Remarks to the Community in West Memphis, Arkansas

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Dec 20, 1999

We can sell a lot of the things produced in east Arkansas all over the world if we have the right kind of networks. And one of the things that--we just had last week a conference at the White House, bringing in big executives in the communications business all over America to try to figure out how to close the so-called digital divide, because if you look at the places where not only computer usage but Internet access is roughly as dense as telephone access, they're growing faster.

And one of the things that I am determined to do is to finish the job of getting all of our schools and libraries and hospitals connected to the Internet so that all of our kids will have access to that educational information. But we need to make that available for adults, too, in commercial centers so that no part of the country is denied these opportunities.

I'll bet you there are people here--and I'll just give you one example--I'll bet there are people in this audience who have bought something off the web from eBay. Have you ever used eBay? I see some of you nodding. I'll tell you an interesting thing. I was out with the eBay people in California a couple of weeks ago, and they told me there are now 20,000 Americans, including many former welfare recipients, who are making a living on eBay. They don't work for eBay; they make a living buying and selling on eBay because it's basically America's trading mart now on the Internet.

It is very, very important that we bring the benefits of E-commerce to the poorest parts of America and to teach people how to use it. It's simple. It's getting increasingly user friendly. It's about gotten to where even I can figure it out. [Laughter] And I think it is profoundly important.

Finally, I want to ask you one thing that I want you to do for us, for me and for Senator Lincoln and for Congressman Berry. I'm trying to pass a couple of simple bills in Washington. I got two of them actually passed to provide some funds for my so-called new market initiative. But what I'm trying to do is to get money, tax credits, and tax incentives basically so that I can say to anybody in America, we think you should have the same financial incentives to invest in the poor areas of America that you now have to invest in the poor areas of Latin America or Africa or Asia or any other part of the world.

Now, I hope and pray I'll be able to pass that this year. We have more bipartisan support for this endeavor than we've ever had before.

I went to Chicago the other night with the Speaker of the House. And we met with the two local Members of Congress who were there. We had a great joint meeting. And there is a chance we can just totally put this beyond politics. But if you think about it, sure there are some extra risks in going to an extremely rural area where the average education level may not be as high as it is in some other places, but it's not as great as the risk of going thousands of miles from home.

I'm not against asking Americans to help the people of Africa and Latin America and Asia. I'm all for that. We just passed through the Congress a bill forgiving the debt of some of the poorest countries in the world that can't pay it back anyway, and all we're doing is keeping them mired in poverty. We can't educate their kids or make them vaccinate them or do anything else, because they spend all their money paying interest on the debt, and they never make any headway. I'm all for that.