
student loans, and many, many other things.
    In this budget of mine, we are proposing a big new investment in our 
worker training system so we can support training and re-employment for 
every person who loses a job in America. We want to help millions more 
whose first language is not English, learn it. We want to help many more 
people come back and finish their GED and then go on to college. And you 
are setting a good example.
    We also, in this budget, have tried to provide the private sector 
with the necessary incentives to reach the biggest group of new markets 
that we haven't fully tapped, and those are the markets for employees 
and consumers in the inner city and in rural areas that still haven't 
been part of our recovery. Now, this is very important.
    In America today, in the urban and rural neighborhoods where 
unemployment is high and growth is low, there is a consumer market of 
$85 billion in those areas, bigger than the consumer market of Mexico, 
which is our second-largest purchaser of American products and trading 
partner. So what I have asked the Congress to do is to pass laws 
providing tax credits for people who invest in these designated areas, 
and also setting up a model, sort of like our Overseas Private 
Investment Corporation, which many of you in this room have used before, 
to guarantee a portion of investments in an inner city, so that, for 
example--suppose that in a big urban census area that had a 15-percent 
unemployment rate, you were willing to go in and set up a plant with 300 
people and train them and do all that, and the initial investment was 
$300 million. If you took full advantage of this proposal of ours, you 
could have 2 of that $300 million guaranteed in the ``American Private 
Investment Corporation.'' The other $100 million, you'd get a 25 percent 
tax credit for the investment. So if we put together $300 million of 
investment in an underdeveloped area, you would actually have only $75 
million at risk. That's a pretty good deal.
    And we can--if we can't take free enterprise into these urban and 
rural areas that have had no recovery now, with our lowest peacetime 
unemployment rate since 1957, with a high growth rate, and with safer 
investment opportunities at home than many of those abroad we pursued--
if we can't fix America now, when will we ever be able to do this? So 
again, I hope you will support this.
    The last thing I'd like to ask you to do is to support the continued 
expansion of trade. In the State of the Union Address, I said, ``We've 
got to build a new consensus on trade in America and beyond our 
borders.'' We've got to be able to convince the American people and 
people in other countries that trade benefits ordinary citizens, that it 
doesn't have to tear the environment up. It certainly doesn't have to 
depress labor standards.
    I know and many of you in this room know that 30 full percent of all 
this growth that we all celebrate all the time came because we've 
expanded trade. And so I ask for your support to make sure that the 
financial crisis we saw in 1998 doesn't become a trade crisis in 1999 
because we don't do everything we can to continue to expand trade and 
support open borders. [Applause]
    Just last week the Vice President 
announced our plan to call for a big reduction in agricultural tariffs, 
which now average 40 percent. We're trying to restore the traditional 
trade authority that Presidents since Gerald Ford have had, to create 
new opportunity for American companies. We are committed to doing this, 
and I thank you for your applause. But you know as well as I do that a 
lot of Americans--it's very interesting--when we had this trade debate 
last year, I found that there was an unusual alliance in the Congress 
between some of the most conservative Republicans and some of the most 
liberal Democrats, both of whom thought those of us who were sort of 
stuck in the middle

[[Page 167]]

believing that we could actually create a new world economic system that 
would benefit ordinary people were wrong, and they thought we had to 
withdraw.
    As I said, I'm working hard within my own party to build a consensus 
on this, and at the same time I'm trying to reach out to Republicans to 
build a consensus with them. But I do not believe we can continue to 
grow the American economy and raise American incomes and reach into 
America's distressed neighborhoods unless we continue, also, to reach 
out to the rest of the world.
    Furthermore, I believe we can minimize the likelihood that we will 
ever have to send our men and women in uniform into a big conflict if we 
have economic and other cooperation with countries that show that there 
are other ways to solve your difficulties than taking up arms and 
robbing children of their future.
    So that's what I think we ought to do. I'm glad we're doing well. I 
am grateful for having had the chance to serve. I am very mindful of the 
fact that a lot of the credit for America's success goes to companies 
and the people who work for them, like those we honor today. But I am 
absolutely certain that this is not the time to sort of sit back on our 
laurels and say, ``Isn't this nice. We've waited for 40 years for a time 
like this. I think I'll take a vacation.''
    This is a time to take this prosperity we have and this confidence 
we have and expand our efforts. We can meet the long-term challenges of 
the 21st century. We can alleviate the looming specter that the baby 
boom might bankrupt our children and our grandchildren to pay for our 
retirement. We can guarantee a secure retirement, a compact within the 
generations, and we can pay down the national debt and guarantee low 
interest rates and a stable situation and more capital to invest in the 
private sector for 15 years. We can improve our education and training 
systems. We can invest in our inner cities. We can expand trade. That is 
an economic agenda that will set a framework within which more companies 
who follow your lead will find the same kind of success that you have.
    And remember what I said when I started. America wouldn't have 
nearly the problems we have today if everybody was as happy on the job 
as you are.
    Thank you, and good luck.

Note: The President spoke at 11:45 a.m. in Imperial Ballroom A at the 
Grand Hyatt Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to award foundation 
president Roger G. Ackerman, chairman and chief executive officer, 
Corning, Inc.; former Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldrige's sister, 
Letitia Baldrige; foundation chairpersons Barry K. Rogstad, president, 
American Business Conference, and Roberts T. Jones, president and chief 
executive officer, National Alliance of Business; foundation trustee 
Earnest W. Deavenport, Jr., chairman and chief executive officer, 
Eastman Chemical Co.; and Dale Crownover, president and chief executive 
officer, Texas Nameplate Co.