July 16, 1998

Even Odds On Passage of Federal Y2K Bill By Declan McCullagh

How serious are politicians about fixing Year 2000 problems? A bipartisan proposal to encourage Y2K readiness -- endorsed by President Clinton -- has only even odds of becoming law this year according to Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate's Year 2000 committee. "I don't put them much better than 50-50," he said yesterday. While conceding that Clinton's speech on Tuesday spotlighted what's been until recently an obscure software bug, Bennett stressed that much more needs to be done during a luncheon speech at the National Press Club. "My plea to you here in the Press Club is: Do not ignore this story just because someone is reassuring you that it's going to work out all right," he said.

Not everything is going to work out all right, Bennett said. "We're not going to get this problem solved, so we have to set priorities." This means triage. Worst-case contingency plans. Ending just-in-time manufacturing. Filling warehouses, just in case.

It also means Bennett is more realistic than Clinton, who offered a feel-good but absurd prediction the day before: "I set a government-wide goal of full compliance by March of 1999." Meanwhile the feds are falling behind their own schedules to at least fix the most vital computers -- and these in turn are only a tiny fraction of the total number of systems. The Defense Department's Y2K czar even told Netly that "I believe there are mission critical systems that won't be done."

Will Bennett be heading for the hills? "I'm not yet ready to start storing food in the basement and digging up the backyard to put in a propane tank," says Bennett. "But it might not be a bad idea to have a little extra food and water around."

http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/article/0,2334,14058,00.html

Yeah - it might not be a bad idea - at all.

-- Chana Campos (chana@campos.org), July 17, 1998

Answers

Those odds give me complete confidence in my Government. I guess I don't need to prepare now, sounds like everything will be taken care of, and I can just sit back and relax. No worries now!

-- Mr. Trust (giveme@abreak.com), October 01, 1998.

This legislation was passed by the Senate and sent to the House on Sept. 30. I think that date is right, anyway it happened this week.

-- Buddy Y. (buddy@bellatlantic.net), October 02, 1998.

Clinton is stating the complete truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help us all....

"I set a government-wide goal of full compliance by March of 1999." That's exactly right, he set the goal of complete compliance by March, 1999. (Please double check that quote, it might have been "see" a goal rather than "set" a goal, but no matter.)

Of course he set a goal - of course he won't meet that goal, nor will he offer any back-up plan to meet that goal. But he certainly did "set" that goal, plain as day. ..plain as the nose on his face, oops, that nose just got a little longer.

Depending on what your defintion of "alone" is. Depending on what your definition of "is" is.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), October 02, 1998.