Remarks to the Community in Shoreline

The President. Thank you very much.

Audience member. [Inaudible]

The President. You know, we've listened to you, now it's my turn. [Applause] Thank you very much.

I want to thank Monica, not only for that introduction, which she did very well, but for her example, which millions of Americans will need to follow in the next few years. Let's give her another hand; she was great. [Applause]

I thank President Oertli, and I thank Senator Murray, your former faculty member here and a remarkable public servant who is—yes, you can clap for that, it's all right—[applause]—she's here along with Congressman Dicks and Congressman McDermott. Let me say that we've done a lot of good things in the last 3 years, and we've made one or two mistakes under the law of unintended consequences. And one of them was the unintended and unwarranted consequence of the way that timber rider has been carried out. And Patty Murray is going to help us fix it, and I thank her for that. I thank her for that.

I want to thank Mayor Connie King of Shoreline and my friends Mayor Rice of Seattle and King County Executive Gary Locke and Governor Lowry. They all came with me today, and we've had a wonderful experience here. I want to especially thank Bill Gates and Microsoft for this remarkable donation. I hope this word goes out all across the country and others try to match him, because this is the sort of thing that we need here. This is a shining example of the kind of partnership between businesses and public institutions that we need more of in America.

Let me say to all of you that when I became President I had a very straightforward vision. I wanted this country to go into the 21st century under circumstances in which every single American could live out his or her dreams and everybody who was willing to work for it could have their shot at the American dream. I wanted to go into the 21st century with a country that was coming together, not being driven apart, and a nation that was still the strongest force in the world for peace and freedom.

Now, to do that it is abundantly clear that we have to meet the challenges of this present moment and that we have to meet them together. One of the reasons I am here today is because I believe the community college in the United States is the daily model of how we are all going to have to behave if we hope to open up the opportunities of the information age to all Americans because it works by cooperation. It is completely democratic—small "d"—everybody is able to come and fulfill their own desires by working together, and everybody cooperates. And if we all did that in every other way, we would be much better off.

I was here, you know, in Washington just a few days ago when I landed at Portland and just flew over the State line and visited a community that was ravaged by the flood. And I was in this little community of Woodland, walking down the streets, and I went into the home of a man—he and his wife were about 70 years old, and they had lost everything they had. They had lived in this house for 30 years; they had lost everything. He was hard of hearing; even his hearing aid was washed away. So I walked in, you know, really not knowing what to expect. I thought these people would be devastated. And this gentleman shook my hand, and he said, "You know, I'm 70 years old, and you're the first President I ever met. It was nearly worth it to lose my home." And then he said—[laughter]—I thought that was pretty remarkable. And then he said, "Not only that," he said, "I wouldn't have been fit to welcome a President before now. But come in here, look, I can offer you an indoor swimming pool." [Laughter] I was stunned.

I got out of the car and shook hands with a fellow who was up in his sixties. He was retired from the local utility company, a naturalized American, an immigrant from Norway, who operated a jackhammer in doing his part to try to help deal with the flood. And he operated this jackhammer for 8 hours with a cracked rib. I don't know if any of you have ever tried to hold a jackhammer in place. I'm above average size and not entirely weak, and that's hard work. And that man did that for 8 hours with a cracked rib.

Anyway, when I got ready to leave the 70year-old fellow said to me, "I have just loved this. You know, as awful as this is, people came in here and tried to help us at least save some of our pictures and our records and our personal effects, tried to help us save a little furniture. They've been here every day since this flood happened." He said, "Don't you just wish we could behave this way all the time?" I say that because if you look at the challenges we face to give everybody a shot at the American dream, to grow together instead of be divided, and to maintain the world's strongest force for peace and freedom, we're going to have to do more of working together all the time.

How do we want that? How do we propose to do that? Well, just imagine what we have to do. In the State of the Union I was outlining the challenges to America. We want people to succeed at home and at work, so we have to build strong families and strong work places. We want people to have a decent quality of life, so we need safe streets and a clean environment. We know that there will be all kinds of changes in this economy, so we have to address the need for greater education and economic security that does not undermine the strength and the dynamism of this economy. We know that we have to do certain things to continue to lead the world. And we know that, just like every other organization, the Federal Government cannot be big and bloated and bureaucratic. So it needs to be smaller and less bureaucratic, but it doesn't need to be weak. It needs to be strong where it should be strong so it can be a valuable partner.

And if you look at all this, the most important areas to building the future we need are two that can be melded together that you are melding together here. One is every single American has got to have educational opportunity that is excellent and that is there for a lifetime—for a lifetime. And the second is we have to maintain the dynamism and the strength of the American economy, but give every American who is willing to work for it the chance to achieve economic security.

Now, before I came in here, I met with a number of students at this community college and some teachers and a labor leader and a businessman who were supporting the activities here. And I want you to just think a minute about the meaning of what Bill Gates did here today. I have worked very hard to increase the educational opportunities available to the America people, based on a simple theory: We should have high standards, high expectations, high technology, and access, access for a lifetime. That's why I believe if we're going to have a tax cut in this budget debate, the first and most important one we could give would be to give a tax cut for the cost of college tuition, a deductibility for that.

If we are here celebrating the work that is going on in this institution, its key to the 21st century, and opportunity for all, then we should stand by those things that are working. We should keep the student loan program and strengthen it. We should keep the Pell grant program and strengthen it. We should keep the national service program, AmeriCorps, and strengthen it. We should do these things.

But I want to put before you the dilemma that I saw in the lives of these people that a lot of you have experienced. If I were to have told you 3 years ago when I became the President, "Look, here's what's going to happen in our country. Just listen to this. In 3 years we will have nearly 8 million new jobs, and all the other advanced countries in the world together will have a net of zero. The other six big economies, they'll have—a few will create a few jobs, and a few will lose a few, but they'll net out no new jobs. We'll have nearly 8 million. And in each year of the next 3 years, we'll have a record number of new businesses, and we'll be at a 15-year high in homeownership. We'll have a record number of new self-made millionaires, not people who inherited it, people like Bill Gates, people that went out and made it on their own. We will have the lowest rates of unemployment, inflation, and home mortgages combined that we've had in 27 years"— you can clap for that. That's the good news. [Applause] "Our exports will be at an all-time high, and we will turn around the trade situation so that for the first time in many years our exports will be growing faster than our imports. We will do that. We'll be opening closed markets in Asia, selling everything from Washington apples to computers to auto parts. We'll be doing these things. But half the American people will be working harder than they were 3 years ago for the same wages they were making 10 years ago." Now, you would say, "Well, how could that happen?"

Well, it's because of the changes we're going through. You heard Monica talk about it. We are changing the nature of work. There's more mind and less muscle in all work. We're changing the nature of the workplace. The information revolution means you don't need as many people in the middle passing orders down and information up. And by the way, these changes are the most profound we've seen in 100 years. The last time this country changed this much was when most people moved from living on the farm to living in towns and cities, and most people moved from working on the farm to working in factories and in businesses necessary to support them. It's a 100-year change.

In addition to that, communication is changing so rapidly. You heard Mr. Gates talk about it. In his book he says the digital chip is the most important change in communication in not 100 years but in 500 years, since Gutenberg printed the first Bible in Europe.

Now, you cannot go through that sweep of change—and understand that the markets in the world where people exchange goods and services and money are changing; the money markets and the goods and services markets are now all global—you can't go through a change like that without a great uprooting.

Now, we have two choices. We can either bore our way through this change until it benefits all Americans, or we can pretend that we can repeal the laws of change and suffer the consequences. I can tell you—you heard what Bill Gates said—remember what I said, for all of our challenges in America, we have 8 million more jobs nearly, and we'll have more than that by the end of this year, and we have a much lower unemployment rate than most of our competitors. Our exports are growing faster than our imports. We're starting record numbers of new jobs. For all the corporate downsizing, listen to this, businesses owned by women alone have created more jobs than the Fortune 500 have laid off in the last 3 years.

So what we have to do—[applause]—but the challenge—that sounds great, but if you're one of those people who hasn't had a raise, if you're one of those people who gets downsized, or if you live in a remote rural community or an inner-city neighborhood that has no new jobs, it sounds great, but it doesn't ring true to you.

So our challenge is not to back up, not to give up, it's to go ahead. If you look at technology, today in our public schools where our children are becoming computer wizards in elementary schools, nobody sees technology as a threat. Technology is the equalizer. Technology is the tool that means that poor kids and rich kids can learn together and access the future together. Technology is a tool that I have seen with my own eyes bringing immigrant families into the mainstream of American educational life.

I was in a poor school district in New Jersey all the way across the country a few days ago where the student body is below the national average in per capita income and many of them come from immigrant families. But a company there, Bell Atlantic, worked with the school district and others to put computers in the classrooms and computers in the homes. And you have people who didn't even live in this country 20 years ago now E-mailing the principal to find out how the kids are doing in school. And this school district, which was on the verge of educational bankruptcy, literally about to be taken over by the State, within 2 years had an attendance record, a graduation record, and test scores above the State average. Technology was the great equalizer. We saw that.

So we have to finish that job. One of the goals we have is to do the four things that was up on one of those charts that Mr. Gates had: Put the computers in every classroom and every library in America, have good software, train the teachers, and then hook them all up to the Internet. We want every classroom and every library in every community in the United States on the Internet by the year 2000. And I think we're well on the way to getting that done.

But the significance of what we are here today about is this: The gift that Microsoft is giving to the community colleges, the work that the community colleges are doing, the people that come to places like this fine institution who have been downsized and now no longer feel diminished but feel empowered, that shows us the way to the future. The way to the future is not to back up on the technology revolution but to embrace it, work through it, and don't stop until every single American citizen benefits from it instead of being punished by it. That is what we have to do as Americans.

When we knew changes would have to be made here in the Pacific Northwest in logging practices in order to preserve the old growth forest, preserve the quality of the water, preserve the salmon population, preserve the quality of life, and still permit an acceptable amount of logging to go on, we knew there would be great dislocation in a lot of these small towns and rural areas, just like there has been in all the communities that lost their military bases when we downsized after the cold war.

So the Congress, with the leadership of the people in your delegation whom I just mentioned, appropriated over $1 billion for communities in the Pacific Northwest for the kind of economic transition that Monica is going through. That is what we have to do more of. But we have to do it in a way that makes technology our friend, not our enemy. At least two of the students that I met with here were downsized purely because you can do more work with fewer people because of computers.

The same thing is going on in the Federal Government. The Federal Government is 205,000 people smaller today than it was the day I took office. And I might add, I'm proud of the fact that we've worked very hard to help all these people not feel like they were downsized but feel like they were given an opportunity to go on to a better and more productive life. But we can do more work than we used to be able to do with fewer people, with less regulatory hassle, less bureaucratic hassle. The Federal Government is today as small as it was in 1965. And that's a good thing. But it's also a good thing that these people are going to have a chance to do something else that's more exciting, that's more fulfilling, that society needs done, that the marketplace says, hey, we need, and that they can get a good wage doing.

So I will say to you again: Our great challenge is to take what we know is true in the schoolroom, that technology is the great equalizer, and take it into the workplace. And that will happen through the community college. That will happen through partnerships. That will happen if we continue to invest in student assistance programs, to invest in technology partnerships, to invest in economic transitions, to invest in the people. And it will happen if we continue to work together.

One of the worst things about contemporary political life is that the further you get away from a grassroots political office where everyone knows all the candidates running, the more likely politics and campaigns are to be used to divide people instead of to unite them. When we are together, America never loses, and we will not lose this.

So I ask you to continue to support Shoreline Community College, to continue to support investments in education, to continue to insist that we move forward into the future and that we not stop until the benefits of technology are available to everyone. We cannot go forward as a country where half of us are growing and half of us are stuck. But we cannot pretend that we can return to a time that does not exist anymore.

We have no choice but to do what Americans have always done, to take on the challenges of the present and to march right through them. We can create more high-wage jobs. The Telecommunications Act will create tens of thousands of high-wage jobs. I want you to be trained to hold them. We can win in global competition if we insist on having an open but fair trading system. We can move into the future. And we have to do it by working together.

More than any other institution in the United States of America today, the promise of technology with a bright future for all Americans is embodied by the way the community colleges work. I want America to work that way, and I want every one of you to remember what that 70-year-old man in Woodland, Washington, said to me: "That's the way we ought to behave all the time." And if we do, there is no limit to America's future.

Thank you, and God bless you all.