[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 6 (Monday, February 14, 2000)]
[Pages 274-281]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Interview With the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today

February 10, 2000

National Economy

    Q. I guess I wanted to ask you, given the way that the economy is 
going--given that there's been so much growth, and it's been so 
successful--how much credit do you think that you and your 
administration can realistically take, compared to the other factors 
that people talk about? There's been some discussion, I'm sure you know, 
recently, with people crediting everything, going back to President 
Reagan. And I'm just curious on that topic, what your views are?
    The President. Well, I think, first of all, if you look at the 
difference in the expansions of the eighties and the nineties, we had 
a--the one in the eighties was funded by an old-fashioned explosion of 
deficit spending. But it built in a structural deficit, which guaranteed 
profound long-term problems for the economy, very high interest rates, 
and very slow job growth.
    There was a lot of commentary in '91 and '92 about how, even though 
nominally a recovery had begun, I think some of the writers called it a 
``triple dip'' phenomenon, that we kept sliding back and sliding back.
    So I think the main thing we did was to cut interest rates by 
getting rid of the deficit. And I think that if you go back and read 
all--I remember what a boost in the bond market there was when we just--
when Lloyd
Bentsen announced our economic program in December of '92. So I think 
our main contribution in the short run was to make it absolutely clear 
that we would have a consistent, disciplined fiscal approach that would 
cut and then eventually eliminate the deficit. And I think that played a 
major role in the investment boom. And it cut interest rates, which also 
put more money in consumers' pockets, which helped fuel the consumer 
side of this recovery.
    But I think that the consistent policies of the Government that go 
back to the previous administrations, that reflected the second leg of 
our approach, which also deserves credit, which is keeping the markets 
open. You've had three administrations here in a row committed--in the 
eighties and the nineties--committed to open trade. And I think that 
that's been very good, because that's kept inflation down and spurred 
continuing competitiveness. And I do believe the previous 
administrations deserve credit for that.
    Then I don't--you know, the lion's share of the credit belongs to 
the people in the

[[Page 275]]

private economy: the people who restructured in the eighties; the 
workers who got better training and understood the global economy and 
didn't press for what would have been inflationary increases in pay and 
benefits, that aligned them more with the real profitability of their 
firms; and then finally what, I think, only in the last couple of years 
has come to be fully appreciated is the enormous contribution of the 
technology revolutions, which are centered, still, in the high-tech 
sector--they're 8 percent of our employment, but they've been 30 percent 
of our growth--but also are rifling through every other sector of the 
economy in a way that has added to productivity that is only now being 
measured. If you noticed, the last couple days we had a new estimate of 
productivity growth. My sense is that all along, the economists 
underestimated--understandably, based on past experience--the 
productivity contribution of technology and the ability of a combination 
of fiscal discipline, open markets, and productivity increases, to 
prolong the growth in a way that would generate large numbers of jobs 
and begin to broaden the benefits of the recovery. That was another real 
problem for--we had 20 years where income inequality continued to 
increase, because of the way the recovery was structured. So I think you 
have to look at the whole piece.
    And then I think now, we're beginning to get the benefits of the 
third part of our economic strategy, which was to continue to make the 
requisite public investments, which have, I think, made a significant 
contribution in education, in training, and we've got college going up 
by 10 percent now, over when I took office. We've made real, continuing 
investments in science and technology, which I think are pivotal to the 
long-term health of the economy and the continuation of this 
productivity increase.
    So I think that we've made a contribution, but the lion's share of 
the credit--as always, since it's a private economy; we had the highest 
percentage of private-sector jobs in this economic boom, I think, of any 
one since we've been keeping such statistics.
    Q. To follow up on this, Mr. President, I notice that in your last 
interview with a group here about the economy a week ago or so, you were 
very generous with credit. There are some people, in fact, who are 
saying, this is one long boom. We're in the 17th year of an expansion. 
What do you think of that account of what's going on with the economy?
    The President. Well, we could say that, basically, we've been in a 
30-year boom and gone back to '61, or a 40-year boom, but for the oil 
price problems, which led to all the inflation. I mean, you can argue 
this flat or round. There is a fundamental health in the American free 
enterprise system, which has prospered in the global economy. And in 
that sense, the people who set up the system at the end of World War II 
deserve a lot of this credit. I don't think you can disaggregate all 
this.
    I think the fundamental mistake that was made in the eighties was 
basically abandoning arithmetic. I think that we got out of that 
recession, and we had--you remember--we had impossible conditions in the 
seventies, with recession and high inflation at the same time, caused by 
a set of economic circumstances that were not of our own making, at 
least certainly mostly not of our own making.
    So the idea of stimulating the economy in the early years--of the 
Reagan years was, even though it was masked in anti-Government rhetoric, 
was basically traditional Keynesian economics. But the problem is, when 
we had a recovery, because it was sold as a, you know, ``tax cuts are 
good; Government's bad'' package, we wound up with a structural deficit 
that couldn't be overcome without a series of highly difficult and 
controversial decisions that were embodied in the Budget Act of '93, 
which required both tax increases and spending restraint. And the people 
who shouldered the burden of that paid a considerable political price in 
the elections of '94, but I think there's no question that it enabled us 
to have a balanced, long-term, stable, not only statistical recovery but 
finally job-growth recovery that was more broadly shared. It seems to me 
that was the problem with the eighties philosophy, that we wound up with 
a structural deficit that was totally unsustainable. And I think it 
basically grew out of the ideological wrapping of what was done in 1981.

[[Page 276]]

    Q. Just one last question along those lines. Sometimes when I listen 
to you recently, in the talks that you give, I get the sense that you're 
trying to assure or encourage that your administration get sufficient 
credit for the boom that's going on now, whether for historians, whether 
in the next election. And I'm wondering if you have any sense of that.
    The President. No, I don't have any sense of that. What I say is 
what I believe to be true, and I've tried to--with you, I've tried to, 
as I said in the State of the Union, as always the major credit for 
anything good that happens in this country belongs to the American 
people and the people and what they do in their private lives.
    I think Government plays a pivotal role, and I do not--let me flip 
it around. If you go--forget about what I might say. Look at what Alan 
Greenspan has said; look at what all the commentators have said, going 
back to the '92, '93, '94 period. I do not believe that we would have 
had a recovery this robust, with this many jobs--I don't think we'd be 
anywhere close to that--if we hadn't taken serious, aggressive, and 
immediate action to get rid of the deficit and to bring interest rates 
down and to free up investment and at the same time, by getting interest 
rates down, to put more money into the pockets of people. They had lower 
home mortgage, car payments, college loan payments, credit card interest 
payments, which enabled the consumer side of this boom to continue.
    I also don't believe that there would have been anything like the 
amount of business investment borrowing or consumer borrowing, if--I 
don't think that would have been sustainable, in this environment, 
unless the Government had not only eliminated the deficit but gone into 
surplus and begun to offset private debt with public savings.
    So I simply think that's a fact. But I don't--but my view of this is 
different. I don't think anybody can claim sole credit. And I'm not so 
interested in that. I think what's happened is, America is following a 
balanced policy now. And if America stays on that course when I'm not 
President anymore, I think we'll meet with success. And then we'll have 
to be flexible, you know, if intervening events cause a recession, well, 
there will be cause for adjustment in policy. But if we had adjustment 
in policy, it might work.
    I mean, if we had continued with these deficits, then the next time 
we had a recession, deficit spending wouldn't have been an option to 
help get the country out of a recession. So to me, the American people 
should look at this in terms of--I think I did my job. But I think the 
rest of the--I think Alan Greenspan did his job. I think the people in 
the high-tech sector were terrific. I think the people who restructured 
all of American industry and business to increase their efficiency and 
productivity were great. And I think the working people of this country 
deserve a lot of credit for understanding that they can only get wage 
and benefit increases that were real, and if they got out of line with 
economic growth, then that could contribute to inflation as well.
    So I think we've had a remarkable balance here, where the American 
people, all of us in our own way, essentially have done what we were 
supposed to do. And there's more than enough credit to go around.

Technology Revolution

    Q. Mr. President, can you talk just a little bit--you talked about 
the high-tech sector and how important that is to the economy. Can you 
talk about the Internet for a second and how important it is to the 
ongoing boom? And also, can you tell us how worried you are about what's 
happened over the last 3 days with these attacks on websites? If this is 
a growing part of the economy, should we be concerned that it's so 
vulnerable to attack? And is there anything the Government ought to be 
doing about it, beyond what the FBI is already doing?
    The President. Well, let me give you a brief answer to the first 
question you asked, because I think we could talk for hours about that. 
Quite apart from the technology revolution, I don't think we have any 
way of measuring the contributions that the Internet is making and will 
continue to make, not only to the overall growth of the American economy 
but to the range of individual opportunities open to people.
    You may have heard me say this in some of my talks, but I was 
amazed--I was out in northern California a few weeks ago with

[[Page 277]]

a bunch of people who work with eBay. And they were telling me, now, 
that there are over 20,000 Americans who actually make a living on eBay, 
not working for eBay but on eBay buying and selling, trading--and that 
they have enough information on their user base to know that a 
significant number of these people were once on welfare. And they 
figured out a way to stay home, take care of their kids, and literally 
make a living buying and selling on eBay.
    Now, that's all I know about that. I don't have any more facts. It's 
an interesting story you might want to follow up on, but the point is 
that this is just one example of, I think, a virtually unlimited number 
of new economic opportunities which will be open. I also think it will 
shrink distance in a way that will make it possible for more profitable 
investments to be made in areas that are now still kind of left behind 
in this economy.
    And I--you know, we've tried to do an analysis of all the areas in 
America which have had slow job growth or which still have higher 
unemployment. And we developed this new markets initiative and proposed 
more empowerment zones and things of that kind. But the--if we can 
bridge the digital divide and literally make the Internet accessible to 
lower income people and to places that are not fully participating in 
this economy, I think the potential is staggering.
    Now, to the second question, yes, I'm concerned about the latest 
hacking incidents. But I think that, you know, we've gotten all this 
incredible benefit out of a system that is fundamentally open. And as 
you know, I've worked hard to keep it unencumbered, to try to make sure 
that Internet commerce is not unduly burdened by regulation or taxation. 
And if you have an open system like this, you're going to have to have 
continuous guarding against intrusion. And people go where the money is. 
It's like Willie Sutton, you know? I mean, the money's in information 
and in knowledge about transactions and opportunities.
    And so my view of this is that this--our renewed vigilance to try to 
deal with cyberhacking, or even cyberterrorism, is part of the cost of 
doing business in the modern world. We've been working hard on this for 
2 years. We've proposed, I think, $2 billion in this budget to deal with 
it. We've got this, you know, this proposal for a cyber-academy to train 
young people to try to work to help us prevent illegal intrusions into 
the Internet and into important databases.
    And we have this FBI center, as you know, and--I think it's in 
Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh--that's looking into these latest 
incidents. But I'm going to bring in some people next week from the 
private sector and from our Government team, to talk about what if 
anything else we can do about this.
    Q. Because of the incidents that just happened?
    The President. What?
    Q. You're going to bring them in because of these events that just 
happened?
    The President. Yes, Yes. As a result--you know, we have a continuing 
ongoing consultation with them. We've had extensive conversations 
leading up to the proposals that we've already made and the work we've 
done for the last 2 years.
    But I don't--I wouldn't--I think it's important that we not 
overreact to this. I mean, we don't want to shut off this incredible 
resource, which I think will be a source of great wealth and, I think, 
will have all kinds of social benefits, not only in the United States 
but around the world. And we just have to recognize that it's like any 
other new institution that's a source of ideas, information, and wealth.
    I mean, people used to--it's harder to rob a bank than it used to 
be, and we figured out how to make it harder. And we'll figure out--
we'll continue to figure out to secure the Internet without shutting it 
down or closing off options. But the American people, in my view, should 
look at this as an inevitable negative development in what is an overall 
very positive trend. And there's probably no silver bullet to deal with 
it, but we'll keep working at it until we can prove our capacity to 
protect the people who are participating in it.
    Q. But doesn't this set some limits on the growth of the new 
economy, the Internet economy? I mean, there was this poor soul who was 
described in the Post today--he sat there on E-TRADE and watched his 
stock drop 6 percent while he couldn't get online. I mean, if some 14-
year-old kid--and we

[[Page 278]]

don't know who has done this, but if some 14-year-old kid with a PC can 
screw up the system that badly, doesn't that effectively limit how much 
people are going to trust it and how much people are going to use it?
    The President. Unless we can solve it. But unless we can figure out 
how to solve the problem--but my instinct is that there are people just 
as clever or more clever who will be interested in making the thing work 
for society as a whole as there are those that want to gum up the works.
    The fact that a 14-year-old did it, I don't think, should be 
surprising to anyone. I mean, all the rest of us--you know, you get to 
thinking by the time you're 35, you're too old to break new ground in 
this area. But it's troubling, but I don't--again, I would say that if 
you look throughout history, every new positive development contains 
within it the seeds of its own vulnerability, and then people, either 
for pure mischievousness or because they're trying to do something 
really wrong and reach some illicit benefit try to interfere with it.
    So I don't think what you're seeing today is sort of anything new in 
terms of human nature or people trying to put their ingenuity to work 
for destructive purposes. And we just have to keep working until we find 
ways to thwart it. Because I think fundamentally, this has been an 
extraordinarily positive development for our country and for the world.

Biotechnology and the Human 
Genome Project

    Q. Mr. President, can I take you from the new economy to what you 
may call the new-new economy, biotech and the human genome. As you know 
and as you've said in the State of the Union, we're within months of 
having a first draft of the entire human genetic code. As I'm sure you 
also know, there is some argument about how we can best put it to use: 
Whether we should have very broad access to it by scientists and so on, 
or whether we get products, new treatments, and so on, faster, if it's 
more narrowly constrained, or access to parts of it, substantial parts 
of it, are more narrowly constrained; should the public, and especially 
the research community have ready access to the underlying human code, 
the genome itself?
    The President. Yes.
    Q. You know that there are people who say that we should allow 
extensive, broad patenting of it, not just to use, but have a 
compositional matter portion where people actually--companies, biotech 
companies--biotech companies, the drug companies actually control the 
underlying sequence, and that's the best route to get products out fast, 
get new treatments. What do you think of that argument?
    The President. I basically agree with the guidance that the Patent 
Office has now announced, that they believe that the broad information, 
the basic sequencing of the genome should be made public and should be 
made publicly available to scientists and researchers, to all people in 
private sector businesses and----
    Q. Why do you think the Patent Office is--do you think the Patent 
Office is saying that, and why do you think the Patent Office is saying 
that? Because there are many people, Dr. Collins, for example, who you 
were with 2 days ago who say that's not what the Patent Office is doing?
    The President. Let me answer your question first of all, and then--I 
think the patenting should be for specific discoveries and developments 
that have a clear and definable benefit, because you don't want to take 
those things, you don't want to--I think we would be making an error not 
to give people who develop such things the benefits of them, and you 
would, then, discourage private investment and research in that area.
    Now, I think some--I believe--and I think that's the position that 
Dr. Collins believes that we should have. Now, the Patent Office has 
been criticized for not following that, for having a policy that was too 
broad if you will, but they have--my understanding is that they've 
announced new guidance and that this is the policy they're going to try 
to follow prospectively into the future, and it's the one I think they 
should follow. And I understand there is a debate about this.
    But I think most scientists and researchers believe the basic 
information ought to be as broadly shared as possible. And then when 
people develop something that has specific

[[Page 279]]

use and commercial benefit and the kind of thing that has to be done and 
should properly be done in the private sector, then that ought to be 
patentable.
    Q. Because, for example, Dr. Collins, who you were with a couple of 
days ago, and Dr. Lander talked with you and to you about this at the 
millennial evening last fall, have concern about this, I wonder, would 
you sketch what you think--in a little more detail--what you think ought 
to be publicly available and how you can assure that that is publicly 
available even when we have a very aggressive, very innovative private 
sector that is filing patents like mad?
    The President. The thing that I'm concerned about, obviously, the 
thing that I'm concerned about is the capacity of the Patent Office to 
make the judgments and to make them at a timely fashion and to draw the 
lines in the right way. And you know, I certainly don't feel, for 
example, that I have the level of knowledge to know how to split the 
hairs there. And I think what we've got to do is to make absolutely sure 
if we've got the right policy. Then we have to make sure that the Patent 
Office has the capacity to implement the policy, not only in the right 
way but in a timely way.
    The worst thing would be to have these things all bogged down for 
years and years and years. And I think that's one of the things we're 
going to have to assess this year to really try to make sure that we 
have the capacity to make the right judgments and to make them in a 
timely fashion.

National Economy

    Q. If I could take the discussion back to a little bit of a more 
broad approach, things are going so well now economically speaking, and 
you regularly recite figures that are very impressive, I'm wondering if 
there is any particular thing or set of things that you regard as 
possible threat on the horizon that we need to look out for, that we 
need to be paying attention to. There's been some discussion of high oil 
prices, for example, and they've talked about the trade deficit.
    What would you see as the things we need to be watching?
    The President. The thing that bothers me about the high oil prices, 
primarily, is the disproportionate effect it has on people who are 
excessively relying on oil. We still have, mostly in the mid-Atlantic 
and New England--we still have too many people who still rely on home 
heating oil. They're the ones that have really been hurt.
    The country's overall reliance on oil is much less than it was 25 
years ago when we had the big oil price problem. And we're on the verge 
of real, new breakthroughs in fuel efficiency. Our ability to build our 
buildings with far less energy use per square foot is dramatically 
increasing, both residences and office buildings. There are all kinds of 
advances in factory efficiency now.
    So the real problem I have with the oil prices is the very old-
fashioned problem of the people that are just too dependent on home 
heating oil, and it's a real, serious problem.
    But I don't think that will sink the overall economy or threaten it. 
I think it's far more likely that we have to be vigilant about the size 
of our trade deficit and the amount of American obligations held by 
people in other countries, combined with a very high level of debt in 
this country.
    One of the reasons--right now, we're in good shape on that, because 
the debt-to-wealth ratio of Americans looks very, very good indeed, even 
though the per capita debt is high. I also think the individual savings 
rate is somewhat understated because I don't think we calculate the 
impact of homeownership as well as we should, and we have the highest 
homeownership in history.
    But for me, that's another argument for our economic strategy. 
That's why we ought to be trying to--not trying to, we ought to be 
actually paying down the debt and be very disciplined about it and say 
that we're on a track to eliminate the publicly held debt over the next 
13 years. I understand there's a lot of problems with people who think 
that would be bad for the bond market and interest rate settings and all 
that. That's an arcane decision we could have on another day.
    But I think basically, one of the reasons that I have been so 
adamant about paying this debt down is that it tends to stabilize a 
system that requires if you're having a lot of business expansion, 
requires a lot of business borrowing for new investment, and

[[Page 280]]

where you have a lot of personal borrowing from people who feel the 
security to do it, because they have more assets, but the value of the 
assets is dependent in part on the overall stability of the economy, the 
confidence of the American people, and the confidence of investors 
around the world.
    I don't think we made a mistake to leave our markets open, for 
example, during the Asian financial crisis, even though it exploded our 
trade deficit, because I think it helped the Asians to recover more 
quickly, and it helped to stabilize the global economy. But if you ask 
me the only things that I'm concerned about, I'm concerned about those 
things. And I think the way to deal with them is to do what we're doing, 
which is to keep paying the debt down, so that the overall fiscal health 
of the American economy, when you look at public and private debt, 
against assets and wealth and growth potential, continues to be robust 
and strong and the confidence remains high.

Japan's Economic Situation

    Q. Speaking of the trade deficit, Japan looks like it's sliding back 
into recession. I know that this Government has been jawboning the 
Japanese for years now to try to get them to change policies. How 
worrisome is it that after all their effort, they're going backwards at 
this point in terms of our trade deficit?
    The President. I think that--let's just talk about Japan a minute. 
First of all, it's a very difficult case, because you've got this 
country of people who work very hard, who are very well educated, and 
who have an enormous technological base. My heart goes out to them, 
because they have tried to take--they've taken interest rates down 
virtually to zero and are virtually paying people to borrow money. And 
then the savings habits of the Japanese are so great--and for that and 
other reasons they've had difficulty making that strategy work.
    Then they've got a Government deficit now--they've tried deficit 
spending, and the deficit is a higher percentage of GDP than ours was 
when I became President. So I think that somehow what they have to do is 
to unlock the creative potential and the confidence of their people at 
the same time, which will be politically difficult because it will 
require them, I think, to keep going to, in effect, deregulate, open up, 
and make more competitive their economy. I think that somehow they've 
got to tap the energies of all these young people, like all these young 
people in America are creating all these Internet companies and doing 
all the things they're doing there.
    They're an immensely gifted people, and they work like crazy, and 
they have everything they need I think to succeed. And they're highly 
efficient in their energy use. They've got a lot of things going for 
them. I just think that it must be so difficult for them because the 
traditional stimulus hasn't worked, traditional bringing interest rates 
down hasn't worked, because of the nature of the present economy. So I 
think they're just going to have to keep pushing to unlock the sort of 
spirit of entrepreneurialism and creativity and confidence in their 
economy. And meanwhile, we'll just keep working with them and do the 
best we can.
    Yes, I'm concerned about it, but I just have to believe that sooner 
or later--and hopefully, it will be sooner rather than later--they'll 
come back, because they just have so many assets, they have so much 
talent.
    Q. Does it frustrate you at all that they refuse to change some of 
the structural policies that we have tried to get them to change over 
the years?
    The President. Yes, but it just takes time. I mean, look at how long 
the rest of the world beat up on us before we finally had the--in the 
eighties--look how long the rest of the world hit on us before we 
finally did something about our deficit. For all of the talk about the 
globalization of the world's economies, nations are still governed by 
their people, their own institutions; they deal with their own 
impediments as well as their own promise. And I think they'll get there.
    I think the Prime Minister of Japan is an able man and a man who has 
shown some political courage already in making some changes, and I think 
what we have to do is keep pulling for them and do our best to share 
what we believe will work. And we all need a little humility because 
they--you know what works in one decade is not always

[[Page 281]]

great in the next decade. And all these countries had to--they worked on 
us for a long time before--you know, telling us we had to so something 
about the deficit.
    But I just hope that they will--I wish that they had the confidence 
in themselves right now that I have in them. I wish that they believed 
that they could make this sort of leap into the 21st century economy and 
still be able to maintain their social fabric. And I think eventually 
they'll do it because I don't think they want to fail. I think they want 
to succeed. And you can't blame them for playing out these two tried and 
true strains of economic recovery, on the deficit spending and on the 
low interest rates, before getting to--because that was easier to do 
than to deal with the underlying structural issues. And I think 
eventually they'll do that.
    I mean, look at the pain that was caused in America in the 1980's 
when all the industries had to be restructured and all the--the whole 
economy was topsy-turvy, and there was a lot of difficulty there for 
people. And countries don't willingly absorb that kind of short-term 
pain, even though they know the long-term gain is out there.
    So I just think that--but I think they'll get to it. They'll have 
to. And I think they will, and I think we just need to stick with them, 
keep encouraging them, keep supporting the right kind of change.
    Q. Thank you very much.
    The President. It's an interesting time to be alive, gentlemen. 
Don't you think?

Note: The interview began at 5:36 p.m. in the Oval Office at the White 
House. In his remarks, the President referred to Francis S. Collins, 
Director, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes 
of Health; former Senator Lloyd Bentsen; and Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi 
of Japan. An interviewer referred to Eric Lander, director, Whitehead/
MIT Center for Genome Research. Participating in the interview were 
George Hager of USA Today, Peter Gosselin of the Los Angeles Times, and 
Naftali Bendavid of the Chicago Tribune. This interview was released by 
the Office of the Press Secretary on February 11. A tape was not 
available for verification of the content of this interview.