Gore Sets as Goal High-Speed Internet Access for All Homes

In 1928, Herbert Hoover ran for president on the slogan, “A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” On Tuesday, Al Gore proposed his 21st century equivalent: high-speed access to the Internet in every home.

Calling computer literacy “a fundamental civil right,” the vice president proposed a partnership between the government and private industry to enable every American to have easy, affordable access to high-speed Internet connections.

Gore has made increasing access to the Internet a hallmark of his vice presidency, and on Tuesday he focused on the critical roles computer literacy and access to the Internet are playing in economic growth.

“We have to close the digital divide in America,” he said. “Every child in America, regardless of income, geography, race or disability, should be able to reach across a computer keyboard and reach the vast new worlds of knowledge and commerce and communication that are available at the touch of a fingertip.”

But his proposal, unveiled in a speech at Morgan State University, included no funding to achieve the goal.

Plan Doesn’t Include New Federal Program

“We are not proposing a new federal program to make that possible,” said his spokesman, Chris Lehane. Instead, the undertaking would rely on unspecified changes in regulatory procedures and the contributions of companies, such as Ford Motor Co., which is making computers available to all its employees.

Gore also noted the importance of the Internet to minorities, saying “African Americans and Hispanics, in their homes, are now only two-fifths as likely to have Internet access as white families. . . . We need to close that divide.”

The vice president’s address did not take into account recent studies showing that the gap between the access of whites and minorities to the Internet, wide in the mid-1990s, is shrinking.

But even as Gore and President Clinton have addressed the “digital divide,” some leading Internet experts are skeptical about the need for a dramatic effort. The gap, existent in mid-1990s and documented by the federal National Telecommunications and Information Administration, has largely disappeared, they say.

When the Internet was young and personal computers cost thousands of dollars, a much smaller percentage of blacks were online than whites, Adam Clayton Powell III, vice president of technology and programs at the Freedom Forum, a Virginia-based media research group, said recently.

“But today, with dirt-cheap Internet access and computers approaching the costs of television sets, assertions of a ‘digital divide’ . . . are as correct as pinning last week’s Dow at 1,000.”

Indeed, Forrester Research, a Cambridge, Mass., consulting firm, reported last year that the Internet access gap had all but closed. Its study found that Latinos, blacks and Asians were signing up for Internet access faster than whites. About 40% to 44% of Latino, black and white households will be online, the firm predicted. The number of Asian households online will remain higher, at 68%, the study said.

“There is no digital divide in terms of race,” said Ekaterina O. Walsh, author of the Forrester study.

Also Tuesday, Gore received the endorsement of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, in a step his aides hope will end questions about his position on abortion. In recent weeks, his opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination, Bill Bradley, has drawn attention to Gore’s opposition in the 1980s to government funding of abortions for poor women.

Last week in Beverly Hills, the vice president acknowledged that he wrestled with the question of Medicaid funding for abortions when he represented conservative Tennessee in the House and Senate. But he said he eventually came to believe that poor women have the same right to abortions as wealthier women, and that government funding is necessary.

Bradley said he was surprised by the NARAL endorsement of his rival, saying his record is better than Gore’s on abortion rights. “I don’t think that [endorsement] will hurt my case at all, because women know where I stand on this issue and where I will always stand, and they also know what his record is,” he said.

Also Tuesday, Bradley spoke to a group of about 200 people at Brooklyn Hospital in New York and launched his strongest attack yet on the vice president’s commitment to universal health care.

Calling health care “an American birthright,” Bradley scolded the vice president for supporting universal health care seven years ago and backing away from it now.

“Real Democrats know we must do these things,” he said. “Washington Democrats are willing to settle.”

Earlier, Bradley earned several standing ovations from Teamsters in New Jersey as he promised to make it easier for people to join a union. “I’m on your side,” he said.

Speaking to 400 leaders of the Teamsters’ eastern region in Atlantic City, N.J., Bradley emphasized his determination to enact labor law reform. Workers, he said, should be able to collect compensation if they are unfairly fired for labor organizing.

Bradley also said that the AFL-CIO’s endorsement of Gore will not weaken his commitment to labor.

“My positions on all of these issues are not related to whether I got an endorsement or not from the leadership of the AFL-CIO,” he said. “It’s related to my commitment of what a just society should be and my commitment to the working people of this country.”

Teamsters May Make Own Endorsement

Although the AFL-CIO, which Gore will address on Thursday in New Orleans, has endorsed the vice president, the Teamsters are considering making their own endorsement. The union leaders in Atlantic City represent about 450,000 of the union’s 1.4 million members.

At Tuesday’s meeting, one union official, in a surprise move, called for an informal vote on whether to endorse the former New Jersey senator. An overwhelming majority of the Teamsters leaders raised their hands in the smoky hall of the Tropicana Casino and Resort.

“It’s pretty obvious that this entire body would like to endorse Bill Bradley,” said Thomas O’Donnell, vice president-at-large of the Teamsters. He said he would convey the sentiment to the union’s executive council.

Chip Roth, a spokesman for the union, played down the vote.

“I think Tom O’Donnell was having some fun up there,” Roth said. “It was a spontaneous expression of support of some members . . . [but] I don’t think it’s a meaningful representation.”

Rocky Bryan Jr., the vice president of Teamsters Local 929 in Philadelphia, took another view. “I think he made a great impression,” he said. “He has a lot of good ideas and he’s on the right track with labor reform. He has my support.”