[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 32, Number 6 (Monday, February 12, 1996)]
[Pages 220-221]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks in a Roundtable Discussion With Families on the V-Chip in 
Alexandria, Virginia

February 9, 1996

    The President. First of all, I'd like to thank our host for 
welcoming us in, and to all the members of the press and our guests 
here. As you know, yesterday I signed into law the Telecommunications 
Act of 1996, which is the first major overhaul of our telecommunications 
laws in six decades.
    That bill will do an enormous amount of good for our country. It 
will, for consumers, open up vast new opportunities for entertainment, 
vast new opportunities for information, vast new opportunities for 
different kinds of communications. It will create many, many thousands 
of high-wage jobs. But it will also bring a lot more images and messages 
into every home in America.
    One of the things that the Vice President and Mrs. Gore and I like 
so much about this bill is that in addition to getting the benefits of 
the telecommunications revolution, it gives more power to parents to 
control what their young children see on television by requiring all new 
television sets to have a V-chip in them.
    So we wanted to come here today to discuss with these folks how they 
feel about it and to give them and to give you a chance to see how this 
will work. So I'd like to turn it over to the Vice President and give 
him a chance to make a demonstration and to comment.

At this point, the Vice President demonstrated the technology, and the 
roundtable discussion then proceeded.]

    The President. Let me just say one final thing about this. Maybe we 
ought to change the name from the V-chip to parent power chip. 
[Laughter]
    One of the things that we talk about all the time, to go beyond 
this, is that all these technological changes that are going on in the 
world are so wonderful in so many ways. They're making opportunities for 
people to do things they never could do before. But if we're not 
careful, they also make the majority of the people feel that they're 
losing control of their lives in many ways, not just

[[Page 221]]

this way, in many ways. And I think anything we can do to harness the 
power of new technology, to give people more control back over their 
lives, their family lives, the workplace, the community, that's a good 
thing. We don't want people to feel powerless.
    One of the things that frustrates people in this country is they 
feel like there are all these forces out there running around working on 
their lives, and they have no control over them. And this is maybe just 
one small step, but it's a way of saying to people that new technologies 
can put you back in the driver seat in your lives, not take you further 
and further out of them.
    Thank you. Thanks again for having me here.

Note: The President spoke at 11:05 a.m. at the residence of Ric and Jean 
Voigt.

    Later in the day, the Office of the Press Secretary released a 
transcript of the complete roundtable discussion, which was not received 
in time for inclusion in this issue and will be published in next week's 
issue.