[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 44 (Monday, November 6, 1995)]
[Pages 1955-1961]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]
<R04>
Remarks to the White House Conference on Travel and Tourism
October 30, 1995
Thank you. Please sit down. This is not an endurance contest.
[Laughter] I am delighted to be here, delighted that this day has
finally come. I want to thank Greg Farmer for the fine job that he has
done, and the others who are here: the FAA Administrator, David Hinson;
the Deputy Transportation Secretary, Mort Downey; Bill Norman, the
president of the Travel Industry Association of America. I want to say a
special word of thanks to Lorranne Ausley-Ellis, who was the executive
director of this conference. I don't know if she's had any sleep for the
last week or two, waiting for you all to appear. And a thanks to my good
friend Congressman Oberstar.
I was telling Greg Farmer when Jim was up here speaking that Jim
Oberstar, once he gets the bit in his teeth, he never lets go. If Jim
had been a dog, half the people in Washington would have rabies.
[Laughter] He is the most determined person I ever saw. And it might not
be so bad, depending on which half it was. [Laughter]
Jim Oberstar came to me with this idea, and I could look in his eyes
and tell it was going to happen. I might tell you also, on a totally
different subject, for a very long time he was one of only literally a
handful of Members of the Congress who supported me in what I ultimately
had to do in Haiti. Because he speaks Creole--he'd lived in Haiti--he
knew it was the right thing to do; he knew it was the right thing for
our country, for the cause of freedom. And when we celebrated one year
of democratic freedom
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in Haiti just a couple weeks ago, I thought to myself, if it hadn't been
for Jim Oberstar and just a couple of more, this might not have
happened. So he, in a real way, is the father of this conference, and I
thank him for it very much.
I do want to thank the Members of Congress and the citizens of both
political parties who worked so hard to make this day possible. I want
to thank those of you who took time away to attend this conference. I
know there are a lot of people here today, as there were at the White
House Conference on Small Business, who don't work for big companies,
who don't have generous leave policies and travel allowances, and who
really had to make a personal effort and a personal sacrifice to come.
And I thank you for coming because I know what an important part of the
tourism industry you are.
I want to thank the State employees who are here who work with
tourism, and the local employees and elected officials who are here. I
want to thank the students from the Academy of Travel and Tourism
programs who wrote essays that won prizes about encouraging people to
visit the United States.
I am very proud that this is the first White House Conference on
Travel and Tourism. And I know all of you agree that it's about time.
This industry has been near and dear to my heart since I was a
little boy. I grew up in a resort town that also embraced a national
park. As an adult I've had the good fortune to travel a fair amount,
although as President I must say one of the more frustrating aspects of
the job is I go to a lot of interesting places and never get to be a
tourist.
As Governor, I enthusiastically attended our Governor's Conference
on Tourism every year. And I want you to know that this is very
important to me personally and that this time is a very important time
for you to be gathering here.
This industry holds much promise for the future of America. It has a
lot to teach us as Americans, as we stand on the dawn of a new era,
moving from an industrial age to one that will be dominated by
technology and information and our ability to relate to one another and
to move quickly in terms of ideas and technology and people across the
globe. We've moved at a breathtaking pace from the divided world of the
cold war to a global village. If the 21st century is going to be an
American century, we have to master this transition, as surely as we
mastered the shift from the agricultural to the industrial economy. And
we will.
To meet the test of the time, we have to dedicate ourselves to
promoting and strengthening those aspects of American society which will
clearly work best in the global economy. And we know that trade and
tourism and travel, all these things are tailor-made for what we do well
and what the 21st century will value.
That's why I have dedicated myself to helping this industry grow. A
healthy travel and tourism industry is good for the economy, and it also
gives Americans a larger service. If you think back to the first time as
a child you left home to go somewhere new, recall the first time you met
someone who was visiting you from a far off place, I know that you came
away from the experience with a greater knowledge of other people and
other communities, a stronger sense of the common humanity that unites
us all. And I would guess that you returned with an increasing
appreciation for something just as important, your own home, your own
community, your own roots.
Travel leads to understanding. It increases the chances of peace,
and therefore, it increases the chances of a better life for all. When
you just travel this land you learn the miracle of America. Our people
are as diverse and wonderful as our landscape. Going to another State
can almost be like going to another country, and if you come from
another State to Washington, it's almost like space travel. [Laughter]
Travel is also democratic, with a small ``d.'' It used to be a
luxury reserved for the aristocracy. But in the history of American
travel and tourism you can see that the marvelously optimistic quality
of our people made this something that everybody ought to do. We look at
something set aside for the very few at the top and we say, ``Hold on,
everybody ought to have the opportunity to work hard and then enjoy
that.'' Most Americans may not travel first-class, but for a long time
now our families have been able to load up the
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car and head for a fall-colored national park or a warm beach or a clean
motel on the side of a road leading to a place they have never been
before.
Of course, the travel and tourism industries are also essential to
providing opportunity for all Americans in the 21st century. You are our
largest business service export. As Greg said, in 1993 you generated a
$22 billion trade surplus for the United States. You're the second
largest employer in the Nation, providing jobs for over 6 million
Americans. And of course, you employ millions more through the
industries that thrive when you do well. As the circle of freedom
expands around the globe, the tourism industry will keep growing all
around the world. And as you grow, here at home the hardworking
Americans whose jobs are changing along with our economy will have a
chance to find a home with you.
Many Americans have general worries about all service-sector jobs.
Somehow they think they're not as steady and don't have as good of
prospects for the future. But I know that we're all working to prove
otherwise. Service industry wages are among the fastest rising wages in
our economy. And I support your efforts to reward hard work and to give
people incomes that they can build solid lives on and raise children
with. For all these reasons I have committed myself to giving your
industry the opportunity to flourish that it deserves. It is part of a
strategy that I have embraced to restore the American economy and to
ensure the American dream and America's leadership into the 21st
century.
The first thing I want to tell you is that your country is clearly
on a roll. We have a resurgence of economic growth. We have a dramatic
reform in the size and scope and way of operating of our Government. And
most important of all, we have a reassertion of basic American values in
every community in this country.
In the last 2\1/2\ years since I have been privileged to be your
President, Americans have produced 7\1/2\ million new jobs; 2\1/2\
million new homeowners, bringing homeownership to a 15-year high; over 2
million new small businesses, the most rapid growth of small businesses
in American history, with the lowest combined rates of unemployment and
inflation in 25 years.
The Government's role in this economic resurgence was to reduce the
deficit, while increasing our investment in education, in training, in
technology, in research, and in partnerships with the private sector to
promote American products and services all around the world.
Our trade with other countries has increased by 4 percent in '93, 10
percent in '94, and 15 percent in '95. As a percentage of our national
income, the deficit is less than half of what it was when I became
President. For the first time since Harry Truman, the deficit has
actually been driven down for 3 years in a row. As a percentage of
income, the United States of America now has the lowest Government
deficit of any industrial country in the world except Norway. Every
other country has a higher deficit as a percentage of their income than
we do. I'm proud of that, and you should be proud of it, too.
We are now debating here in Washington how to balance the budget.
But the good news is the leaders of both parties want to finish the job.
I believe we have to do it in a way that is consistent with our values,
that keeps our economy going, and that maintains our leadership in the
world.
More important even than the economy to me is the encouraging signs
that Americans are getting back together around the values that make
life worth living. In almost every State and significant community in
America the crime rate is down, the murder rate is down, the welfare
rolls are down, the food stamp rolls are down, the poverty rate is down,
the teen pregnancy rate is down, and child support collections have
increased 40 percent in the last 3 years. Our country is moving in the
right direction and coming back together. That is a terribly important
development.
Specifically with regard to the tourism and travel industry, we have
taken a series of very specific steps designed to help you succeed at
what you do. First of all, we have a disciplined, coordinated leadership
effort and a commitment to promoting travel and tourism, beginning with
the Secretaries of State, Commerce, and Transportation, our Trade
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Representative, Ambassador Kantor, the Overseas Private Investment
Corporation, led by Ruth Harkin, and the Export-Import Bank, led by Ken
Brody. Secondly, we have worked very hard to open markets and to support
U.S. exports including travel and tourism around the world. We have
concluded more than 80 separate trade agreements in less than 3 years.
Tourism is an export, and we have fought for it just as we have fought
for other industry.
The U.S. Trade and Tourism Association is leading a public-private
partnership to double the number of Japanese visitors to the United
States by the year 2000. The reason is clear: Of the 7\1/2\ million new
jobs that have come into the United States since I have been President,
2 million--2 million--came from the expansion of the sale of American
products and services overseas. International visitors spent $78 billion
here last year.
The second thing we've worked to do is to sign open-skies agreements
with more countries to facilitate air travel here. Earlier this year I
signed an open-skies agreement with Canada, deregulating the world's
largest aviation market: more flights, lower fares. Last month we
concluded an open-skies pact with nine European countries. We've
expanded air service around the world to Great Britain, Brazil, Ukraine,
the Philippines.
We've worked hard to give you a healthy airlines industry. They were
in deep trouble when I came into office. Every airline in America but
one was losing money. Three were in bankruptcy. From 1988 to 1992, the
industry lost $12 billion, more money lost in 4 years than it had made
in its entire history. I appointed a special commission headed by the
former Governor of Virginia, Gerry Baliles, to revive the industry.
Secretary Pena has now carried out the vast majority of its
recommendations. Today the airlines are healthy, the fares are down, the
passengers are up, and they are turning a profit. We are moving in the
right direction.
We've also worried about industry safety, to try to make America a
safe harbor and to try to guarantee the safety of Americans around the
world. We see today ironic and mostly encouraging developments, peace in
the Middle East coming along, more peace and less violence in Northern
Ireland, tomorrow peace talks opening about Bosnia here in the United
States, something we are proud to host. We also know that there are new
threats to our security that go across all national boundaries, that the
organized forces of destruction and terror know no nationalism.
We saw terrorism at home blow up the Federal building in Oklahoma
City, and foreign terrorists try to take the World Trade Center down,
plan to bomb the United Nations. We see abroad when a religious fanatic
sect can take a small vial of sarin gas into a subway in Japan and break
it open and kill scores of people and injure hundreds of others. And we
know we have to work together, together with other countries, to reduce
the menace of terrorism and violence and drug trafficking and organized
crime in this world. That was the subject of the speech I gave to the
United Nations last week on the occasion of its 50th anniversary.
But I also want you to know that we are doing everything we can to
help your local officials and your community bring the homegrown crime
rate down in America. The crime bill that was passed in 1994 was an
astonishing piece of legislation. It provided for putting a hundred
thousand more police officers on our street in community policing
settings so that we could reduce the incidence of violent crime. It
provided for prevention programs, not designed and run by the Federal
Government but run by local communities to give our young people
something to say yes to, constructive endeavors, avoiding a life of
crime.
It provided for tougher punishment. And we now have the first
convictions coming in under the ``three strikes and you're out'' law,
where we take career criminals and just put them away. It provided for
all these things, plus the Brady bill, which kept 40,000 criminals from
getting handguns last year--40,000. Next time somebody tells you that
didn't work, tell them to think again.
Now, that's one big reason the crime rate is down. We're on time--
we're actually slightly ahead of schedule in putting these police
officers out there on the street. And we are trying to give you a safe
America that everyone is happy to travel in and to be a part of, in
every State in our community, in
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cities and rural areas alike. That is a very important priority with me.
And we've got to keep this crime rate coming down, down, down.
The other thing we're trying to do is rooted in a lesson I learned
as a Governor when I realized that every time we opened a new State park
or refurbished an old one, or did something to one of our State's
landmarks, we helped the private sector tourism in the area. We have
done everything we could to promote and enhance our national parks and
our national landmarks and our national monuments, as well as to
maintain the ability of the United States to have clean air, clean
water, safe drinking water, and a generally very healthy and high
standard environment. I am, therefore, opposed to changes which would
undermine our ability to provide a clean environment or would require us
to sell off any of our national parks or national assets.
I congratulated Congressman Oberstar on the victory won, and headed
by Congressman Richardson of New Mexico, in the Congress just last week
to get rid of this hit list of over 300 American treasures that some in
the Congress wanted to sell off, including the home of President
Roosevelt, where I met with President Yeltsin last week. I hope that
idea is dying a very timely death. We need to enhance our public
investments.
So we are committed to doing things that will help the tourism
industry, that will promote travel, that will enhance your efforts. Let
me say, we are also doing it with a much smaller Government. There are
163,000 fewer people working for the Federal Government today than there
were the day I became President. Next year, the Federal Government will
be the smallest it's been since John Kennedy was President, under the
budget we passed in 1993. And as a percentage of the civilian work
force, it will be the smallest it's been since 1933. The era of big
Government is done. The era of smart Government is here. It is the right
thing to do.
We have 16,000 fewer pages of Government regulations. My favorite,
because I'm from Arkansas, was when I showed up I realized there was a
whole page of Government regulations on what grits were. [Laughter] And
I could have just given the name of 400 people they could teach
something to, and they could say this is grits or it's not. [Laughter]
So we're getting rid of a lot of that. We got rid of 16,000 pages--you
think I'm kidding, it really was there--[laughter]--16,000 pages of
regulations have been eliminated. We have proposed to eliminate hundreds
of programs.
But we also want to make the Government work better. A lot of you
are small business people. Maybe you've had some help from the Small
Business Administration. In the last 3 years, we have cut the budget of
the SBA by 40 percent, but we have doubled the loan volume. We have
emphasized making loans to women business people and to minorities
without in any way reducing the loans that white males were getting or
without watering down the standards for making the loan one bit. The SBA
is simply working in a more entrepreneurial, more effective way to try
to help more small business people get started in the United States in
every part of the United States no matter who they are or where they
come from. That is the kind of Government that the taxpayers of this
country are entitled to. And it will help the travel and tourism
industry if we can accelerate the growth of small business in America.
Another thing we are trying to do in this Congress--and I think we
have a good chance to get a bipartisan agreement on this--that affects
an awful lot of small business people, and I would imagine a lot of you
in this audience, is to make it easier for small business people to take
out retirement plans for themselves and their employees. The present
rules and regulations are a nightmare. They are too cumbersome; they are
too expensive. The legal fees alone keep thousands of small business
people from doing anything in this important area.
So if you're interested in this and this will affect you personally,
I would urge you to contact your Member of Congress and get a status
report on this. As far as I know, there is no partisan difference here.
We just know that small business is creating most of the new jobs in
this economy; that retirement programs, health care programs are often
too burdensome, too inaccessible for small business people; and this
legislation can make it much, much, much easier for people in small
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business to take out retirement plans for themselves and to help their
employees. And I would urge you to help me get this done. I think we
have a broad coalition for it. It just needs to be made a priority so
that no matter how busy we are, we take care of this. I am committed to
it, and I hope you will be as well.
Finally, let me say that we are trying to do two more things to make
the Government work better and cost less that directly affect the travel
and tourism industry. The Vice President is going to speak to you
tomorrow, and he will talk about the work we've done in reinventing
Government with the Customs Service and the Immigration and
Naturalization Service which has changed the way we greet our own
citizens and visitors as they enter the United States. If you're coming
or going legally, we want to get the Government out of the way and get
you on your way. And that will make a big difference if we do it right.
Now, finally, I want to mention this second point. We have worked
very hard to enact reforms at the Federal Aviation Administration.
Having a Federal Aviation Administration that works, that has the
confidence of all Americans, that operates the airports efficiently and
safely, that has a lot to do with how well those of you in travel and
tourism do, unless you get all your customers off the road. And it is a
very important thing for the United States, for our economy, for the
convenience and for the safety of our people.
The FAA controls the bottom-line efficiency of the airline industry.
Yet, believe it or not, its air traffic control system in many places
still depends upon stone age technology that's often older than the
flight controllers using it. [Laughter] I know that's hard to believe.
At a time when our private sector is building the most advanced
airplanes in the world, the FAA is still buying vacuum tubes like this--
the Vice President gave me this just before I came over--to run the
computers and the radar systems that ought to be run by chips. We
actually have to buy these vacuum tubes for some of the old computers
and radar systems from other countries because they're not even produced
here anymore.
Now, this is unacceptable. Americans have a right to believe that
the FAA will be run with the highest technology in the world and that
they will get where they're going on time at a reasonable cost and at
maximum safety. I never want a parent to think twice when a child asks
if the flying is safe.
Now, we've been very blessed by very safe and careful airlines, and
our control and regulatory system has worked very well over time. But we
also know that there's no point in pretending something's all right when
it's not. It is not all right that the FAA does not have the highest
technology, safest, most efficient equipment in the world. That is not
all right. We have to change that.
That's why more than 2 years ago I made FAA reform a top priority
and asked the Vice President to include it at the top of his list in the
National Performance Review. In early 1994, almost 2 years ago, we sent
Congress a plan to overhaul the agency. Building on suggestions from the
airline commission that helped us to turn the airline industry around,
we called for a procurement system that gets the FAA new technology
while it's still on the cutting edge, a new personnel system that puts
controllers where they're needed and rewards them for good work, and a
radically new financing system that ensures stability, demands
accountability, and provides incentives for efficiency.
We've done everything we could to fix the FAA on our own. Secretary
Pena and Administrator Hinson brought in a new management team and put
in plans to modernize the system. We have speeded up the replacement of
failing computers at some of our busiest air traffic centers, so there
will be fewer of these and more of the chips. And we have stepped up
training for controllers and technicians.
But unfortunately, we cannot do everything we need to do alone. We
have to have some legislative help. And I am very pleased that Congress
has put together finally a transportation appropriations bill that
embraces the personnel and the procurement reforms we asked for two
years ago. I am very gratified that members of both parties came
together to create this important legislation, and I'd like to give a
special word of thanks to Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon. When
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this bill hits my desk--[applause]--we've got the Oregon group back
there. When this bill hits my desk, I intend to sign it. And we will get
FAA back on a glide path to the 21st century.
But there's more to do. We still have to overhaul the financing of
FAA. Today's budget process simply does not guarantee the agency the
long-range funding it needs to operate safely and efficiently. Again,
let me thank Congressman Oberstar and Senators McCain, Ford and Hollings
for their work on this. I want Congress to redouble their efforts. We
have got to fix this problem once and for all.
Now, let me say that these are my ideas for what the National
Government can do to support you in what you're trying to do. I'm sure
that you have some ideas about that, too. I never met a group of people
that I thought had more consistently higher levels of energy and more
consistent openness to new ideas than the people I work with throughout
my career who are in tourism and travel.
One big point of a White House Conference on Travel and Tourism is
for us to listen to you, not for you to listen to us. I came here to
make a report to you because you're entitled to that and it will help
you to know where we are and how we're thinking. But when you leave, I
want you to report back to me and tell me what more you think we can do
to help you to succeed.
I will say again: Next year the whole world will be looking at the
United States when the Olympics open in Atlanta. They may let the Braves
carry the torch in now. [Laughter] But the world will be lookng at us.
It will give us a new opportunity, an even greater opportunity, as
billions of people all over the world look at the United States, to
enhance the chances that more and more and more of them will want to
come here; to see what America's like up close; to share in all the
things that too many of our fellow countrymen sometimes take for
granted.
We want to be ready for that. We want to keep this country on a
roll. We want to keep coming back to our values, and we want to keep
pushing our economy forward. And we want to keep being a leading force
in the world for peace and freedom and prosperity.
In order to do that, we have to have a healthy travel and tourism
industry. And by next year when the eyes of the world are on America in
a clear and focused and open-hearted way, I want to know that you and I
together have done everything we can to make sure that one of the things
those eyes take away from the sight of the Olympics is a deep, yearning
desire to come to America, and to be with us in friendship and
partnership as we pave the way for greater opportunity for these young
people in the 21st century.
Thank you, and God bless you all.
Note: The President spoke at 10:35 a.m. in the Grand Ballroom at the
Sheraton Washington Hotel.