Extending Prosperity In The New Economy

I can't tell you how honored I am to be at this magnificent library. And I am grateful to have the endorsement of more than 2,700 business leaders from across the nation. Working together, we will make the next four years a new age of innovation and investment in America.

All week long, all across our country, I've been focusing on the big choice we face in just eleven days - a choice that is as fundamental as prosperity itself:

Will we seize this incredible moment of opportunity, to extend prosperity and make sure it enriches all our families? Or will we take the future for granted, and let this moment slip through our hands?

I believe this is one of the most hopeful and exciting times in all of human history.

Thanks to the hard work of the American people - thanks to the vision and dedication of our best entrepreneurs—these past eight years have been a time of remarkable growth and change. We've seen the birth of a whole new economy.

Each day, new breakthroughs and technology are lifting the lives of millions of Americans. In a world once limited by borders and geography, the only boundaries we face are the limits of our own imaginations.

Think about how far we've come. When I first served in the Congress, chips were something you ate; windows were something you washed; and the Internet—well, let's just say it hadn't been invented yet.

Forty years ago, when the first Xerox machine was developed, it weighed about 650 pounds, and cost almost $30,000. I'm guessing it didn't collate or staple - and it probably jammed a lot more than the newer models.

Today, you can scan pages of text into your computer with a stylus the size of a ballpoint pen.

When the first computer was invented 55 years ago, it took up 1,500 square feet - and needed 18,000 radio tubes just to keep running.

Today, there's more computer power in this Palm Pilot than in the spaceship that took Neil Armstrong to the moon.

Now imagine the future we can create together.

Already, Internet commerce is the largest virtual shopping mall ever imagined—a multi-hundred-billion dollar industry that's open 24/7/365.

Imagine the new jobs and opportunity that will open up in every home and in every neighborhood when Internet commerce becomes a multi-trillion-dollar industry in the next four years.

This summer, we saw the completion of the human genome - faster than anyone thought possible, because of new computing technology.

Imagine the diseases we can conquer, and the brand new industries we can shape, as the human genome merges fields like biotechnology, genetics, and information technology.

Right now, our automakers are developing cleaner, better cars that get up to 80 miles on the gallon.

Imagine the potential for growth - imagine how much cleaner our air and water will be - when we seize this multi-hundred-billion dollar opportunity, and build and sell these cars around the world.

If we do things right, I believe our economy can add at least 10 million new high-tech, high-wage jobs over the next decade.

If we do things right, we can raise wages and living standards, and lead the world in the new technologies of the future.

And so we face a big choice: will we make the right decisions - the responsible decisions - to unlock the full potential of this new Internet economy, and make it work for all our people?

Of course, the heart of this challenge is innovation and new ideas in the private sector, the engine of economic growth.

It depends on cutting-edge research at our finest labs and universities - and giving them the freedom to explore the farthest horizons of knowledge, even when they don't know where that will lead.

But we as a country also have to make a new commitment to the new economy.

The new economy can grow at the speed of light - if we make the right choices, encourage the spark of innovation, and don't turn back to failed policies of the past.

I need your help to make our self-government a constructive partner with the businesses and the working men and women who are fueling this new economy. And government should never be a barrier. To me, that means four simple principles:

First, we need a smaller, smarter government that knows when to get out of the way, and isn't a drag on economic growth.

Second, we have to aggressively support ideas and innovation. So today, I am announcing a major expansion of the tax credit for research and innovation in the private sector, to make good on my most basic promise to the American people in this campaign: for all the progress we've seen in recent years, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Third, we have to invest in education and training, to make good on our basic purpose in this campaign: to equip all our children for the future, and ensure that prosperity enriches all our families, and not just the few.

And fourth, to seize the full promise of the Internet age, we have to avoid the pitfalls - by protecting the fundamental rights and privacy of families and businesses on-line.

Let me take each of these points in turn. I know government didn't create all these new jobs in the new economy.

But our businesses could never have created them if we still had the sky-high deficits, soaring interest rates, and quadrupled national debt that only a few years ago, was crowding businesses out of capital markets.

And I say to you today: for the good of our families and our economy, we're not going to be dragged back to runaway spending and massive tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of the middle class. Never again will we allow the inability of leaders to make tough decisions to result in an anchor of deadweight debt tied around America's neck. Instead, we're going to free the potential of this Internet economy.

So I'll devote the single largest share of the surplus to debt reduction - shrinking government to the smallest share of the economy in 50 years - to keep interest rates low and investment rates high.

As President, I will not add to the number of people doing work for the federal government - not by even one position.

And I have a simple approach to the Internet economy: government should keep its hands off. No burdensome government regulations; no new tariffs on Internet transmissions; and a moratorium on taxes on the Internet.

The Internet economy is like the goose that's laying silicon eggs. Let's make sure it stays healthy and well-fed, with a steady diet of new discoveries and new ideas.

Today, I am proposing an expansion of tax credits for research and experimentation, to the largest level ever - an idea championed by Joe Lieberman in the Senate.

Let's make the tax credit for research permanent, for the first time - so businesses can count on long-term help as they invest and explore.

Let's expand it to high-tech start-ups - since they're at the frontier of our new prosperity.

And let's encourage older, core industries to increase their research. In Detroit, car manufacturers have trimmed hundreds of pounds from the weight of an average car by using lighter materials and smarter engineering. That kind of new thinking can revolutionize every industry - and we ought to reward it.

At the same time, we have to realize that much of the most basic, undirected research - research that simply follows ideas wherever they lead - has always been done with government support.

So let's double federal research in information technology in the next five years - and double all medical research in the next seven years.

If we make the right decisions - if we balance our budget, and don't give away the store in massive tax cuts we can't afford - then we can make these targeted investments, even as we completely eliminate our national debt.

But all that innovation will only yield maximum results if companies can fill the good new jobs that are opening up. We have got to make education our number-one national priority.

If you want to know the cost of a second-class education, talk to the business leaders who are now sometimes forced to turn down major new contracts, because they cannot find enough skilled people to do the work.

If you want to know the cost of a second-class education, talk to the hard-working Americans who are hungering to fill these good new jobs - but have not been given the opportunities they need to learn the new skills that are essential in the new economy.

Knowledge is the key to America's success in the Information Age. Teachers are the locksmiths who can put that key in the hands of every child. It's time that we treat teachers like the professionals that they are, reduce class sizes, recruit new teachers, hold them accountable - as we also measure the performance of every student - and modernize our schools.

Then we ought to open the doors to college wider than ever before, by making up to $10,000 a year of college tuition tax-deductible.

We ought to let families save for college and job training tax-free, with a new National Tuition Savings Program.

And we have to close the digital divide in America - by making sure we have computers and Internet hook-ups in every classroom, in every library, in community centers, and ultimately, in every home - to make Internet service as common as telephone service is today.

And we have to make sure that teachers are given the training and professional development they need to make use of these exciting new tools and integrate them into the curriculum. Public access to knowledge and to the skills required in the knowledge economy is even more important now than it was when America made its first commitment to public libraries.

Andrew Carnegie built this library - and over 2,500 more around the world - because when he was young, he was denied access to a private library in Pittsburgh.

He later wrote that when that library was finally opened to him, "the windows were opened in the walls of my dungeon through which the light of knowledge streamed in."

If we open the windows for all our people, the Internet and the new economy offer truly limitless possibilities.

To seize those possibilities, we have to make sure that the rights and privacy of every American and every entrepreneur are fully protected.

Too often, people's private medical information is being sold for profit.

And that has got to stop.

Too often, personal financial records can be collected and sold to marketers. And that has got to stop.

Too often, parents have trouble protecting their children from inappropriate and indecent material on the Internet. And that has got to stop.

How can businesses and families move full speed-ahead into the new economy - how can people conduct simple business transactions—if they don't have full confidence that their rights will be protected?

As President, I'll fight for tough new privacy laws to make sure your personal medical records and financial records are nobody's business but your own.

I'll fight to make sure no one can profit from personal information by selling your Social Security number.

And I'll support the Internet industry's own efforts at self-regulation, to develop better and more comprehensive privacy protection efforts, that don't leave the burden for protection solely on consumers.

Privacy is a basic American value - in the electronic age, as in any age.

And I'll make sure it's always protected.

My point today is a simple one: I believe we are just at the dawn of this new age of innovation and discovery. Our children will work in jobs and industries we can hardly even imagine today.

We have to make sure that a smaller, smarter self-government frees up the potential for unlimited growth and potential, and forms creative partnerships with industry and universities, to empower the new ideas economy.

Today's new economic numbers remind us how far we have come, and how much is at stake in this election.

And in eleven days, prosperity itself is on the ballot.

Our economy sets new records every day. The fundamentals are strong. But prosperity can never be taken for granted - and we must not derail it by making the wrong choices.

The future of our economy depends on sound leadership, and the right choices. That's why my plan balances the budget every year, pays down the debt, and makes investments to promote economic growth, extend the prosperity, and strengthen middle class families.

And the other side's plan - that huge tax cut that squanders our surplus - threatens our prosperity, brings back deficits, and means permanent debt for our nation. It is the wrong choice, at the wrong time, taking America in the wrong direction.

In closing, let me share a story. A few years ago, I was talking with a group of college students about the amazing pace of technology. I pointed out that if today's cars made the same advances as computers, a Cadillac would get 100,000 miles to the gallon—and cost about 50 cents.

Then one of the students said: "Sure, but it would be about this big."

Today's breakthrough products may not always be big. But tomorrow's horizons are limitless.

I need your help and support - to make this new economy all that it can be.

I need your votes, eleven days from today - to seize the opportunity that stands before us.

We can have a new prosperity, and a new America - with possibilities as vast as the wide-open sky. Join with me, and we will make it a time of new hope and abundance, for all our families. Thank you.