Clinton Sticks Up For Trees Calls For End To Logging Of Old Growth In Seattle Visit

President Clinton, paying his second visit to Washington state in 10 days, on Saturday sided with environmentalists and called for repealing legislation he signed last year that resulted in the logging of thousands of acres of old-growth trees in national forests.

The logging provision was part of a budget bill Clinton signed last summer. He reluctantly accepted the provision in the belief the issue could be managed so as not to produce logging harmful to the old-growth trees.

But White House Press Secretary Michael McCurry said here Saturday that adverse court decisions expanding the provision had produced unacceptable results and Clinton would now push Congress for repeal.

Environmentalists throughout this region had strongly urged Clinton to switch position and seek repeal. Along his Seattle motorcade, before the decision had been announced, environmental groups held signs accusing him of lying and of abandoning the environment.

Protecting what environmental groups said were thousands upon thousands of acres of prized trees is a major election-year issue here, and Washington is a crucial state for the president’s re-election.

Clinton also spent his Seattle visit urging Americans to embrace the technology revolution now sweeping the economy, but to make sure no workers are left behind.

“Embrace it, work through it, and don’t stop until every single American citizen benefits,” the president said in a campaign-style speech in Washington’s high-tech corridor.

Clinton called it a “100-year change” in America’s workplaces, in education and in government and said the nation must figure out ways to harness the huge changes and spread its benefits to all.

“Our challenge is not to back up or give up, but to go ahead,” he said.

Technology and finding new high-paying jobs will be key to taking care of people who lose their jobs in timber and fishing and in industries that are downsizing, he said.

Clinton shared the podium with Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, the nation’s wealthiest man and an advocate of technology and the Internet, which he says will equalize society.

Gates announced a $10 million donation of software to the state’s community college system.

The visit by the president came little more than a week before the state’s Democratic caucuses. The president, who has called the West Coast states crucial to his re-election hopes, is expected to sweep the caucuses and win all 91 national convention delegates.

The state also has a non-binding “beauty contest” primary on March 26.

Several thousand cheering partisans, including party leaders, union and environmental activists and others, jammed into the Shoreline Community College gymnasium for the invitation-only rally and speech.

The president’s re-election committee picked up the tab.

Clinton was interrupted at the start of his 20-minute speech by a heckler who wanted him to do more to protect old-growth timber.

“We’ve listened to you. Now it’s our turn,” the president shot back. He headlined a private reception for party donors following the speech.

Clinton said the federal government, like most private corporations, is downsizing and becoming less bureaucratic, but he drew cheers from the party activists when he said “that doesn’t mean government needs to be weak - it needs to be strong.”

He said the economy is vibrant, with a 15-year-high in home ownership, job creation at a much larger rate than the rest of the world, the growth of exports now faster than the growth of imports, and the combined rate of inflation and home mortgage rates now at their lowest in 20 years.

But he spent most of his speech talking about technology.

“We can bore our way through this change … or pretend it doesn’t exist,” he said. ” … Technology can be our friend not our enemy. Our great challenge is to take technology into the work place.”