[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 10 (Monday, March 15, 1993)]
[Pages 392-395]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to Westinghouse Employees in Linthicum, Maryland

 March 11, 1993

    Thank you very much. I want to say a special word of thanks to the 
people from Westinghouse who greeted me when I arrived: Gary Clark, who 
introduced me, Dick Linder, Gladys Green, Rich O'Leary, and Gary Eder. 
And thank you to all of you who made this tour possible.
    I want to thank the Members of the United States Congress who are 
here, who have worked very hard for a long time and before I became 
President to help to design a plan to strengthen our economy even as we 
reduce military spending. Your Senators, Barbara Mikulski and Paul 
Sarbanes, are here. Your Congressman, Ben Cardin, is here. Senator Jeff 
Bingaman of New Mexico; Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein of 
California; Senator Bill Cohen of Maine; Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode 
Island; Congressman Martin Frost of Texas; Congresswoman Jane Harman of 
California; and Congressman Tom Foglietta of Pennsylvania. I think that 
is the entire delegation here, along with Mayor Kurt Schmoke of 
Baltimore and Governor Schaefer. I'm glad to see all of them. I have to 
note here, you can tell who the best politician is. Of all these people 
I've introduced, only Senator Mikulski found a seat. [Laughter]
    I'd also like to thank the members of my Cabinet who have helped to 
work on the statement that I will announce today who are here: the 
Defense Secretary Les Aspin, Labor Secretary Bob Reich, Veterans Affairs 
Director Jesse Brown, Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, Commerce Secretary 
Ron Brown. I want to thank all of them for their work.
    All of you know from personal experience how much American industry 
has been changed by the cutbacks in defense. Defense spending peaked in 
1985. And by 1997, it

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will have been reduced approximately 40 percent, perhaps more, from its 
1985 peak. These changes have led not only to reductions in military 
personnel abroad and closings of bases at home but dramatic changes in 
military contracting that have affected companies like this one and 
which have affected the economies of the States of California, 
Connecticut, Texas, and many others.
    It has been said that while change is certain, progress is not. And 
that certainly is true when it comes to the challenge of meeting the 
national economic goals that we have in the face of cutbacks in military 
spending. As I said, these cutbacks have been made since 1985; more are 
to come. They are essential in a world in which we need funds to be 
reinvested in the domestic economy and in which the security threats we 
meet today, while very serious, are different and clearly less expensive 
than those we faced when the Soviet Union and the United States faced 
each other across the Berlin Wall with the barriers of the cold war and 
the imminent prospect of nuclear war. So these changes had to come. But 
if we do nothing in the face of change, we have learned the hard way 
that we are its victims. If we take bold action, we can be the 
beneficiaries of change.
    All of you here at Westinghouse Electronic Systems Group are proof 
that you can make change your friend. In 1986, just 16 percent of the 
work done here was nondefense. Today, it's 27 percent. By 1995, half or 
more of your work will be nondefense. What you have done here is what I 
wish to do nationally: take some of the most talented people in the 
world who produce some of the most sophisticated military technology and 
put that to work in the civilian economy.
    The military surveillance technology I have seen here can now be 
used to help commercial airlines avoid wind shears. Military security 
technology can now be used to help police officers on the streets and in 
their patrol cars to be safer and to solve crimes and to find missing 
children more rapidly. State-of-the-art batteries is helping here to 
develop an electric car which may well provide an enormous opportunity 
for America to become more energy-independent and to dramatically reduce 
the pollution of our atmosphere, at a time when we have been reminded 
anew that there really is a hole in the ozone layer and there really are 
problems with unlimited emissions of CO<INF>2</INF>.
    Clearly, defense conversion can be done and can be done well, making 
change our friend and not our enemy. But in order to do it we must act, 
act decisively, act intelligently, and not simply react years after the 
cuts occur.
    Last year, when a candidate for President, I outlined a plan to 
create new jobs in the civilian economy. Anticipating this challenge, 
farsighted Members of Congress appropriated approximately $1.5 billion 
for defense conversion last year, including ideas that literally came 
from the minds and the efforts of some of the Members of Congress who 
are here with us today. They've demonstrated aggressiveness in adapting 
to change. But until today, in spite of that act, none of the money 
appropriated by Congress was released, and there was no comprehensive 
plan for what to do with it.
    Today I want to explain how we're going to put your money to work to 
put Americans to work and how we're planning for the future by investing 
in our people, encouraging our companies, and assisting our communities. 
Our first priority has to be investing in our people. Keep in mind, as 
you all know here, when the defense budget is reduced, that affects, 
obviously, contracts and therefore the jobs of people who work in the 
private sector. It also affects the size of the military force itself, 
the configuration of our defense forces abroad and here at home, and the 
people who will be affected by the reductions.
    Our defense reinvestment and conversion initiative will rededicate 
$375 million right away to help working people affected by defense 
reductions with employment services, job training, and transition 
assistance; $150 million of that will go to Government and employer-
sponsored job training programs; $112 million will help members of the 
Guard and the Reserves make the transition to civilian life and to 
provide severance pay and health benefits to civilians who are leaving 
Government employment.
    There's also initiative to provide early retirement benefits for 
military personnel with 15 years of service or more, to start a new

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program to encourage them to put their skills to work in vital areas 
like teaching, law enforcement, environmental restoration, and health 
care. Under a provision offered by Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, any 
member of the military who is being mustered out with 15 years or more 
of service can go to work in law enforcement, for example, and earn a 
year of military retirement for every year they were in law enforcement, 
so that these people who have committed their lives to the service of 
our country and could not reasonably have known that this reduction 
would occur and would affect them can still earn their military 
retirement by serving their country here at home.
    We must also recognize the ripple effect of defense adjustment and 
target assistance to our communities. In 1993 alone, we will triple the 
budget of the Defense Department's Office of Economic Adjustment. The 
$30 million we've committed to this task will be invested in helping our 
communities find the tools and the expertise to adjust to the changed 
nature of their local economy. It will be an investment that pays off in 
the long-term.
    In addition, through the Commerce Department, we'll invest another 
$80 million in a revolving loan and grant program to directly and 
immediately aid communities hit hardest by defense cuts.
    Finally, the Secretary of Defense has assured me that he will do 
everything he can to speed the environmental cleanup on bases that are 
closed so that they can be turned over either to commercial purposes or 
to local government at the earliest possible time so that there will be 
a minimum loss of economic activity in areas where bases are closed.
    But all the worker training in the world and all the community 
assistance in the world will do no good if there are no jobs for those 
workers and no businesses for those communities. The private sector is 
the engine of lasting economic growth in our system, and therefore, our 
plan must help our companies to make these transitions to compete and to 
win.
    We seek to go beyond the debate of the past in which some thought 
Government alone could do everything and others claimed Government could 
do nothing. In this area there are two things Government can do to aid 
companies like this one: promote dual use research and promote civilian 
use of technology that was formerly developed for military purposes. 
That is what you have done here. We want to speed and expand that 
process all across the United States.
    One of the success stories of the cold war was the Defense Advanced 
Research Agency, or DARPA. DARPA helped keep America on the cutting edge 
of defense research. To meet the new challenges of the new world, we're 
giving DARPA a new mission and restoring its old name, because before 
1972 that Agency was known simply as the Advanced Research Products 
Agency. By going back to that name and refocusing the Agency's efforts 
on dual use technologies, such as that which you have demonstrated to me 
here today, rather than strictly military applications, we'll be better 
able to integrate research to strengthen defense and to promote our 
economic security here at home.
    Starting now, this Agency, ARPA, will allocate more than $500 
million to technology and industrial programs like the ones we've seen 
here today. We'll support industry-led consortia and dual use 
technologies and promote efforts to break through with commercial uses 
of formerly defense technologies. Programs will be selected on the basis 
of merit and will require matching funds from the corporations affected. 
We're even going to set up a toll-free number to attract good ideas from 
good companies. And you will like this. The number is 1-800-DUAL-USE. 
The hotline will be hooked up tomorrow, so don't call today. [Laughter]
    To help walk companies through their new opportunities, ARPA will 
provide them with this book, which puts together programs from the 
Defense Department, the Department of Commerce, the Department of 
Energy, NASA, and the National Science Foundation. It is a remarkable 
coalition of Agencies finally putting all the information together for 
defense technology conversion, reinvestment, and transition assistance.
    To further coordinate assistance, ARPA will work with four other 
Agencies, the ones I just mentioned. And we're going to have a series of 
regional outreach meetings all

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across this country, again, to try to mobilize other companies to get 
involved in this initiative so that they can save or create jobs instead 
of lose jobs in the face of defense reductions.
    We want Government-industry partnerships to help develop advanced 
materials. We want companies to form regional technology alliances so 
they can share information and develop new products and new markets. Our 
manufacturing extension programs will help bring state-of-the-art 
technology to companies in much the same way as the Agricultural 
Extension Service helped our farmers more than two generations ago begin 
to become the most productive in the world. And through the Small 
Business Innovation Research Program, we'll help small businesses in 
their efforts to develop dual use technology.
    But dual use technology is just the beginning. We have to explore 
also new opportunities in purely civilian technologies. This year alone, 
we'll invest $300 million in emerging nondefense technology. The 
Department of Energy will speed the transfer of technology to private 
industry from our national labs. And when Congress passes the stimulus 
package I have proposed, we'll have millions more to invest in research 
and development partnerships, in advanced technology programs, and in 
computer networks for schools and libraries around the country.
    As with every aspect of the program for change I have asked the 
American people and the Congress to embrace, defense conversion will 
require us to literally reimagine and reinvent the way Government works. 
I've asked the National Economic Council to take the lead in our efforts 
to streamline and coordinate our conversion efforts so that you don't 
have to deal with a big bureaucracy where all the information is in many 
different places and sometimes seems to be operating at cross purposes.
    Shifting to a civilian economy is of obvious concern to the Defense 
Department, but it's also the business of the Commerce Department, the 
Labor Department, the Energy Department, NASA, and many other agencies, 
including the Department of Veterans Affairs, which will have even more 
veterans now as people are coming out of the service and going into the 
civilian work force. Our National Economic Council will cut through 
redtape, break through turf battles, and help to deliver services to our 
customers quickly and efficiently.
    I don't pretend that this will be easy, and all of it will take some 
time. But the choice we face is between bold action to build a stronger 
and safer and smarter America, or continuing to cut defense with no 
appropriate response or with one that is too localized and too limited.
    The soldier-statesman Dwight Eisenhower once observed that the 
resourceful American makers of plowshares could, with time and as 
required, make swords as well. Our challenge is now to reverse the 
process. You have given us a stunning example of just how brilliantly 
that can be done here in this fine facility. I know today that the 
world's finest makers of swords can and will be the finest makers of 
plowshares, and they will lead America into a new century of strength, 
growth, and opportunity.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 12:29 p.m. at Westinghouse Electric Corp. 
In his remarks, he referred to Dick Linder, president, Westinghouse 
Electronic Systems Group; Gary Clark, acting CEO, Westinghouse Electric 
Corp.; Gladys Green, president, IBEW; Rick O'Leary, president, IVE; and 
Gary Eder, president, Salaried Employees Association.