[Excerpts from transcript of a speech by President Clinton. The excerpts 
are those relevant to S.652 and S.314, from the Q&A period at the end.]


                         THE WHITE HOUSE

                  Office of the Press Secretary
                         (Dallas, Texas)
________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                                      April 7, 1995

                        REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
              TO THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF NEWSPAPER EDITORS

                          Loews Anatole Hotel
                             Dallas, Texas

11:55 A.M. EDT

             ...

             Q  One of the issues we've been examining at this
convention, Mr. President, is the new Information Age and our own role
in it.  And one of the issues that's likely to come up in the next 100
days to which you referred is a broad reform of telecommunications
policy.  Do you think that a pragmatic, practical compromise solution in
this area, which affects how people get their dial tones and what is on
that dial tone, is likely to come out of these discussions?

             THE PRESIDENT:  I do.  I think it is likely.  Let me say
that I very much wanted to pass a telecommunications act in the last
session of Congress.  And we came within a hair's breath of being able
to do it.  Some rather -- to me any way -- rather minor problems hung it
up in the Senate.  And, as you know, it's not difficult to hang a bill
up in the Senate.  And so it got hung.  If we can pass the right kind of
telecommunications act it can be good for American consumers and it can
pump billions of more dollars into this economy and create a very large
number of jobs.

             It's interesting that you would ask me this.  The Vice
President and I had lunch yesterday -- our weekly lunch -- and we talked
about this for quite some time.  My concern about the bill in its
present form in the Senate is that I believe, as written, it would lead
to a rather rapid increase and a rather substantial increase in both
telephone and cable rates in ways that I do not believe are necessary to
get the benefits that the telecommunications bill seeks to achieve.  So
I would like to see some provisions in there which deal with that.

             I can also tell you that the antitrust division of the
Justice Department has some fairly serious reservations about how far it
goes.  Now, I have, in several areas, been willing to see, because of
the globalization of the economy, some modifications in our antitrust
laws.  But I'm concerned -- and I think they're warranted.  But I think
that this may go too far.  But the most important concern I have is, are
we going to have a very large and unnecessary increase in cable and
phone rates immediately if the bill, as passed, is adopted?  That is my
major concern.  But I think we can get one and we certainly need to get
one....

             Q  You alluded to our being in the Information Age.  Many
of us in this room are investigating and developing ways of
disseminating information electronically.  There are thousands outside
this room who are doing the same.  What role, if any, does the federal
government have in censoring or regulating that information and news?

             THE PRESIDENT:  Let me begin by saying I support what
you're doing and I've tried to bring the White House up to date
electronically.  You know, we have a pretty sophisticated e-mail
operation.  And now you can take a tour of the White House and all the
federal agencies on the Internet and find out more than you ever wanted
to know.  So we're trying to be there for you in virtual reality land.

             I guess you're asking me about the bill that Senator Exon
introduced on trying to regulate obscenity through the e-mail system, or
through the electronic superhighway.  To be perfectly honest with you, I
have not read the bill.  I am not familiar with its contents, and I
don't know what I think.  I do believe -- about this specific bill.
(Laughter.)  I'll tell you what I think about the issue.

             I believe that insofar as that governments have the legal
right to regulate obscenity that has not been classified as speech under
the First Amendment, and insofar as the American public widely supports,
for example, limiting access of children to pornographic magazines, I
think it is folly to think that we should sit idly by when a child who
is a computer whiz may be exposed to things on that computer, which in
some ways are more powerful, more raw and more inappropriate than those
things from which we protect them when they walk in a 7-Eleven.

             So as a matter of principle, I am not opposed to it.  I
just can't comment on the details of the bill, because I do not know
enough about it.  And I do not believe in any way, shape or form that we
should be able to do on e-mail, or through the electronic superhighway,
in terms of government regulation of speech, anything beyond what we
could elsewhere.  I think the First Amendment has to be uniform in its
application.

             So I'm not calling for a dilution of the First Amendment.
But if you just imagine, those of us who have children and who think
about this, you just think about what's the difference in going in the
7-Eleven and hooking up to the computer.  I think that we have to find
some resolution of this.  And within the Supreme Court's standards,
which are very strict, I am not -- am philosophically opposed to some
action.
                               END12:55 P.M. CDT