October 11, 1996
President Bill Clinton proposed on Thursday a $100 million plan to expand the speed and scope of the Internet to help make computers in school classrooms as important as blackboards.
``It would lead to an explosion in learning,'' Clinton told a campaign rally at Courthouse Square in downtown Dayton. He also honoured the city's role in playing host to the Dayton peace talks a year ago that led to a peace accord between Bosnia's warring factions.
As Clinton portrayed himself as a man looking ahead to the future, his campaign seized on remarks by Republican Bob Dole's running mate, Jack Kemp, to suggest that Dole should not make ``character'' questions about Clinton an issue at their second and last debate on Oct. 16.
In his debate on Wednesday night against Vice President Al Gore, Kemp said, ``It is beneath Bob Dole to go after anyone personally.''
Clinton campaign spokesman Joe Lockhart said ``anytime (Dole) has gone negative, he's hurt himself. In this (election) cycle negative politics isn't working. We have to believe that Kemp was speaking for the ticket last night.''
To try to fend off charges from Dole and Kemp that Clinton is weak on foreign policy, the Clinton campaign said more than 100 national security experts had endorsed Clinton.
It named 13 of them, most of whom served Democratic presidents although one, former arms control negotiator Paul Nitze, served in administrations spanning both parties. Jack Matlock was ambassador to the Soviet Union under Republican President George Bush.
``We praise the president's willingness to use U.S. military power effectively, as he has done in Iraq, Bosnia, Haiti, the Taiwan Strait and elsewhere,'' they said.
Clinton announced details of his Internet proposal during an earlier stop in Knoxville, Tennessee, an area dependent on government-funded science research. He said he wanted to see the day ``when computers are as much a part of classrooms as blackboards.''
``Let us reach for a goal in the 21st century of every home connected to the Internet and let us be brought closer together as a community through that connection,'' Clinton told Democratic supporters in Tennessee, Gore's home state.
Clinton announced a three-pronged strategy to make Internet access universal.
-- He urged the Federal Communications Commission to approve at a Nov. 8 meeting a proposal that schools and libraries be given basic Internet services free. Telecommunications companies would pay for this by putting money into a fund, much as they currently subsidise poor and rural phone users.
-- He said industry leaders would help raise money to match government technology-literacy grants to buy computers for schools and ensure that teachers are properly trained.
-- And he said the $100 million Internet upgrade project would help develop a new generation of the information superhighway that would be 100 to 1,000 times faster than the existing computer system, which is rapidly reaching capacity.
``Like any other piece of critical infrastructure, it has to be repaired and upgraded to meet all of our education, medical and national security needs. It is now time to invest in the next generation of Internet,'' he said.
The $100 million would be included in the budget for the 1998 fiscal year. It would be paid for with $70 million from the defence budget and $30 million from domestic discretionary funding, Gore's technology adviser, Greg Simon, said.
The initiative is part of a five-year, $500 million programme to install more advanced Internet access. The White House planned to study where the rest of the money would come from, according to one White House official who said public-private partnerships were one option.