Home > 2000 Presidential Documents > pd08my00 Statement on the Legal Framework Agreement for the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan...pd08my00 Statement on the Legal Framework Agreement for the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan...
serving in our Armed Forces, upholding our laws, and participating in
our democracy.
Other Americans have showed their loyalty by courageously
challenging our Nation to live up to its ideals. We owe a profound debt
to the heroes and visionaries who opposed slavery, reformed labor
practices, won the right to vote for women, marched for civil rights,
and spoke out with conscience and conviction whenever we have failed to
uphold the highest standards of freedom and justice.
We find perhaps the strongest and most moving evidence of loyalty to
America in the service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform.
From the War of Independence to today's peacekeeping missions around the
world, generations of Americans have shown their allegiance by defending
our Nation against tyrants and terrorists, protecting our national
interests wherever they are threatened, and promoting our values across
the globe.
On this first Loyalty Day of the 21st century, all Americans should
give thanks that we live in a Nation that inspires such fidelity. And we
should remember with pride the loyal patriots who have gone before us,
whose character and efforts built America, preserved it in times of
peril, and gave life to our founders' dreams.
Recognizing the importance of loyalty to the continued strength of
our country and success of our democracy, the Congress, by Public Law
85-529, has designated May 1 of each year as ``Loyalty Day.''
Now, Therefore, I, William J. Clinton, President of the United
States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2000, as Loyalty Day. I
urge all Americans to recall the valor and selflessness of all those who
made this Nation worthy of our love and loyalty and to express our own
loyalty through appropriate patriotic programs, ceremonies, and
activities. I also call upon Government officials to display the flag of
the United States in support of this national observance.
In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-ninth
day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand, and of the
Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-
fourth.
William J. Clinton
[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 8:45 a.m., May 2, 2000]
Note: This proclamation was released by the Office of the Press
Secretary on May 1, and it was published in the Federal Register on May
3.
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Monday, May 8, 2000
Volume 36--Number 18
Pages 943-1020
Week Ending Friday, May 5, 2000
Statement on the Decision To Stop Degrading Global Positioning System
Signals
May 1, 2000
Today I am pleased to announce that the United States will stop the
intentional degradation of the Global Positioning System (GPS) signals
available to the public beginning at midnight tonight. We call this
degradation feature Selective Availability (SA). This will mean that
civilian users of GPS will be able to pinpoint locations up to 10 times
more accurately than they do now. GPS is a dual-use, satellite-based
system that provides accurate location and timing data to
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users worldwide. My March 1996 Presidential Decision Directive included
in the goals for GPS to: ``encourage acceptance and integration of GPS
into peaceful civil, commercial, and scientific applications worldwide;
and to encourage private sector investment in and use of U.S. GPS
technologies and services.'' To meet these goals, I committed the U.S.
to discontinuing the use of SA by 2006, with an annual assessment of its
continued use beginning this year.
The decision to discontinue SA is the latest measure in an ongoing
effort to make GPS more responsive to civil and commercial users
worldwide. Last year Vice President Gore announced our plans to
modernize GPS by adding two new civilian signals to enhance the civil
and commercial service. This initiative is on track, and the budget
further advances modernization by incorporating some of the new features
on up to 18 additional satellites that are already awaiting launch or
are in production. We will continue to provide all of these capabilities
to worldwide users, free of charge.
My decision to discontinue SA was based upon a recommendation by the
Secretary of Defense in coordination with the Departments of State,
Transportation, Commerce, the Director of Central Intelligence, and
other executive branch departments and agencies. They realized that
worldwide transportation safety, scientific, and commercial interests
could best be served by discontinuation of SA. Along with our commitment
to enhance GPS for peaceful applications, my administration is committed
to preserving fully the military utility of GPS. The decision to
discontinue SA is coupled with our continuing efforts to upgrade the
military utility of our systems that use GPS and is supported by threat
assessments which conclude that setting SA to zero at this time would
have minimal impact on national security. Additionally, we have
demonstrated the capability to selectively deny GPS signals on a
regional basis when our national security is threatened. This regional
approach to denying navigation services is consistent with the 1996 plan
to discontinue the degradation of civil and commercial GPS service
globally through the SA technique.
Originally developed by the Department of Defense as a military
system, GPS has become a global utility. It benefits users around the
world in many different applications, including air, road, marine, and
rail navigation, telecommunications, emergency response, oil
exploration, mining, and many more. Civilian users will realize a
dramatic improvement in GPS accuracy with the discontinuation of SA. For
example, emergency teams responding to a cry for help can now determine
what side of the highway they must respond to, thereby saving precious
minutes. This increase in accuracy will allow new GPS applications to
emerge and continue to enhance the lives of people around the world.
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Monday, May 8, 2000
Volume 36--Number 18
Pages 943-1020
Week Ending Friday, May 5, 2000
Statement on the United States Treasury ``Debt Buybacks''
May 1, 2000
Today the Department of the Treasury is announcing that the United
States will pay off $216 billion of debt this year--the largest debt
paydown in American history. This will be the third consecutive year of
debt reduction, bringing the 3-year total to $355 billion.
This important news offers yet more evidence that our strategy of
fiscal discipline, investing in people, and opening markets abroad is
working. The debt quadrupled in the 12 years before I came into office
and was projected to rise still further. As a result of the 1993 and
1997 budgets, and tough choices in each and every year, the debt is now
$2.4 trillion lower than it was projected to be. As a result, interest
rates are lower, leading to stronger investment and growth while saving
money for American families.
We should not jeopardize the longest economic expansion in history
with risky tax cuts that threaten our fiscal discipline. We should take
advantage of this historic opportunity to use the benefits of debt
reduction to extend the life of Social Security and Medicare and pay off
the entire national debt by 2013 for the first time since Andrew Jackson
was President. Lifting the burden of debt from our children and
grandchildren is one of the most important investments in the future we
can make.
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Monday, May 8, 2000
Volume 36--Number 18
Pages 943-1020
Week Ending Friday, May 5, 2000
Remarks to Independent Insurance Agents of America's National
Legislative Conference
May 2, 2000
The President. Thank you very, very much. Ladies and gentlemen, I
am delighted to be here. And I thank you, President Houston, and I thank
your CEO, Paul Equale, whom I see all the time here in Washington
pleading your cause. And I thank my old friend George Frazier. I heard
that introduction. The truth is that only he and my mother thought I had
a chance to be elected President when I ran. [Laughter] But it's nice to
have someone like that in your corner.
I came here today, in part, on a sentimental journey. I couldn't
hear everything George said, but the first speech I gave outside
Arkansas as an elected official was in 1977, when I flew to California
to speak for George when he was president of your organization. So, in a
real sense, my political career began with George Frazier's presidency
and ended with my own. And I am delighted to be here.
I also want to acknowledge and thank another member of this group
from Arkansas, my friend Lib Carlisle, who agreed to become chairman of
the Democratic Party when I was reelected Governor in 1982. I told him
that it would just be about a half-a-day-a-week job. The truth was he
had about a half a day a week left to devote to this job. And I'm
surprised as a result of his public service that he could afford the
airplane ticket up here. [Laughter] But I am delighted that he and all
of you are here.
I also want to say I'm glad I got here for a few minutes of Senator
Hatch's speech. Believe it or not, we're good friends. [Laughter] And
it's nearly ruined him in the Republican caucus. [Laughter] And so he
has to give me a little grief when he shows up. I would say in my own
defense that it is true that tax receipts--I heard him talking about the
tax burden--it is true that tax receipts as a percentage of national
income are up. But the reason is, unemployment is low and incomes have
grown so much. The actual percentage of income being paid by middle
income families is the lowest it's been in over 35 years. So I think
that's worth pointing out.
I also would say, on the education issue--I heard what he said about
burden of regulations--the Secretary of Education, Dick Riley, who was
Governor of South Carolina for many years, has cut two-thirds of the
regulations and paperwork burdens on local school districts that existed
when we became the new administration in 1993. And in fact, our
administration, even though we've had to promulgate some new regulations
over the whole Federal Government, has gotten rid of more regulations,
some 16,000 pages of them, in every Federal agency than were eliminated
in the previous 12 years. And we have the smallest Government since
1960. So I think the record will look pretty good on that score.
But I also want to say I appreciate the fact that Orrin Hatch has
worked with me, particularly, to try to encourage the orderly
confirmation of judges, when so many people would rather not deal with
that issue. I've done my best to take that out of politics, and I think
it's important.
I want to thank you for several things. If I could begin, I want to
thank you for what you do every day when you're not being politically
active. I want to thank you for what you do day-in and day-out to give
personal insurance service to people across this country. I want to
thank you for the work you're doing to modernize insurance, to build a
presence on-line and in E-commerce. And I want to ask you to continue to
help to preserve the privacy of your clients in the face of this new
technology.
On Sunday I went to Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti,
Michigan, not too far from Detroit, to talk about the promise of the
Internet age and the challenges to our privacy, including our financial
privacy, that it presents. And I think it's very, very important that we
maximize the possibilities of technology without giving up the American
people's right to determine what basic information is or is not in the
hands of people that they don't know and whom they have not approved to
receive the information.
I also want to congratulate you for diversifying this organization,
by reaching out to the
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National African American Insurance Organization and by appointing the
first woman to your board. The First Lady, particularly, thought that
was a good idea. [Laughter]
And I want to thank you for the quality of representation you have
here in Washington. We have not always agreed over the last 7 years, but
I have always been impressed by the straight talk and the honest, open
effort that I have seen from your organization to try to work out
difficulties, work out genuine differences. And when we have worked
together, we have done some very good things indeed.
We've worked together to get our economy moving again. When I became
President, we had a $295 billion deficit. It was scheduled to be nearly
$400 billion this year. The debt of the country had quadrupled over the
previous 12 years, and I knew there was no easy way to get rid of it. So
we passed an economic plan in 1993 that took us about 70 percent of the
way there, and then we passed a bipartisan balanced budget in 1997 that
had big majorities in both parties in both Houses supporting eliminating
the deficit entirely.
We've now run the first back-to-back surpluses in over 40 years, and
this year we'll make it three in a row. The United States this year is
going to pay off $216 billion of our national debt. That is the largest
debt repayment in American history. This will bring the 3-year total to
$355 billion, and it's further evidence, I believe, that the country
ought to have a bipartisan economic strategy of paying off the debt and
investing in our people, in education, in science and technology, and in
opening new markets at home and abroad.
Four years ago you put yourselves on the line for the Kennedy-
Kassebaum bill. I want to thank you for that. Your support has made a
difference all across this country, and I am very grateful. Again, we
had not only the Democrats, Vice President Gore, and I but substantial
Republican support. And we reached agreement, and it made a difference
for ordinary Americans. And I'm very grateful.
It seems to me that this year the large question before the American
people is, what are we going to do with these good times? What will we
make of them? You can probably recall some time in your own life or your
own business when you've gotten into a little bit of trouble, not
because things were so tough but because things seemed to be going well,
and therefore, there were no consequences to breaking your concentration
or taking a little time to stop thinking about tomorrow.
And I feel very strongly--and I think I can say this with some
credibility since I'm not on the ballot, and most days I'm okay with
it--[laughter]--but I think I can say, to me, the importance of this
election is that America now knows that we can solve problems together.
We know we can make real progress. When I became President, if I had
said in my Inaugural Address in 1993, ``You know, if you will just stick
with me folks, in 7 years we'll have 3 years of surpluses, and we'll be
in a position to get this country out of debt for the first time since
1835,'' you would have said, ``He seems like a nice young man, but we
have a delusional person in the White House.'' [Laughter] If I had said,
``The crime rate will come down 7 years in a row, and we'll cut the
welfare rolls in half,'' you wouldn't have believed that. If I had said,
``We'll find a way to work with the private sector to improve the
quality of our air, water, and land and still have the longest economic
expansion in history,'' you might not have believed that. So we know
now, because of the success our country has had, that if we work
together and we set common goals, we can achieve them. The level of
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