[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 39, Number 33 (Monday, August 18, 2003)]
[Pages 1064-1065]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Exchange With Reporters in Thousand Oaks, California

August 15, 2003

    Q. Do you have time for a couple of questions?
    The President. Yes, I'll answer a couple of questions.

North American Power Blackout/Energy Legislation

    Q. Can you update us on the situation back East, what you've heard, 
whether there's been any progress toward finding out what possibly 
caused the blackout?
    The President. Yes, it's going to take a while, I think. But we will 
find out what caused the blackout, and we'll deal with it. I view it as 
a wake-up call. You know, I've been concerned that our infrastructure--
the delivery system is old and antiquated. And I think this is an 
indication of the fact that we need to modernize the electricity grid.
    So it's a good opportunity for us to analyze what went wrong and to 
deal with it. We don't know yet what went wrong, but we will.
    Q. There's a bill pending in Congress, the energy bill, that's 
pretty broad in scope. There's also a piece of that bill that's smaller 
that would fix this particular problem. Would you urge Congress to act 
on that?
    The President. Yes, I think what we need to do is take a look at 
what went wrong, analyze the problem, and come up with a solution. And I 
think it's very important--I'm going to say this down here in the 
remarks--the people in New York and in the Northeast and in parts of the 
Midwest were--showed the great character of America in very difficult 
circumstances. The people responded in calm fashion. They worked hard to 
help their neighbors in need, and they showed the rest of the country 
and the world the true mettle of the American people.
    As I said yesterday, I'm most pleased by the fact that we've got a--
our emergency response was good. They acted well. And I doubt that would 
have happened--the response would have been this good--prior to

[[Page 1065]]

September the 11th. But the creation of the Homeland Security 
Department, coupled with the modernization of communications between 
State and local and Federal officials, really enabled the system to work 
well. And now we've got to figure out how to make the electricity system 
have the redundancy necessary so that if there is an outage like there 
has been throughout our history, that it doesn't affect as many people 
as it did in the past.
    Q. Sir, are you worried, though, that power still isn't restored to 
so many millions of people and may not be through the weekend?
    The President. Well, I think, you know--listen, everybody is working 
hard to get it restored as quickly as possible. I think it's going to 
take a while to get 100 of the power up and running. And that's why it's 
important for our citizens who have got electricity in the Northeast and 
the Midwest would be wise about how they use the electricity. They must 
conserve, because the more conservation there is now, the more likely it 
is their neighbor is going to end up having electricity in a quicker 
fashion.
    Q. In recent weeks, you have mentioned several times the need to 
pass your comprehensive energy plan. Is there anything in there that 
would have helped or mitigated this?
    The President. Well, I think part of the plan recognizes that the 
grid needs to be modernized, the delivery systems need to be modernized. 
And obviously something like this isn't going to happen overnight. But 
it is--it begins to address the problem, that this particular incident 
has made abundantly clear to the American people that we've got an 
antiquated system, and now we've got to figure out what went wrong and 
how to address it. And I'm confident we will.
    Q. You said yesterday that while you've made some offers of Federal 
assistance, the States and locals didn't really seem to need much help; 
they had it under control. Is that still the situation?
    The President. Actually, as I understand it, as of this morning, at 
about 5:30 a.m. Pacific Coast time, there was a request for a generator 
by New York City from the Department of Defense, which we're now working 
on delivering.
     Look, for example, Tommy Thompson started calling around to 
hospitals and asking, did everybody get what they need? And Tom Ridge 
was calling, which made it clear--abundantly clear--that where we had 
assets that could help, we're more than willing to help. This is a 
national problem, and the Federal Government has got a responsibility to 
help local and State officials. As far as I know, the one specific 
request to date was this generator.
     Thank you all.

Note: The exchange began at 8:35 a.m. at the Santa Monica Mountains 
National Recreation Area. A tape was not available for verification of 
the content of this exchange.