Administration Claims Credit for Undoing Y2K Bug

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Clinton administration congratulated itself today for killing the Y2K millennium computer bug, which drowned in a sea of $100 billion on repairs and preparations in the United States. "Mission accomplished," White House press secretary Joe Lockhart said. President Clinton invited his Y2K team, led by John Koskinen, to the White House for a group photo as it winds down operations.

The U.S. government spent $8.5 billion to update and repair its computers; preparations by businesses and individuals pushed the total to $100 billion. The phone industry alone spent $3.6 billion to make sure phone systems were Y2K-compliant. The glitch involved the inability of some computers to recognize "00" as shorthand for the year 2000.

"We averted what could have been a big problem in many of our economic sectors and government institutions," Lockhart said. "And that's in large part because of the leadership of Mr. Koskinen both here in the United States and around the world." He dismissed criticism that the Y2K warnings were a costly false alarm.

"Business in this country doesn't go ahead and spend money on problems that they don't think exist," he said. "They addressed this problem. I think we were the leaders in the world on this. And I think the results are quite straightforward."

link

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGI8Q911U4C.html

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 18, 2000

Answers

Carl In this case, I was in the process of posting this article (about to hit the "paste" button!) as I saw you already post it. As we can tell by all of the posts on this website, methinks congratulations may be somewhat premature. *It isn't even Feb. 29 yet!!*. Ok, no disasters or near-disasters (well, maybe except for some nuclear power plants, nuclear weapons plants, defense satellite systems, air traffic control, and allegedly refineries, chemical plants. Etc.) But even Koskinen said everything, including the watch centers, would be in place until Feb. 29. Are we closing down early, closing our eyes, and refusing to see what is happening? Or is the President's schedule so clogged after Feb 29 that the photo-op had to be done in advance?? Remind me not to sign that "congratulations John" Koskinen letter floating around.

-- Bud Hamilton (budham@hotmail.com), February 18, 2000.