[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
[February 26, 1998]
[Pages 295-298]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Remarks to the Technology '98 Conference in San Francisco
February 26, 1998
Thank you very much. I also want to thank whoever turned the lights
on. [Laughter] When Sandy and I first came
out, you were all in the dark, and the lights were very bright. And I
thought there was something rather anomalous about my coming to a high-
tech conference and you being in the dark. [Laughter]
Actually, I had to fight with the Vice President to see who would get to come here today. Here's a guy who
lives and breathes to talk about teraflops and gigabytes. But I pulled
rank. [Laughter] And so here we are.
Thank you, Sandy, for your leadership
and your kind remarks, and thank you for your friendship and your wise
counsel. I'm very grateful.
I am delighted to be here. In many ways, I think my trip here today
would be sort of like a President going to Pennsylvania in the 1890's to
see the people who first struck oil, or transformed iron ore into steel,
the people who built our great industrial-revolution America, for you
have mined the myriad possibilities of the silicon chip and, likewise,
have transformed America.
For those of us, like Congresswoman Pelosi
and others who serve in the National Government, it's a very interesting
challenge trying to assess where we are, where we're going, make the
right decisions, and do it in a way that enables us to make the most of
all this change while being true to our most fundamental values.
These are good times for America. Sandy talked about it. We are
almost now up to 15 million new jobs in the last year and one month. We
have the lowest unemployment in 24 years; the lowest crime rate in 24
years; the lowest welfare rolls in 27 years; the lowest inflation in 30
years; we're about to have our first balanced budget in 30 years; the
highest homeownership in the history of America. These are good times.
The economic strategy that we have embraced, to balance the budget
but to invest more in our people and their future and to trade more
around the world, is working. But I think everyone who has studied this
economy believes that at the dawn of a new century the strength of our
economy, the health and prosperity of our people, indeed, the very
security of our Nation will depend more than ever on the scientific and
technological revolution that so many of you have helped to set in
motion.
Today, over 4 million Americans work in technology-related
industries, earning 70 percent above average incomes. There are 70 new
companies a week that start here in northern California alone in high-
tech areas. There are new industries, biotechnology, super computers.
But some of the most profound revolutions have occurred in old
industries. Indeed, a great deal of information technology research and
development is taking place in real estate, in services, in wholesale
and retail trade, in construction, in transportation. The Ford Taurus
that you drive today has more computer power than the Apollo 11 did that
Neil Armstrong took to the Moon. It's an interesting time.
I came today to talk about what we can do to build on this progress
by, in particular, promoting and expanding the fastest growing social
and economic community in history: the Internet. Ten years ago, it was
still the province of scientists, an obscure project developed by the
Defense Department. Five years ago, the World Wide Web barely existed; I
think there were about 50 sites. Today, there are 1 1/2 million new
webpages created every day, 65,000 every hour. This phenomenon has
absolutely staggering possibilities to democratize, to empower people
all over the world. It could make it possible for every child with
access to a computer to stretch a hand across a keyboard, to reach every
book ever written, every painting ever painted, every symphony ever
composed.
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The next big step in our economic transformation, it seems to me, is
the full development of this remarkable device and the electronic
commerce it makes possible. One of the things that I have focused on
very much lately is with the unemployment rate at 4.7 percent and the
inflation rate very low and stable, the question arises from all
conventional economic analysis, can we continue to grow robustly without
new inflation? The answer is, if we're productive enough and we have
enough technological advances, we probably can.
The second thing is, can we grow and finally extend the benefits of
this explosion of enterprise to the isolated communities and people who
have not yet felt this remarkable economic upsurge, the inner-city
neighborhoods, the remote rural areas? I am convinced that the answer to
both those questions can be yes if, but only if, we maximize wisely the
potential of our technological revolution.
A new study, soon to be released by our working group on electronic
commerce, documents the remarkable growth of the Internet. Within a
single year Amazon.com, an on-line bookstore, increased its sales nearly
10 times selling 6 1/2 million books in 1997. In a year's time, Internet
airline ticket sales nearly tripled and is expected to grow sixfold, to
$5 billion a year, by the year 2000. By 2002, electronic commerce
between businesses in the United States alone will exceed $300 billion.
And of course, as with everything on the Internet, that is just the
beginning.
This explosion of real commerce has the potential to increase our
prosperity, to create more jobs, to improve the lives of our people, and
to reach into areas that have not yet felt prosperity. But it raises new
and serious issues as well: How can we further its growth and foster its
magnificent freedom without allowing it to be used as a tax haven that
drains funds our States and cities need to educate our children and make
our streets safe?
Thirty thousand separate taxing authorities in the United States--
I'll say that again, there are 30,000 separate taxing authorities in the
United States--all struggling to come to grips with this phenomenon,
with only their existing old tax methods to apply to a very new world.
There should be no special breaks for the Internet, but we can't allow
unfair taxation to weight it down and stunt the development of the most
promising new economic opportunity in decades.
I think America should adopt a moratorium on discriminatory taxation
so that a bipartisan commission of elected officials, business leaders,
consumers, and representatives of the Treasury Department can carefully
study the matter and come to a resolution. Therefore, I support the
``Internet Tax Freedom Act'' now before Congress, because it takes into
account the rights of consumers, the needs of businesses, and the
overall effect of taxation on the development of Internet commerce. The
legislation does not prevent State and local governments from applying
existing taxes to electronic commerce, as long as there is no
discrimination between an Internet transaction and a traditional one. It
does give us time to work through what is a very, very complex issue.
I'm committed to listening to the concerns of the Governors, the
mayors, other officials and businesses, and to achieve a consensus that
will establish rules that are progrowth, nondiscriminatory, but will
provide appropriate revenues our communities need to meet vital public
purposes. I think this legislation will have the support of both
parties. And I look forward to working with many of you to pass it and,
along the way, to reach a greater consensus in our Nation about how to
go forward from here.
To ensure that electronic commerce can flourish across international
borders, I've also asked the Secretary of the Treasury to work with our
international trading partners to block new or discriminatory taxes on
global electronic commerce. Already, we've fought off a bit tax, a tax
on every unit of data consumers download from the Internet. And we're
working with the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development to
prevent such discrimination and streamline tax administration in
cyberspace.
There are other ways our Nation must work to harness the potential
of the Internet. We want to work with you to meet our goal of connecting
every classroom and library in America to the Internet by the year 2000.
Just this morning in Washington, Vice President Gore announced that we have now connected nearly 80 percent of
our schools to the Internet; more than twice as many as were connected
in 1994 when we had the first NetDay here in California under the
leadership of many of you in this room. He also announced new private
and nonprofit efforts to connect underserved communities to 21st century
technology, bringing us closer to ensuring that a child from the poorest
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inner city, the most isolated rural area, or the most affluent suburbs
all will have the same access to the same universe of knowledge in the
same real time.
We want to work with you to make certain that cyberspace is a
healthy place for our children in a way that does not overregulate the
Internet or stifle the growth of electronic commerce. We will work with
you to make sure that consumer protections and laws that promote
competition remain strong in the new economy at the dawn of the new
century, just as we built competition into the old economy at the turn
of the last century.
We will work with you to make sure that the Internet never becomes a
vehicle for tax evasion or money laundering. We will work with you to
build a new Internet that operates up to a thousand times faster than it
does today. My balanced budget includes $110 million to develop the next
generation Internet in partnership with leading U.S. high-tech companies
and universities. Today I'm pleased to announce new National Science
Foundation grants that will connect 29 more universities to help create
the next generation Internet, bringing the total now to 92. And we will
work with you in every way we can to lift our eyes to the remarkable
potential of the Internet for learning, for the arts, as a means to
spread our shared values.
The First Lady and I launched the White House Millennium Program to
help our Nation honor our past and imagine our future as we come to this
new millennium. In the State of the Union Address, I announced a public-
private partnership to preserve our historic treasures for future
generations and to help make them more accessible to more Americans,
including the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the
Constitution, the Star-Spangled Banner. Putting our treasures on-line
will help us to do just that. Our balanced budget will make 3 million
objects from the Smithsonian Institution, the National Archives, and
other collections available on the Internet by the year 2000. And
together with the private sector, we'll help museums and libraries and
communities all around our country to do the same thing.
Two weeks ago, thanks to Sun Microsystems, we launched the first-
ever cybercast from the White House, when historian Bernard
Bailyn from Harvard gave the first in a
series of our Millennium Lectures. We started this special program to
bring some of our greatest thinkers, writers, historians, and scientists
to the White House to talk about our Nation's history and our future at
this pivotal time. Next week, the world-renowned physicist Stephen
Hawking will be with us to talk about
human knowledge in the 21st century and the innovations it will create.
I hope you will join us on-line at www.whitehouse.gov. [Laughter] We'll
be there. And this time, we will have the capacity not to shut down like
we did last time.
This is a truly exciting time to be an American. The qualities of
the digital revolution, its dynamism, its curiosity, its flexibility,
and its drive, they're at the core of our character and the legacy of
our original revolution. By once again adding the fuel of interest to
the fire of genius, as Abraham Lincoln once said, our country is leading
the world to new heights of economic and human development.
I ask you to think about these things together. The economic
development is largely the means by which we seek to expand the quality
of human life, not only for the people who directly participate in it
but for those who benefit indirectly.
As I think more and more about a new century and a new millennium, I
also think more and more about how we began. All of you are here today
committed to an incredible entrepreneurial way of life and work as the
descendants of a group of people who came here believing that free
people would nearly always get it right. They came fleeing societies
where people like you, with good ideas in the 18th century, were subject
to absolute, arbitrary, abusive government power. And they forged a
Declaration of Independence, a Constitution, and a Bill of Rights based
on the simple idea that freedom worked better and that people ought to
be free to pursue happiness within the context of a more perfect Union.
If you look at the whole history of this country, that's what it has
been about. You think about every single period of change and crisis,
whether it was the Civil War, the industrial revolution, the civil
rights era, or the present information age, and the advances have come
when we have deepened the meaning of freedom and expanded it to more
people, widened the circle of opportunity and prosperity, and found a
way across all of our myriad diversities to be a stronger, more united
nation.
That is really what you are a part of, to a degree that would have
been unimaginable to
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the people who founded this Nation. But I believe it would make them
very, very proud.
Thank you for what you do and for what, together, we will do to make
our country stronger in this new era. Thank you very much.
Note: The President spoke at 11:30 a.m. in the ballroom at the Ritz
Carlton Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Sandy Robertson, chairman,
Robertson Stevens.