[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
[December 3, 1999]
[Pages 2202-2205]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks on the National Economy
December 3, 1999

    Thank you very much. Thank you, Secretary Herman and Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Martin 
Baily, and especially, thank you, Marvin 
Dawkins, for your remarks and for the power 
of your example.
    This is a very different time than we were experiencing 7 years ago 
this month. When I ran for President in 1992, it was a time of economic 
distress and uncertainty for our country. While some people were moving 
from the industrial to the information economy with optimism and 
purpose, many others felt fear and uncertainty because of the problems 
in our economy, high unemployment, big deficits, high interest rates, 
low productivity gains, falling real wages for average Americans.
    Too many Americans couldn't tell the story that Marvin just told. They lacked the skills they needed to 
succeed in the new economy; they felt threatened by the changes; and 
they had no access to the tools that would lift them up.
    But when I traveled around the country in 1992 with the Vice 
President, we saw a lot of signs of hope. We saw a lot of people who 
were winning. And we became even more convinced that our country, as a 
whole, could do very well in this new global information economy, if we 
could create the conditions and provide all Americans the tools 
necessary to succeed.
    It seemed to me that there were three absolutely pivotal elements. 
First, fiscal discipline: We had to get rid of the deficit and get 
interest rates back down and get investment back up. Second, expanded 
trade: We had 4 percent of the world's people and 22 percent of the 
world's income; even someone technologically challenged like me could 
figure out we had to sell something to the other 96 percent of the 
people on the globe. And third, greater investments in new technologies 
and in our people in their capacity not only to know what they needed to 
know but to learn for a lifetime. And people like Marvin 
Dawkins are Exhibit A of the pivotal 
importance of that.
    Now in 1993, we put in place a new economic strategy. It cut the 
deficit and increased investment by eliminating hundreds of inessential 
programs and putting us on a path that now has given us the smallest 
Federal Government in 37 years. In 1997, with the Balanced Budget Act, 
we continued the strategy, again increasing investment, cutting 
inessential programs, first balancing the budget and then providing the 
first back-to-back budget surpluses in 42 years.
    Now that led to lower interest rates, which helped ordinary 
Americans in all kinds of ways. It cut the price of the average home 
mortgage by $2,000, the price of the average car payments by $200 a 
year, the average college loan payment by $200 a year. But critically, 
it also cut the borrowing costs and the investment costs, therefore, for 
new businesses, especially for investment in new productivity-enhancing 
technologies.
    At the same time, we negotiated over 270 trade agreements, including 
dozens of them involving high technology issues, all of which helped 
Americans to increase exports of high technology products, services. We 
promoted more competition in telecommunications, providing American 
consumers with the lowest Internet access rates in the world and fueling 
the growth of E-commerce. And we've taken actions that have led to the 
creation of a whole new generation of digital wireless phones, you know, 
the kind you hear go off in restaurants, movie theaters, and 
Presidential press conferences. [Laughter]

[[Page 2203]]

    While eliminating hundreds of programs, we have almost doubled our 
investment in education and training, everything from preschool to 
dramatically increasing college access, to establishing lifetime access 
to training and retraining programs for people like Marvin.
    Now, as a result of these actions and, most importantly, the 
innovation and the hard work of the American people, we are now 
experiencing an amazing virtuous cycle of progress and prosperity that 
few could have imagined. We are in the midst of the longest peacetime 
economic expansion in American history. If as seems highly likely it 
goes on through February, it will become the longest economic expansion 
in our history.
    It has given us low inflation, the lowest unemployment rate in 30 
years, also the lowest welfare rolls in 30 years, the lowest poverty 
rates in 20 years, the highest homeownership ever recorded, the lowest 
African-American and Hispanic unemployment rates ever recorded, the 
lowest African-American poverty rate ever recorded, the lowest Hispanic 
poverty rate recorded in a generation, the lowest poverty rate among 
households headed by single adults in over 40 years, and the lowest 
unemployment rate among women in 40 years.
    In other words, a good economy has also turned out to be very good 
social policy. More and more Americans are mastering the skills and 
reaping the benefits of this new economy, and America itself continues 
to lead in new technologies, from E-commerce to biotech, that are 
shaping the future of the entire world.
    Now today, I want to talk about one more piece of stunningly good 
economic news that is the direct result of the actions that have been 
taken and the work that has been done by our people to propel our 
economy into the new century, and now, we have a high-tech animation 
behind me--[laughter]--to illustrate this good economic news. I hate to 
compete with the movies, and I'll probably lose--[laughter]--but the 
idea is that I'm supposed to be the narrator of this show. [Laughter]
    What you see behind me is a graphic representation of the growth of 
new jobs in America, beginning in 1993, as well as the geographic 
location of these jobs. You can see they have been spread across the 
country, wherever people live. Virtually no area of our Nation has been 
left out. At the bottom, you can also see a running tally of how many 
new jobs have been created. [Laughter] And I'm ahead of the running 
tally. [Laughter] But the latest figures are being released today.
    Come along. [Laughter] What did you say? Filler, filler. [Laughter] 
I've never been at a loss for words. [Laughter] Why can't I do this?
    With today's new numbers, we have truly crossed a remarkable 
threshold: 20 million jobs. In fact, the specific number behind me is 
20,043,000 jobs, thanks to the hard work of the American people, the 
economic policies we have pursued.
    To give you some idea of what this means, 20 million jobs is a 
number greater than the population of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Denver, 
Washington, San Francisco, Dallas, Miami, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Little 
Rock combined. [Laughter] Twenty million people would fill the Rose Bowl 
to capacity 200 times over. Twenty million jobs are a lot of jobs.
    And by and large, those jobs are good, well-paying jobs, jobs on 
which you can support a family, buy a home, afford a vacation, save for 
college, put away a nest egg for retirement. This was made clear in a 
new report being released today by my Council of Economic Advisers and 
the Department of Labor.
    The report finally should put to rest the old myths about the new 
economy. The 20 million new jobs we have created mostly are high-wage 
not low-wage jobs. Over 80 percent of them are in job categories that 
pay above the median wage. They are mostly full-time, not part-time. In 
fact, the proportion of Americans in part-time work has actually fallen 
a bit in the last few years.
    Finally, those 20 million new jobs have benefited not just one race 
or class of Americans but all Americans. Unlike the end of the last 
economic expansion in the 1980's, when average wages went down, wages 
during the last 4 years of this expansion have gone up across the board 
in all income categories, with some of the biggest gains coming to some 
of our hardest pressed working families. As I said--I want to say this 
again, because I think it is worth reiterating: This economy is not just 
20 million new jobs and a stock market that went above 11000 again 
today--I never talk about it because it goes down as well as up, but 
it's done pretty well--but let me say again, the lowest African-American 
unemployment and poverty rates ever recorded--and we've been separating 
the figures for nearly 30 years now--the lowest Hispanic

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unemployment rate on record and the lowest Hispanic poverty rate in over 
25 years, the highest minority homeownership on record, the lowest 
female unemployment rate since 1953. And I don't need to remind the 
large group of women in this audience that in 1953, there were a lot 
smaller percentage of women in the work force, so this is actually a 
much more important figure than even that number indicates.
    Now, technology has been a very important part of this economic 
performance. It has given us big productivity gains. The information 
technology sector alone has been responsible for about a third of our 
economic growth. And jobs in that sector pay nearly 80 percent more than 
the private sector average. If we want our current prosperity to 
continue into the 21st century, we must therefore clearly continue to 
encourage the creation and the spread of new technologies in our own 
economy.
    Therefore, I would like to highlight a couple of things that I think 
are of real importance in the budget agreement achieved with Congress, 
that I signed just a few days ago. First, the budget I signed contains 
substantial increases in direct Federal investment and long-term 
research and development. This is still very important, as all the 
private sector experts tell us. It is the kind of investment that 
allowed the Defense Department to create the predecessor of today's 
Internet 30 years ago, that led Marc Andresen, 
working at a federally funded supercomputer center, to develop the first 
graphical web browser.
    We worked hard to get increases not only for biomedical research 
that had strong support in our Congress but for other science and 
engineering disciplines as well. And I would like to make this point 
very strongly, because it's one that I hope to make more progress on 
next year and hope to see our country embrace as a policy across the 
board, without regard to party: It is very important that we have a 
balanced research portfolio. And I don't believe that the National 
Institutes of Health has had a stronger supporter than me. I believe 
that. But we have to have a balanced research portfolio, because the 
research enterprise is increasingly interdependent. Advances in health 
care, for example, are often dependent on breakthroughs in other 
disciplines, such as the physics needed for medical imaging technology 
or the computer science needed to develop more drugs more rapidly or to 
continue the mapping of the human genome.
    Just think what these investments could mean. Today, scientists and 
engineers all over the country have ideas for new technologies they need 
Federal help to explore, technologies that could transform our economy 
and our lives in the future just as dramatically as the Internet is 
doing today. There is really a continuing revolution, as we all know, in 
all kinds of computer technology, in biomedical research, and also in 
materials development, which I'll say a little more about.
    We'll have new materials as strong as steel but 10 times lighter. At 
the Detroit auto show this year, they were already showing cars 500 to 
1,000 pounds lighter that have exactly the same safety tests as the old 
cars with steel. Obviously, that dramatically increases mileage, that 
reduces greenhouse gas emissions. We could have new drugs that might 
cure spinal cord injuries or new computer chips that might simulate 
nerve movements that allow people to function without the nerves 
actually being reconnected.
    Just before I walked out here--this is ironic--just before we walked 
out here, we had CNN on in the little anteroom, and they pointed out 
that Stevie Wonder was about to have 
experimental surgery to have a computer chip inserted in his retina to 
see if it can simulate and recreate the functioning that was lost when 
he was an infant. We obviously all hope it will work. But I can tell you 
this: Someday, such things will work, and it won't be very long in the 
future.
    We already have fuel cells and blended fuel engines for automobiles 
which will take mileage up to 70 and 80 miles a gallon. We will soon 
have, I believe, ultra-clean fuel cells for cars, whose only byproduct 
will be water clean enough to drink; computers that can translate 
English into foreign languages and vice-versa as fast as people can 
speak. All these things are right around the corner, but we have to 
continue our commitment to research.
    Second, later this month, I will sign a tax measure that extends for 
5 years the life of the vitally important research and experimentation 
tax credit. This is important because this tax credit gives private 
firms the incentives they need to invest in innovative technologies that 
often don't show up quickly on the bottom line

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but that, over the long run, will be highly profitable and that 
immediately provide tremendous benefits to society as a whole.
    Third, last week I signed legislation to help accelerate competition 
in the telecommunication industry, to give consumers more choices and 
lower prices. I also signed a bill to strengthen and streamline our 
patent and intellectual property system, to strengthen the incentives 
for the next Alexander Graham Bell or Steve Jobs, to create the 
inventions and innovations that will drive the 21st century economy.
    No one today can say for sure what our economy will look like in 25 
or 50 years or what as yet unimagined technologies will transform our 
lives. But we do know that it will be truly amazing, and it will happen 
with breathtaking speed and scope. And we know that our Nation has 
always prospered when Government has invested in giving people the 
opportunity to make the most of their vision and their dreams, from 
financing the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark Expedition to 
the Interstate Highway System and the space program.
    The American people have always been a bold and innovative bunch. We 
are always drawn to uncharted lands over the next horizon. Who will pack 
our bags and head out to the latest gold rush or tinker in our basements 
for years to invent a product no one else has ever imagined? That's what 
we do.
    Today, thanks to wise investments made by Government and the private 
sector over many years, the American people have before them the 
unexplored continent of cyberspace and the prospect of discovering what 
is in the black holes in outer space. By continuing these commitments, 
we can celebrate more days like today.
    Thank you very much. Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 1:25 p.m. in Presidential Hall (formerly 
Room 450) in the Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building. In his 
remarks, he referred to Marvin Dawkins, former AT&T employee who took 
advantage of retraining opportunities to begin a new career, who 
introduced the President; Marc Andresen, cofounder Netscape 
Communications Corp.; and musician Stevie Wonder.