    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [April 18, 2000]
    [Pages 744-749]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the COMDEX 2000 Spring Conference in Chicago, Illinois
    April 18, 2000

        Thank you very much. Thank you, Frederic Rosen, and thank you, Jason Chudnofsky. I am delighted to be here. I want to thank Director
    Tony Streit and the young people from Street-
    Level Youth Media who went on my tour with me over in the other part of
    the McCormick Center to see some of the new wonders of the information
    technology revolution. I want to thank those who have come with me here
    today on this last stop of this part of our new markets tour, including
    several Members of the United States Congress: Jan
    Schakowsky from Chicago; Stephanie
    Tubbs Jones from Cleveland; Silvestre
    Reyes from El Paso, Texas; and
    Representative Bill Jefferson from New
    Orleans.
        I want to thank Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater; Federal Communications Chair Bill Kennard; Reverend Jesse Jackson;
    Bob Johnson, the president of Black
    Entertainment Television; and Gene Sperling
    and Maria Echaveste, who operate this
    program for me out of the White House.
        I am glad to be the first President to address this conference, but
    I am quite sure I will not be the last. Information technology has
    accounted for about 30 percent of this remarkable economic growth we've
    had, even though people directly working in IT only account for about 8
    percent of our employment.
        What we have tried to do in Government is to provide the conditions
    and give people the tools to make the most of this phenomenal new era in
    human affairs. What you and people like you all across this country have
    done, have made the most of that--the balanced budget, the
    Telecommunications Act, doubling our investment in education and
    training, and dramatically increasing basic research, opening trade to
    new countries. And it's given us the longest economic expansion in
    history, the lowest African-American and Hispanic unemployment rates
    ever recorded, the lowest female unemployment rate recorded in 40 years,
    poverty down to a 20-year low, the lowest welfare rolls in 30 years, the
    lowest overall unemployment in 30 years. That is the good news. And it
    was brought about primarily by this incredible environment and the
    gifted people who have made the most of this celebration of ideas and
    innovation and ingenuity.
        But as Mr. Rosen said when he
    introduced me, what I have been focused on now in the last year-plus of
    my term as President is the people and places who have been left behind
    in this phenomenal new economy, and I have for two reasons. One is, I
    think that all of us would like to see every American who is willing to
    work for it have a chance to be a part of this astonishing new era of
    enterprise. I think, just on pure ethical grounds, we all sense that the
    American values require that everybody be given a fair chance to
    participate. But secondly, I think it is in our economic interest to do
    it.
        You know, we spend a lot of time in Washington discussing, how in
    the world can we keep this economic expansion going? It's already the
    longest economic expansion in history, far longer than any other one
    that did not include a major war. How long can it go? What will happen?
    How will it come to an end? Will we really have inflation that will
    somehow bring an end to this long boom?
        Well, it's clear to me that if we want it to continue, we have to do
    more to find new markets. New markets mean creating new businesses and
    new employees, as well as new customers. And if you do both, it means
    you can have growth without inflation. So this idea of closing the
    digital divide is good social policy. It's good personal ethics. But
    it's also very, very important for our continued economic expansion as a
    nation.

    [[Page 745]]

        So I came here today to ask you to set another trend, to devote more
    time and technology, more ideas and energy to closing the digital
    divide, the growing gap between those who have the tools and skills and
    motivation to succeed in the economy, which you've come here to explore
    and celebrate and push the frontiers of, and those who do not have those
    at this time.
        Now, over the past year I have been to a lot of these places. I have
    been to the hills and hollows of Appalachia, to the heart of the
    Mississippi Delta. I've been to Englewood here in inner-city Chicago and
    to East Los Angeles. I've been to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South
    Dakota, the home of the Oglala Sioux. I have tried everywhere to shine
    the spotlight on the potential, not the problems, of these places.
        Yesterday we began our third new markets tour in East Palo Alto,
    California, right in the heart of Silicon Valley, because I wanted the
    American people to know that even there, there are a lot of our fellow
    citizens who are not yet fully participating in the information age.
        Yesterday we also went to Shiprock, Navajo country, in the far north
    of New Mexico, and saw the vast differences, the literal vast distances,
    literal distances in this case that have to be overcome to build an
    information infrastructure that all of America is a part of. We visited
    a community living in the place where their forebears have been for more
    than 1,000 years. We celebrated the Navajo Code Talkers, who were very
    instrumental in America winning World War II with our Allies in the
    Pacific because they developed a unique means of communication. They
    transferred messages back and forth in Navajo, and the language was so
    different from any code or any known language that our adversaries in
    World War II couldn't break it. And it's quite ironic that a people
    whose major contribution to the modern world was helping us to win World
    War II based on unique communications now live in a place where 70
    percent of them don't even have telephones.
        I was introduced by a young woman, a 13-year-
    old young girl who won a contest--really a bright young woman, and she
    won this contest, and she won a computer. And she found that she
    couldn't get on the Internet because she didn't have a telephone line in
    her home.
        Next week we're going to rural North Carolina to discuss the
    prospects of broadband communications and what it might do to open
    opportunities in poor, rural, isolated places. And then in a couple of
    months we will have a part of this digital divide tour devoted solely to
    the potential that web accessibility offers to disabled Americans to
    participate more fully in the educational and economic life of the
    United States.
        Now, this is all sobering at one level, but increasingly hopeful to
    me, because I honestly believe that the new information economy has the
    potential, at home and around the world, to lift more people out of
    poverty more quickly than at any previous period in all of human
    history; and that tapping that potential is actually in our enlightened
    self-interest.
        And that's why I came here today, because I need your help and your
    support, because now we've come through all these years of this
    remarkable economic expansion. We have finally seen even income
    inequality begin to diminish over the last 2\1/2\ years, as more and
    more Americans at the lower end of the income scale begin to fully
    participate in the economy. We have a very important choice before us.
    And only with your help can America make the right choice to make sure
    that no one is left behind; to use these new technologies to widen the
    circle of opportunity rather than allowing the digital divide to widen
    the lines of division in education, race, income, and region. I will say
    again, it's not only morally the right choice. It's not just good social
    policy; it is imperative, in my judgment, if we're going to keep the
    economy growing, to find new places where we create not only new
    customers but new businesses and new employees.
        Now, I believe we've got to find the right combination of incentives
    and initiative to bridge this divide. The distances that exist are, in
    some cases, as I said, they're physical. They're also educational, and
    they're clearly economic. But on every one of these new markets trips,
    we have met people who are eager for opportunity. And like the young
    people here today who made this tour with me, they demonstrate that
    ability and drive and dreams are evenly distributed throughout the human
    race and throughout American society. It is opportunity which is still
    not evenly distributed.
        Everywhere I have been, I find Americans who are not at all
    interested in charity but very interested in opportunity, not a handout
    but a

    [[Page 746]]

    hand up. We can only tap the potential of these new workers, these new
    business owners, these new learners, if we work together. Over and over
    again over the last 7 years, I have found, in some of our most important
    endeavors, the only thing that really works is the right kind of public-
    private partnership.
        I'll just give you one example. We have the lowest welfare rolls in
    30 years. The welfare rolls have been cut roughly in half since I became
    President. And part of it is the laws that have been passed, including
    the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, which required people who could work to
    work, but also invested more money in child care for their children and
    transportation so they could get to work, and kept their kids in food
    and medicine while they were making the transition.
        But part of it was this remarkable partnership now that numbers over
    12,000 businesses, people who committed that they would personally go
    out and find people, help them move from the welfare rolls, give them
    the training, give them the support they needed to succeed. And these
    people alone, just the 12,000 people in our partnership, have hired
    hundreds of thousands of people from the welfare rolls, many of whom
    were difficult to place but have succeeded. No Government mandate could
    have gotten that done. If we hadn't had the public-private partnership,
    it would not have worked nearly as well as it has.
        The Vice President has worked for more
    than 7, or about 7 years now, in our partnership with the auto companies
    and the auto workers on the new generation vehicle, and we put a lot of
    money into it. But we couldn't develop a car in the Government. And yet
    you see--if you noticed in the last Detroit auto show, they're showing
    cars that they expect to market in the next year or two, including
    larger cars that get 70 to 80 miles a gallon. We have research going on
    now into the production of biofuels, not just from corn but from
    agricultural waste products, even from grasses. And if we ever get the
    conversion level down to about 1 gallon of gasoline for 8 gallons of
    fuel, biofuel, and then you get in a 70-mile-an-hour gas car, you'll be
    driving a car that gets over 500 miles a gallon in conventional terms.
    That will change the energy future of America and the world forever and
    will prove something I deeply believe, that we can conquer the challenge
    of global warming and continue to grow not only our economy but the
    developing economies of the world.
        All of this has to be done in partnership. And that's basically what
    I propose for closing the digital divide and creating new markets
    throughout America. What we want to do is to be a catalyst, to provide
    investment incentives and the kind of framework and tools that will
    enable people in the private sector to do what is in their interest
    anyway. We believe that tax incentives and loan guarantees can leverage
    private sector investment in distressed areas, get capital flowing to
    people in neighborhoods it might otherwise miss, having basically
    nothing to do, necessarily, with high technology investment.
        Today, if you want to invest in a poor area of Latin America or Asia
    or Africa, we have a framework set up that could get you a combination
    of tax breaks and loan guarantees to lower the risk of doing that. Why?
    Because we think that we have an obligation as Americans to help poor
    people around the world develop stable lives. We know it promotes
    democracy; it promotes peace; it promotes environmental cleanup; it
    undermines the destabilizing forces at work in the world. All I'm trying
    to do, in terms of the law, is to give Americans who have money to
    invest the same incentives to invest in poor areas in America we give
    them today to invest in poor areas in Latin America or Africa or Asia. I
    think that's the right thing to do.
        Last fall the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis
    Hastert, and I came here to Chicago, met
    with Reverend Jackson and Congressman Bobby
    Rush and others, and we pledged to work
    together on a bipartisan initiative to spur investments in new markets.
    We are making real progress on our end of the deal. The House of
    Representatives took a very important step last week toward creating the
    American Private Investment Companies that I've proposed to spur as much
    as $1.5 billion in private investment in our hard-pressed communities.
    Now, I understand Speaker Hastert is going to be with you tomorrow, and
    I think you will see, if this is part of the discussion, that his
    commitment is genuine. This should not be a partisan issue.
        Every American--Republican, Democrat, independent, Green Party
    member, whatever--every American has got a vested interest in seeing
    that every other American has the chance to live up to his or her God-
    given potential.

    [[Page 747]]

    So this is very, very important. And the main thing that we want to do
    with this portion of the new markets initiative is to make sure that we
    can get some investment in areas where people literally are isolated,
    where we need local, community-based investment because you can't just
    say, ``Well, we'll give them an education. They can hop on the subway or
    get in their car and drive to a job.'' But we also have to have a
    comprehensive approach that gives individuals the ability to bridge the
    digital divide, to create businesses which are far distant because
    technology permits them to overcome distances, and to get the education
    and training they need in the first place to succeed.
        Now, what have we done in that? Well, when the Congress adopted the
    Telecommunications Act a few years ago, we insisted--the Vice President
    and I did--on something called the E-rate, the power of the Federal
    Communications Commission to set the E-rate. It is now worth over $2
    billion, and it gives discounts to schools, to libraries, public
    institutions, so they can afford to be a part of the Internet. And it's
    had a huge impact.
        When I became President, only 3 percent of our classrooms, about 11
    percent of our schools, were connected to the Internet. We've been
    working on this hard, now, for 6 years. Today, over two-thirds of our
    classrooms and 95 percent of our schools are connected, including 90
    percent of very poor schools. And we'll be, by the end of the year,
    we'll probably be at 100 percent of the schools connected, except for
    those whose physical facilities are literally in too much disrepair to
    have a connection.
        I know that may be hard for some of you to believe, but it's true.
    We have cities where the average school building is 65 years of age or
    more. We have--there are schools in New York City that are still heated
    by coal-fired furnaces. But by and large, this E-rate has really worked.
        We have a $450 million technology literacy challenge, which is
    designed to make sure that we try to match contributions from others who
    put technology into our schools. Our budget offers $2 billion in new tax
    incentives to help bridge the digital divide, to get the technology into
    the schools and into the rural communities, into community computing
    centers. And things like that can be available to adults as well as
    children.
        We provide $150 million to train new teachers to use technology in
    the classroom, so that they aren't repeatedly embarrassed by their
    students knowing more than they do, and so that they can actually make
    the most of it; and $100 million to create more technology centers in
    1,000 communities across the country.
        Today I can tell you that 214 of these community technology centers
    will be created this year alone and 136 more will be expanded. These are
    very important because they are not only available to young people but
    also to adults who can use such centers after work and themselves
    acquire these skills. It's very, very important that we recognize that
    this cannot be solely the province of the school years. We have got to
    do more to bring adults who have been left on the other side of the
    digital divide into the economic mainstream. We are going to expand our
    investment in these centers by about $86 million from State, local,
    private, and Federal sources together.
        Not far from here, on Chicago's West Side, is one of these centers.
    I mentioned the young people I met today from there, at Street-Level
    Youth Media. They spend a lot of their time there. They are here in this
    audience today. They can access the Internet and a lot more. They can
    have classes in website design, projects in video production, and, most
    important, the chance to apply their skills in real work for real wages.
    Every child in America should have this opportunity, and we are trying
    to give it to every child in America.
        If the budget passes, we will have 1,000 of these neighborhood
    networks next year. That is double the number we have now in the
    country. These computer learning centers are the fruit of public-private
    partnership under the leadership of the Department of Housing and Urban
    Development. They have already helped residents of some of our poorest
    neighborhoods move from welfare to work, increase their earnings, even
    start their own businesses.
        One of the things that is totally unappreciated about the nature of
    the Internet revolution is the extent to which it gives people who are
    otherwise completely out of the economic mainstream, who could never
    have access to the kind of up-front capital it would take to start a
    traditional business and rent a big office space, the chance to actually
    earn money on the net. The first time I discovered this was when some of
    my friends at eBay told me that they now have

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    30,000 people making a living off eBay--not working for the company but
    making a living buying and selling and trading--and that the profiles
    indicated to them that a very substantial number of these people had
    previously been on welfare.
        So again I will say, if you believe that there is an equal
    distribution of intelligence, ability, and dreams throughout the
    population, and if you have seen in your own lives what this has done
    for you and for this economy, it seems to me that closing the digital
    divide is one of the most important things we could do that would have
    the quickest results in alleviating the kind of poverty which is
    inexcusable in the kind of economy we're experiencing today.
        Let me also say that--I made a joke about it earlier, but I think
    the idea of having teachers who are really able to make the most of
    technology in the classroom and teach their students is something that's
    very important. Everybody I have ever worked with on this in the last
    several years, all the heads of all the companies that have tried to
    really help our schools continue to hammer this.
        I got a letter from the deans of more than 200 colleges and
    universities, pledging to join in that effort, holding themselves
    responsible for results, being willing to test their progress with a
    tool designed by the CEO Forum on Education and Technology, a forum that
    includes a lot of the companies that are represented in this auditorium
    today. But this is a big deal. This is a serious commitment that we
    haven't had in the past. And I want to thank the Forum on Education and
    Technology and these 200 deans for what they want to do to train our
    teachers.
        But this is just the start. So here is what I came to do, really. I
    want to ask you to do the following things. First of all, if you are not
    already a part of it, I hope that the companies, everyone represented
    here from the largest to the smallest, would support our national call
    to action, which I issued 2 weeks ago. Its basic goals are to provide
    21st century learning tools for every child in every school and to
    create digital opportunity for every family and every community.
        I have asked for businesses and schools and community groups and
    volunteers to enlist in the effort. More than 400 organizations have
    signed on in the first 2 weeks, and they are already doing amazing
    things. Many of you have been working at this for some years now, to
    help in education and in economic development. But if you are not part
    of this, I hope you will become part of this. I hope you will do more
    than sign a pledge. I hope you will commit to fulfill it.
        I want you all to ask if there is anything you are not doing that
    you could do to give our schools computers and high-speed connections,
    to design the educational software our children need to succeed, to make
    sure our teachers are as comfortable in front of a computer as in front
    of a chalkboard. Again I say, many companies are leading this effort
    today, but we need more. The biggest problem in American education and
    the biggest problem in combating poverty and creating economic
    opportunity is not that there are no good ideas. Every problem in
    American education today has been solved by somebody somewhere.
        I remember when I started running for President and I was coming to
    Chicago, there was a woman here from my home State of Arkansas who was
    principal of a junior high school that was in a neighborhood with the
    highest murder rate in the State of Illinois. And you had to ask to get
    into this junior high school. They had 150 mothers and 75 fathers in
    that school every week. They had a strict no-weapons policy; if you had
    one, you were history. They had a zero dropout rate. The kids went on to
    high school and did well, and a phenomenal percentage of them went on to
    college. And I could give you lots of examples like that.
        The problem we have--and in terms of closing the digital divide and
    education and economics, there are examples everywhere. The problem we
    have in America with social change is getting things to scale, is
    reaching a critical mass of people. That's why I came here today. This
    is a critical mass of the IT community. And you need to reach a critical
    mass of the at-risk kids and the communities where economic and
    educational opportunities are needed to close the digital divide.
        The second thing I want to ask you to do, so that today's students
    can become tomorrow's success stories, is to expand internships and to
    deepen your talent pool. I just received a survey that I read just the
    day before yesterday indicating that, even making allowances for
    differences in education, women and minorities are still comparatively
    underrepresented in most IT occupations. We can do a lot to close the
    digital

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    divide just by equalizing the representation once people do have the
    education and skills they need.
        The third thing I would like to ask you to do is to recognize, as I
    said before, there is a limit to what the Federal Government can do. I
    intend to set up a framework and to try to provide the necessary tools
    and to generate as much activity as I can. But we need more partnerships
    at the local level with the schools, with the local communities, with
    the local community groups, and with local government. I think you will
    find that if you are not involved in this kind of work, there is more
    interest in it than ever before, and people are eager for help.
        If we work together, we can empower people with the tools and the
    training they need to lift themselves out of poverty. If we work
    together, we can give people the ability to use new technology to start
    new businesses. If we work together, we can close the digital divide and
    open digital opportunities.
        I am asking you to do this because you can. I am asking you to do
    this because it's right. And I am asking you to do this because America
    needs it to have a continually growing economy.
        The productivity increases generated by information technology in
    the IT companies themselves, and then through application throughout the
    economy, is what has enabled us to continue to grow at 4 percent and to
    keep inflation down. I am doing my best to open new markets around the
    world and to keep our markets open, which helps to keep inflation down
    and to grow. But the best opportunity we have are all those people out
    there that are dying to be part of what the rest of us may take for
    granted.
        And I can tell you, I have lived longer than most people who do very
    well in the work that you do. Our country has never had an economy like
    this. The last time we had anything close was in the 1960's. It came
    apart over the competing claims and crises in civil rights and the war
    in Vietnam and the attempt to finance all that and deal with the
    problems of the poor. I see a lot of people who are gray-headed like me
    out there nodding their heads.
        And when it happened, when I grew up in it, I thought that economy
    would last forever. I just took it for granted that we were the most
    productive economy in the world; we were going to win the cold war; we'd
    solve the civil rights problems in the courts and the Congress, and
    everything would be hunky-dory. And then boom, one day it was gone.
        And I've waited 35 years, as a citizen, for our country to have the
    chance to give all our people the future of our dreams for our children.
    That's the chance we've got now. And I know you're very busy. I know you
    have a lot of other things to do, but I don't know how many years we'll
    ever have to wait again until a moment like this comes along.
        I can't do it alone. The Federal Government can't do it alone. But
    if we all do it together, there is nothing we can't do. We will never,
    ever, ever have a better chance, and, therefore, a more profound
    responsibility, to close the digital divide.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:10 p.m. in the Arie Crown Theater at the
    McCormick Place Convention Center. In his remarks, he referred to
    Frederic D. Rosen, chairman, Key3Media Group, Inc., who introduced the
    President; Jason Chudnofsky, president, SOFTBANK COMDEX, Inc.; Tony
    Streit, administrative director, Street-Level Youth Media; Rev. Jesse
    Jackson, civil rights activist; and Myra Jodie, student, Steamboat
    Navajo Nation, AZ.