[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 18 (Monday, May 8, 2000)]
[Pages 948-953]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Commencement Address at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, 
Michigan

April 30, 2000

    Thank you very much. I must say I was very moved by Secretary 
Slater's remarks. But I realize he was lifted to new heights of 
eloquence by being back at his alma mater. And I also realize he was 
once again proving the adage of Clinton's third law of politics: 
Whenever possible, be introduced by someone you have appointed to high 
office. [Laughter] They will praise you to the skies, true or false. 
[Laughter]
    I must say, I was afraid, though, Rodney was about to commit--we 
have been friends for many years--I've never heard him say anything 
politically incorrect. I've never heard him utter a curse word. I've 
never heard him betray a character flaw. But I almost heard an ethnic 
slur today when he said he got me because I look like President Shelton. 
[Laughter] All gray-haired, middle-aged Scotch-Irish guys look alike, 
you know. [Laughter]
    I'm very proud of Secretary Slater, and you should be, too. And I'm 
proud of General Coburn and his leadership in the Army, and Gene Conti, 
who is the Assistant Secretary for Policy at our Transportation 
Department with Secretary Slater. We have been richly blessed by this 
university. And President

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Shelton, I am grateful for your years of service here and for our 
friendship in our early years in Arkansas, when we both had less gray 
hair and didn't look so much alike.
    I thank Mayor Archer and former Governor and Ambassador Blanchard 
and Representative Kilpatrick and the other Michigan officials who are 
here with me today. I thank my longtime friend Jim Comer. I didn't know 
he was here at EMU this year until I saw him right before I came in. No 
American has proven so clearly as Professor Comer that all children can 
learn if given the right learning environment, and I am very grateful to 
him.
    I thank all the distinguished board of regents and faculty and staff 
who are here. But most of all, I want to recognize the students and 
their parents of this, your first graduating class of the 21st century.
    On the way in, Rodney was telling me that I would identify with a 
lot of you. A lot of you are first-generation college graduates. A lot 
of you had to work your way through school. A lot of you needed help in 
the form of loans and grants and work-study positions. And every one of 
you should be very proud of what you have achieved.
    I also identify with your class because I may be the only President 
of the United States who ever studied here. I came here to prepare for 
my debates in 1992. And like you, I passed, and I thank you very much 
for the contribution you made to my education and to my years here.
    You are graduating into a strong economy, the strongest in our 
Nation's history. You are also graduating into a time of immense 
possibility, here in Michigan and throughout the United States and, 
indeed, throughout the world.
    One of my speechwriters wrote me a line that said, ``Our economy is 
soaring higher than Swoop, the eagle.'' [Laughter] He said you would 
know what that means. All I know is that I am grateful for the chance 
that the Vice President and First Lady and our administration and I have 
had to work to create opportunity in America and to bring us closer 
together in one community.
    I know that a great deal of this is because we are in the midst of a 
profound revolution, the most sweeping since the industrial revolution a 
century ago. Information technology alone now gives us about a third of 
our growth, though only 8 percent of our work force is directly involved 
in it. It is bringing growth to every sector of our economy in a way we 
haven't seen since Henry Ford's first assembly line.
    And I wanted to come here today to try to give you, this graduating 
class, some sense of the world into which you're going. You understand 
the opportunities, doubtless, better than I. I want you to understand 
the challenges, too. For economic opportunity is not an end in itself; 
it is a means to an end, to further liberty, to strengthen the bonds of 
community, to enable you to build families and have children and enrich 
your lives.
    Before you lies a future of unparalleled possibility. But I want you 
to understand today that just as at the dawn of the industrial age 100 
years ago, which was symbolized by Michigan, by Mr. Ford's assembly 
line, and the factories of Detroit, there are new challenges presented 
by this new era to our oldest values of freedom and opportunity and 
community.
    Theodore Roosevelt came to this campus more than 100 years ago, at 
the beginning of the industrial era, when new rules were required to 
make sure that the industrial revolution worked for all our people. 
Without those rules, there would have been a terrible industrial divide 
between rich and poor, strong and weak. With those rules--with the wage 
and hour laws, the child labor laws, the antitrust laws, the Federal 
Reserve, and later the minimum wage, workman's compensation, 
unemployment insurance, Social Security--with those new rules, we built 
an opportunity society that produced the greatest middle class in human 
history, one that became even more successful and more inclusive 
throughout this last century with the progress of civil rights, women's 
rights, environmental and worker protection.
    I want to say to you today that you are well-equipped for the 
possibilities of this new era, but we also need new rules for the 
information age to protect those old values, just as we did for the 
industrial age. For all the possibilities must be measured also against 
the challenges presented by this new era, challenges to our privacy as 
individuals, to

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our pledge of equal opportunity for every member of our community, to 
our stewardship of the environment as citizens of the planet.
    From our earliest days, part of what has made America unique has 
been our dedication to freedom and the clear understanding that real 
freedom requires a certain space of personal privacy.
    Today, as information technology opens new worlds of possibilities, 
it also challenges privacy in ways we might never have imagined just a 
few years ago. For example, the same genetic code that offers hope for 
millions can also be used to deny health insurance. The same technology 
that links distant places can also be used to track our every move on-
line.
    In this information age, we can't let new opportunities erode old 
fundamental rights. We can't let breakthroughs in technology break down 
walls of privacy. Our response to this challenge will affect the lives 
of every single member of this graduating class and the lives of your 
children.
    We are working with the Internet industry to raise privacy 
standards. In the last year alone, the share of commercial websites with 
privacy policies has risen a lot, and we will do more. But as my wife 
has said many times, some of these privacy issues presented by 
information technology are so sensitive they must have the protection of 
law.
    We have taken steps to protect the privacy of children on-line, 
preventing websites from collecting information from children without a 
parent's permission. I proposed the first set of national standards to 
protect the privacy of on-line medical records, to ensure that your 
personal health information doesn't fall into the wrong hands. You 
shouldn't have to worry that your employer is looking at the medications 
you take or the ailments you have.
    Today I'd like to ask you to think about the challenge to our 
financial privacy coming out of the information revolution. We are 
moving from cash to electronic transactions. A bank is no longer just a 
bank; it's often linked with an insurance firm, a broker, a travel 
agency. All this helps to give us added convenience, lower prices, and 
more choices. But it's also forcing us to redefine financial privacy for 
the information age and to rewrite the rules that go with it.
    There was a time when protecting your financial privacy meant 
safeguarding your passbook. Today, a financial record isn't just about 
what you're worth; it can paint a picture of who you are. Every time you 
write a check, use an ATM, make a purchase with a credit or debit card, 
there is a record, a record that technology can sort and track--what 
dish you ordered at a restaurant, what clothes you bought at the mall--
that makes it easier for others to mine all of that information for 
their own profit.
    We've taken some historic steps to stop information about your 
personal spending habits from being shared without your permission. But 
even today the law doesn't prevent firms within a financial conglomerate 
from sharing information with each other. In other words, the life 
insurance company could share information about your medical history 
with the bank without giving you any choice in the matter. The bank 
could share information from your student loans and your credit cards 
with its telemarketer or its broker, again without giving you any 
choice. I believe that is wrong.
    Today I present a plan to protect the privacy of Americans' 
financial records. I challenge Congress to act on it this year. Because 
your information doesn't belong to just anyone; every consumer and every 
family deserves choices about how their personal information is shared.
    First, before your financial information is shared between two 
affiliated companies, say, a credit card company and an insurance 
company, you would get notice, and you could say no.
    Second, for the most sensitive type of information, I think there 
should be an extra level of protection. As more banks and insurance 
companies merge, lenders could gain access to private medical 
information and many insurance records. But no one should have to worry 
that the results of their latest physical exam will be used to deny them 
a home mortgage or a credit card. Under my plan, you'd get to say no.
    Third, we would add that same safeguard to the information that 
makes up your personal spending identity, such as the list of

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every purchase you've ever made by check or debt or credit card, 
everything you buy. Again, that information could be shared only if you 
say yes.
    And finally, to make sure you have control over the comprehensive 
records that financial institutions may assemble about you, we'll make 
sure you have access to those records and the right to correct mistakes 
in them. We must be able to enjoy the benefits of technology without 
sacrificing our privacy, to maximize the promise of the information age 
and still protect our individual liberties.
    Our national character also requires new rules for the information 
age that recognize opportunity for all, now means access to technology 
for all. Just as we closed the industrial divide in the 20th century, we 
must now close the digital divide in the 21st century.
    You know, if you're educated for the information age, who you are 
and where you are don't matter as much anymore. I have seen that with 
people in the poorest villages of the world logging onto the Internet 
and getting an education, getting information once available only in 
textbooks, learning how to take care of their children, learning how to 
start new businesses. But if who and where you are don't matter so much, 
what you know and what you can do matter more than ever. That's why this 
degree and what you learned here is so important. That's why technology 
education is so important.
    Technology in this new era will either erase lines that divide us or 
widen them. The Internet and computers make it possible for us to lift 
more people out of poverty faster than at any time in history, but it 
will not happen by accident. Many of you have learned this lesson in 
your own lives.
    Todd Pasquale, of the college of arts and sciences, wasn't going to 
let anything stop him from earning his degree today, not even navigating 
his wheelchair through the Michigan snows. Thanks to EMU Online, he took 
his winter courses at home. Now, he plans to give back to the community 
by working as a counselor to people in prisons, because he could access 
technology. Let's give him a hand. [Applause]
    Randy Short went back to school after her husband died, leaving her 
to raise three sons alone. Today she earns a Masters degree with honors 
in website design. She hopes to start her own business, and she wants to 
help teach women to use computers. She has already given those women a 
lesson for all of us about the value of making sure technology education 
is accessible to every American. Give her a hand. [Applause]
    Today I ask all of you to join me in reaching out to all the others 
across America who need these tools to build their future. When Vice 
President Gore and I started hooking up schools to the Internet, there 
were only about 16 percent of our schools who had a connection in 1994; 
today, 95 percent do. But I was on an Indian reservation in northern New 
Mexico the other day, introduced by a brilliant young girl of 13 who had 
just won a computer in a contest, who could not hook it up to the 
Internet because her home did not have a phone. Seventy percent of the 
homes on her Navajo reservation did not have a phone. We have to bring 
telephone service to everybody and then make the Internet as common as 
telephone usage is in every home, every business, and every school in 
the United States of America. We owe that to our future.
    We must create incentives for American business to invest in people 
and places in danger of being left behind--left behind in their 
economies and their education of their children, in information 
infrastructure and special technologies for people with special needs. 
That's what our efforts to build bipartisan support for opening 
America's new markets and closing the digital divide are all about.
    The third thing I want to mention is that the revolution in 
technology and communications means our lives are bound up more than 
ever with people far away from us with whom we now are in instant 
contact. Our community of values and interest spans the globe. Events 
half a world away can have an impact on us here, just as what we do has 
an impact on people who live thousands of miles from our borders, in 
ways large and small. I have a cousin in Arkansas who plays chess once a 
week on the Internet with a man in Australia. Doubtless, there are many 
stories like that in this room today.

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    We need a new level of international cooperation and new rules that 
deal with the most significant challenge of our common humanity, the 
environmental challenge posed by global warming. Scientists tell us the 
temperature is now rising 4 degrees a century. To anyone who has lived 
through a Michigan winter, that might not sound so bad. [Laughter] But 
the scientists also say that a significant degree of this climate change 
is due to human activity, specifically to putting more greenhouse gases 
into the atmosphere from the burning of coal and oil. And if it goes 
unchecked, the consequences will be dramatic. Rising temperatures can 
melt polar icecaps, which lead to rising oceans that could swallow 
thousands of miles of our own coastlines and bury island nations. 
Changing weather would devastate our farmlands. We would have both more 
droughts and more violent storms and floods. Hotter weather could both 
cause more rapid evaporation of inland water systems and a drought which 
replenishes them less.
    Think about the Great Lakes, where water levels are falling faster 
than ever recorded. They have fallen almost 3 feet in just 2 years. They 
may fall much more in the next 30. That would be a disaster for industry 
and for all living things dependent upon the lakes. And that is why I've 
asked Congress to fund our efforts to find out why the water is falling, 
to restore the Great Lakes waterways, to improve our stewardship of this 
vital resource.
    Now, for most of the 20th century, economic growth did require 
burning more fossil fuels--more coal and more oil--which released the 
greenhouse gases, caused the pollution, and heated the atmosphere. 
Because of that, many people still believe that we must choose between 
two vital values, preserving our environment and making our economy 
grow. Thankfully, in the digital economy, that is simply not true 
anymore. It is now possible to grow an economy and improve the 
environment at the same time. New technologies make it possible to 
reduce harmful emissions as they make the economy more efficient and 
stronger.
    Scientists right here at EMU are making environmentally friendly 
paints out of soybeans. Michigan, the home of the automobile, is now the 
home of cutting-edge research into cars and trucks of the 21st century 
that will get much higher mileage. And soon, vehicles developed here, in 
partnership with the Federal Government, will use alternative and 
biofuels, which could get the equivalent of 100 miles or more to a 
gallon of gasoline.
    These technologies are good for the planet and good for the bottom 
line, but we must embrace them. And I say this very seriously: It takes 
at least 50 years for greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere to 
dissipate. The class--this class, graduating today--it is your children 
and your grandchildren that will feel the harshest effects of our 
neglect in meeting this challenge. But if you don't do it, your children 
may not be able to do it for you because of the time delay. And it is no 
good saying that someone else should do it. We are the world's largest 
emitter of greenhouse gases because we're the richest country, but soon 
China and India will surpass us. We must show them that they can grow 
even faster by following a different path, but first we must set a good 
example.
    I have implored the Congress to adopt legislation to increase 
research and development in this area and to give significant tax 
incentives for people to produce products that emit less greenhouse 
gases and for people to buy them. It is a big challenge for you. You can 
have all the computers and all the money in the world, and if we 
squander God's environment, it won't be worth very much. I urge you to 
meet this challenge.
    Let me say in closing, I am very optimistic about the new century. 
It will bring us more advances and answer more questions than any period 
in human history. We'll be able to store all the information in the 
Halle Library in a device the size of a sugar cube. We'll have 
microchips that stimulate the spine in such a way that people now 
paralyzed will be able to stand up and walk. I believe we will even 
learn what's in the black holes in the universe. But we must not be so 
dazzled by the bright promise of technology that we lose sight of the 
fundamental lesson. We must bring to bear our basic values on each new 
development in human history in order to assure that it works for the 
public good and maintains America's values

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of liberty and community. That is the noble challenge that you face.
    Henry Ford once defined obstacles as those frightful things you see 
when you take your eyes off the goal. I hope your goal will be a 21st 
century American community that derives every benefit from technology 
while holding fast to our oldest values. I hope you will not take your 
eyes off of it. I hope you will embrace it and work for it. If you do, 
you will achieve it. And you will live in history's most exciting, 
prosperous, and humane era. That is what I wish for you.
    Congratulations, good luck, and Godspeed.

 Note:  The President spoke at 2:15 p.m. in the Convention Center. In 
his remarks, he referred to William E. Shelton, president, and James 
Comer, professor, Eastern Michigan University; Mayor Dennis W. Archer of 
Detroit, MI; former Gov. James J. Blanchard of Michigan; and Myra Jodie, 
student, Steamboat Navajo Nation. A portion of these remarks could not 
be verified because the tape was incomplete.