[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 11 (Monday, March 21, 1994)]
[Pages 537-539]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to Employees of Markem Corporation in Keene, New Hampshire

March 15, 1994

    Thank you very much. First, thank you, Jan. She did it like a real 
pro, didn't she, just as if she'd been there her whole life. Give her a 
hand. [Applause]
    I want to thank Jim Putnam for that fine tour and for his remarks. I 
also want to recognize your Congressman, Dick Swett, who is with me, 
who's made the tour with me, and he's been a real friend to this 
company. He's been telling me about Markem for a long time and telling 
me that I should come here. And I'm very glad I took the suggestion. I 
had a great time today, and I thank you for that.
    I want to thank Jim for the tour and all of you who welcomed me 
along the way and showed me the work you're doing. It's very, very 
impressive. I appreciate the message that was read from Tom Putnam and 
the fact that he's opening new markets for you in another part of the 
world. I know there are other leaders of this company: Jim Baute whom I 
met today, and Dave Putnam who's not here. And I thank all of you for 
giving me a chance to see something that is very important for America 
to think about today, which is how people work together in partnership 
and win in a tough global economy.
    Mayor Lynch, I want to say I'm glad to be back in Keene today, and 
with you, Senator, and all the other people that are here. This 
community and this county have been very good to me. Cheshire County 
gave me more votes than anybody else on the ballot in the primary here 
in 1992 and in the general election. And so I'm indebted to the people 
of this community and this county.
    Yesterday I was in Detroit, the center of our country's automobile 
industry, a place that is full of change where, first, thousands and 
thousands of jobs were lost in the car industry, and now, automobiles 
are coming back and other industries are coming back in and around 
there. We had leaders of the world's seven large industrial nations 
meeting there--Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, and 
the United States--talking about an interesting phenomenon which is the 
difficulty all the wealthy countries are having creating jobs in a tough 
global economy, even when their economies are growing. It's not a 
problem confined to America. And I asked for this meeting last summer so 
that we could begin to plan together what we could do to reward the work 
of our people and to try to cooperate more with one another even as we 
compete.
    One of the things that we know is that there are some things that 
work, and you live it here every day. This is an old company that, as 
Jim said to me on the tour, keeps young by looking always to the future, 
being always willing to change, a company that's had, as I understand 
it, no layoffs in four decades, and that goes through a long recession 
in the 1980's. That's something you can be proud of. Would that every 
company would do that.
    And it's obvious that you have a combination here of good 
management, strong workers, good partnership between the people who work 
here and the folks in management. You're keeping on the cutting edge of 
technology. I saw the computer change the two different labels for my 
visit here today, not with any plates or anything but with simple 
software. And a real commitment to open markets: I thank Jim and his 
company for their support of our attempts to open more markets to 
American products through the North American Free Trade Agreement with 
Mexico, through the new worldwide trade agreement, through the outreach 
we're conducting to Asia.
    One of the things we know is that a rich country can't grow richer 
unless it finds more customers for its goods and its services. And I am 
committed to finding more customers and to making sure that we have a 
chance to sell in every market in the world. I was encouraged at the 
Japanese that, after years of conversation and controversy you've 
finally worked out an arrangement to give our cellular telephone 
companies, Motorola specifically, access to the entire Japanese market.
    We don't want any favors. We just want a chance to sell American 
wherever people are willing to buy American. I think that's what we 
ought to want and what we ought to insist on. If we let other countries 
have access to our markets, we should ask for the

[[Page 538]]

same thing in return and give you a chance to compete in the global 
economy.
    Since I became President, I have worked on a coordinated economic 
strategy designed to give you a chance to do well by opening more 
markets to exports, because export-related jobs pay 22 percent more on 
average than jobs that have no connection to the global economy, by 
trying to improve the economic climate in this country, bringing 
interest rates down and increasing investment, by bringing our deficit 
down.
    Last year, the Congress approved a deficit reduction plan to reduce 
our deficit by $500 billion. This year's plan has just been approved in 
its outlines by the House of Representatives. And if it passes, and I 
believe it will, we'll have 3 years of constant reduction in our 
Government deficit for the first time since Harry Truman was the 
President of the United States. And it's paying rich dividends for the 
economy of America and New Hampshire. The unemployment rate in this 
State has dropped 1.5 percentage points since the election of 1992, 
30,000 more jobs in New Hampshire.
    But there is a lot more to do, and I ask you to work with me to make 
sure we do these things properly, and I just would mention three things 
if I might. First of all, we have to continue to harness technology to 
the future and make the best technologies available to all of our 
people. One of the ways we're doing that which has benefited some in New 
Hampshire already is by taking some of the money that we're reducing 
defense spending by and putting into domestic technology development so 
that a lot of the defense companies can find ways to hold onto their 
jobs by making nondefense products.
    Another thing we're trying to do that Jim Putnam has been an expert 
about--in fact, he's closer to Vice President Gore than I am in what he 
knows about it--and that is the information superhighway. We want to 
hook in companies like this one but also every library and every public 
school and every hospital in the United States of America into a vast 
information network, fueled by high technology to make information 
readily, quickly, inexpensively accessible to all the American people. 
This can explode our economic opportunities and improve our quality of 
life. And your company and your leader are on the cutting edge of that. 
We intend to continue to push it.
    Second thing we want to do is try to improve the continuous training 
opportunities for America's workers. Unfortunately, as you know, very 
few companies have a no-layoff policy, and a lot of companies in a 
dynamic economy simply don't make it at all. Most of the new jobs being 
created in America are being created by smaller employers, but they have 
a record of not only coming into business in a hurry but often going out 
of business.
    That means that we need to change the whole unemployment system, 
because frankly, companies pay unemployment taxes into a fund designed 
for an economy that doesn't exist anymore. Most people who lose their 
jobs today don't get their old jobs back the way they used to. They have 
to find new jobs, which means, instead of maintaining people in idleness 
for a protracted period on unemployment payments that are inadequate 
anyway, we should use that money immediately, as soon as people lose 
their jobs, to begin to immediately retrain them so that they can get 
jobs in companies that are growing with a better future that require 
higher skill levels. We should turn the unemployment system into a 
reemployment system. That will be a heavy priority for the Congress this 
year.
    The last thing I'd like to talk about briefly is health care, for a 
couple of reasons. First of all, I know this company has a good health 
care package and, therefore, that you all feel secure in your health 
care. And I honor you for that, and I'm glad you do. But you should know 
that every major company in America like this one that provides good 
health care to its employees is paying more for that health care than it 
should because so many Americans don't have any health insurance, and 
when they show up at the hospital at the emergency room, their health 
care gets absorbed by the hospitals, and they pass the cost on to the 
companies that do have health insurance. That adds to the cost of doing 
business.
    It also means that a lot of Americans are at risk of losing their 
health insurance all the time. So what we're committed to doing this 
year is to preserving the plans that are good,

[[Page 539]]

like yours; preserving what works in the American health care system, 
but fixing the system of finance which has led a lot of people into very 
difficult circumstances.
    I just left a town hall meeting in Nashua, where I talked to a woman 
who lost her health insurance because she had a sick child and because 
she lost her job, and now nobody will hire her because they don't want 
to take her son's insurance on because the child is sick. In any other 
country they would have a broad, big pool in which people like that 
could be insured, so no company would be unduly burdened by hiring an 
employee.
    With people changing jobs seven or eight times in a lifetime, we 
have to make it possible for all American families to work and to have 
access to health care. And we can't stop people from moving in the job 
market just because they've had a child or a parent who was sick. And 
furthermore, it is not right when we are tying to export our products 
all over the world to punish good companies that provide good health 
insurance benefits by making them pay more than they should just because 
some people don't pay anything.
    So we're going to try to provide health security for all Americans 
in a way that preserves what is right about our system but fixes what is 
wrong. It will be good for the economy, and I can also tell you it'll be 
very good for this budget deficit, because every year, now the only 
thing that's really growing in the entire Federal budget are health care 
costs going up at 2 and 3 times the rate of inflation for reasons 
directly related to the fact that we're the only advanced industrial 
country that doesn't provide health care to everyone. So we have to do 
that, and I hope you will support that.
    Finally, let me say that one of the things that I'm trying to do as 
your President, with mixed results, I guess, is to bring the same sort 
of values and method of operation that made this company great into the 
operation of the National Government.
    So many of the problems that we have today are people problems. They 
don't fit neatly within the partisan political categories of the past. 
So much of what we have to do today is to get people to work together in 
teams to develop human potential and to exalt human dignity and give 
people a chance to live up to the fullest of their God-given ability. 
That is our job, to get people together, to get things done, to help 
people make the most of their lives.
    And I think that we do very well in Washington, DC, to remember the 
model that we see here. The model that puts people first: no layoff 
policy, heavy emphasis on productivity, use technology, but never forget 
people are the most important thing. Sell to the whole world. Keep the 
competition in mind. Those are things I wish we could be driven by in 
Washington. And I promise you, every day I'm trying to bring Washington 
a little closer to that way of doing business, your way.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 1:17 p.m. on the factory floor. In his 
remarks, he referred to Janet Morse, employee, James A. Putnam, 
president, Thomas A. Putnam, chairman, David F. Putnam, director 
emeritus, and Joseph A. Baute, director, Markem Corp.; and Mayor William 
F. Lynch of Keene.