Remarks at a roundtable discussion with employees of Therma, Inc., in San Jose, California

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, May 11, 1998

The President. Thank you very much. I want to thank Joe and Nicki for welcoming me here. I want to thank Dan Kirby for the tour through the operations. He did a great job. Thanks to Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren and Mayor Susan Hammer, my good friends, for joining me here today. I thank the labor leaders that are here - Amy Dean, Ray Lancaster, Mark Van Den Heuvel, Steve Preminger. But most of all, I thank all of you for giving me a chance to leave Washington and come out and visit the real world. It's great. Thank you very much.

Before I say a little more about why I came here today, I'd like to make a brief comment on something very important to your future that did happen in Washington, DC, late last night. Last night an overwhelming bipartisan majority of 80 Members of the United States Senate voted for a treaty that will permit us to bring Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic into the NATO military alliance.

Now, why does this matter to you out here on this factory floor? I think it's very important to you and to every American. We fought two World Wars and lost a lot of Americans and waged a long cold war in a deeply divided Europe. The Berlin Wall fell, communism dissipated, giving us the chance for the first time in history, ever, to deal with a Europe that is free, democratic, and undivided. That's important. If we can do that, that means you will know that you'll have stable partners for trading purposes. You can sell them things; you can buy things from them; you can be a part of growing.

Even more important, it means you know that your children will likely never have to go there to fight and die in a war. And furthermore, you know that we'll be able to work together on the problems that do exist in the world to contain them.

Now, just in the last few years since I've been President, we have used NATO for those purposes. We've brought in two dozen other countries in a Partnership For Peace, and they work with us all over the world, training, working with our militaries together. We made a special agreement with Russia and with Ukraine. And together, we went into Bosnia and stopped the bloodiest war in Europe since the end of World War II, with no conflicts, no shooting, no deaths.

So that's why this is important. Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic - three more partners that will make our alliance stronger. If we have to do something in the future, that's three more countries that will be contributing people, sharing our burden, and building a future of strong partnership based on trade and commerce and travel and visitation, not on conflict. It's a big deal.

And I would like to thank the Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott; the Senate Minority Leader, Tom Daschle; Senator Jesse Helms; Senator Joe Biden - all of them. This was an unusual coalition of people - [laughter] - who worked together to do something that a lot of people didn't think we could do. And it's going to make a better world for our children. Ten years from now it will look like an even bigger vote than it does this morning. So I thank them.

I'd also like, before I begin, to offer my condolences to the family of the police officer, David Chetcuti, who was killed in the line of duty last Saturday, and express my gratitude for the bravery he showed when he lost his life. And in that connection, I'd like to thank the police officers from the motorcycle crew from Santa Clara County, because they had to accompany me on this visit, and they're missing his memorial service that is going on this morning. So I thank them for doing that.

Now, let me tell you why I came here. Because, to me, you guys represent the future. You're good at what you do; you're changing all the time; you're committed to getting better; you're operating in a global economy; you have a good management-labor partnership; you have apprenticeships for new workers; you have training for veteran workers to make sure they learn new skills and master new technologies. You're proving that Silicon Valley's economic revolution does not just include computer programmers; it can include all the workers of America if we're all well-trained, highly competitive, and the best in the world at what we do.

You're evidence of that. I thank you for it. I wanted America to see it. And mostly, I wanted to talk to you and your representatives behind me about how we can do this all over America, in every part of America, and set the processes in motion that will keep it going year in and year out.

You are a very important part of this wonderful economic renaissance going on in America now. Yesterday we saw that the economic strategy that we put in place over 5 years ago in Washington did, in fact, work to unleash the competitive capacities of America. We said we were going to reduce the deficit and balance the budget. We were going to invest in our people, in education, in technology, in scientific research, in environmental investment. And we were going to trade more with the rest of the world. We were going to open more avenues to trade our goods and services.