President Clinton has a saying: "If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there." My family and I just returned from a conference in Ireland, where we enjoyed the music, the culture (I sampled a Guinness or two), and learned about the road that country has taken from a quaint but impoverished nation on Europe's peripheries to its status now as one of the wealthiest nations in the EU. You see, a few decades ago, the Irish decided they were tired of being always near the bottom of Europe's economic indicators. So they envisioned a better future for their country, and they put their people on the right road to get there.
And how did they reach their destination of a high quality of life with almost no unemployment? They embraced the challenges of the changing economy by designing an economic policy that encouraged investment, while adhering to fiscal discipline. And they made college education essentially free, ensuring that the Irish workforce is one of the most educated in the world.
Sometimes, it takes leaving to gain some perspective. I see that clearly every time I leave Washington, DC and return to Indiana. I see the bizarre bubble that seems to enclose the Beltway and makes people forget what regular people care about. Well, in this instance, it took distance to see anew that our country desperately needs leaders with a vision for the future -- and a firm understanding on what road we must take to get there.
Second only to winning the war on terror, the greatest challenge facing our country is developing a strategy to succeed in the global economy. Through our own hard work and ingenuity, America has spent much of its history as the world's dominant economic power. But our dominance is not pre-ordained -- history does not roll along on the wheels of inevitability. In fact, history is sprinkled with examples of upstarts who unexpectedly rose to greatness -- much like the example of Ireland today. And history is also littered with once-great powers that grew complacent and didn't adapt to changing circumstances. It is going to take leadership and foresight to ensure that we do not become the first generation in our nation's history to pass on an America that is less than the one we inherited. Of course we can't reverse the changes of the global economy any more than we can stop them -- but we must have a strategy to help bend the forces of the future to America's benefit.
And that is why I am so shocked by the Bush administration's failure to demonstrate any leadership or vision when it comes to preparing our country for the challenges of the global economy. This President has actually done the exact opposite of the Irish. Instead of making college more accessible, the Bush Administration has cut funding for Pell Grants. Instead of imposing fiscal discipline, they have run up deficits as far as the eye can see. And instead of encouraging investments and innovation, they have repeatedly cut funding for research and development. We have got to make a U-turn before it's too late and get our country and our workers on a better route for the future economy.
Take the issue of college availability. We know that a college degree is rapidly becoming the price of admission to the global economy. Trinity University in Dublin is teeming with students preparing to seize the future but for too many Americans, college remains out of reach especially for those who need it most. When I was governor of Indiana, we instituted a program called the 21st Century Scholars program, which said that every child whose family qualifies for the free or reduced lunch program (about 185% of the poverty level) and signs a written pledge to graduate from high school with passing grades and without getting involved with illegal drugs is entitled to a full college scholarship to the Indiana public university of their choice. The result of that initiative is that Indiana has moved from 40th in the percentage of kids who go on to higher education to 17th. We are literally lifting up tens of thousands of less fortunate kids and making it possible for them to realize the dream of going to college. This is a dream that we should make possible for each and every child across this country. In the coming weeks, I plan to release legislation to do just that, to make the 21st Century Scholars program a national one.
Yet instead of taking similar measures to develop an innovative strategy to secure our place in the global economy, this administration tells us that things are just fine, that this is as good as it gets. Well, we as Democrats know better than that because we have helped this nation to do better before. We helped to lift this country out of the depths of the Great Depression. We led the transition from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy... from a service economy to an information economy... and now it's time to do it again. Now we must reinvent ourselves to preserve our economic strength in the innovation economy of the future as well. Ireland is doing it, now so must we.
President Bush has shown that he has no clear vision of how to lead America into the global innovation economy. So I think I would suggest to him that the road to the future begin with a quick detour through Ireland.