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Transcript: Clinton's remarks in Clarksdale, MississippiJuly 6, 1999
July 6, 1999 PRESIDENT CLINTON: Thank you very much. Thank you. (APPLAUSE) (CHEERS) Thank you. Thank you. Please be seated, everybody. Well, it's hot as a firecracker in here. (LAUGHTER) So I feel right at home. (LAUGHTER) But I don't know whether Bob Korber (ph) and the people at Waterfield are insured against heat stroke by strangers happening in along the way. But let me say that I am delighted to be here today. I've had a good day already, and I've got a large group with me and I can't mention them all, but I'd like to mention a few of them. First I want to thank Secretary Slater, who is as all of you know, also from Arkansas and worked with me on the Delta Commission. I want to thank our Secretary of Agriculture, Dan Glickman, our Secretary of Labor, Alexis Herman, who's here with me; our SBA Administrator Aida Alvarez. Reverend Jackson, thank you for being here. I'd like to thank David Brozac (ph) from FedEx, Jack Hugslin (ph) from Greyhound. We'll introduce our panelists later. I'd also like to say a special word of thanks to Lieutenant Governor Ronnie Musgrove and his family. They're here. (APPLAUSE) And we thank him for his interest in the development of the Delta. (APPLAUSE) To our congressman, Bennie Thompson from this district. (APPLAUSE) (CHEERS) Thank you. And I understand Congressman Ronnie Shows from Mississippi is also here. Ronnie, you can stand up there. Thank you. (APPLAUSE) And we have two visitors who've come from a long way away to be with us, Congressman Jim Clyburn from South Carolina and Congressman Paul Kanjorski all the way from Pennsylvania is down here. Thank you very much. (APPLAUSE) (CHEERS) We thank Attorney General Mike Moore for being here, and all the other people from Mississippi who are here. Let me say again to Bob Korber (ph) and all the folks here at Waterfield, we thank you for giving us a chance to both tour this plant and to camp out in some of your space. I would like to be very brief. I've learned to attenuate these remarks. Yesterday it was 100 degrees in Hazard, Kentucky, and we had 10,000 or 15,000 people outside. And I said, "I don't believe I better give this speech I was going to give." Hello, Governor Mavis, it's nice to see you. Welcome. Thank you very much for being here. (APPLAUSE) And I think my friend, William Wenner (ph), Governor Wenner (ph), are you here somewhere? He met me at the airport. So anyway, I talked for about five minutes and I'd like to do that. I just want to tell you exactly why we're here. First of all, the people in the Delta know better than anybody else that while this country has had an unbelievable run -- we've had the longest peacetime expansion in our history, nearly 19 million jobs since the day I took the Oath of Office. (APPLAUSE) We have the lowest recorded rates ever of unemployment among African Americans and Hispanics. We have the highest rate of home ownership ever. We have a million kids lifted out of poverty. Now, having said all that, in the Delta, the poverty rate is much higher than the country as a whole; in this county, it's over twice as high. The unemployment rate is higher than the national average, and the investment rate is lower. Now, a lot of you -- I remember when I was out on a barge in the Mississippi River outside Rosedale with Ray Mavis back in the mid-'80s, and we signed this agreement with the then-Governor of Louisiana about all the things we wanted to do with the Delta. And then we worked on the Delta Commission for all those years. A lot of good things have happened here, and I want to talk a little about some of them. But I want you to know, I am making this tour of America for one simple reason: I want everybody in America to know that while our country has been blessed with this economic recovery, not all Americans have been blessed by it, that it hasn't reached everyplace. (APPLAUSE) I want our country to know that there are great opportunities out here for investment for jobs in America. I want them to know what we have done already to make it easier for people to make the most of those opportunities, and what we're still trying to do. Now, let me say, ever since I became president, I have done what I could to increase investment in underdeveloped areas through the empowerment zones, which give tax credits and put tax money into distressed areas; through the enterprise communities; through getting banks to more vigorously approach the Community Reinvestment Act; and setting up community development financial institutions or supporting those that are already in business, like the Enterprise Corporation of the Delta. It's a private, tax-exempt business group. It is a real success story. Just since 1994, it's given financial or technical assistance to more than 600 companies, including Delta Laundry and Computers (ph) here in Clarksdale. Now, we've set these operations up all over the country. Overall, the ECD here has helped to generate more than 5,000 jobs and $200 million in annual sales. Bill Bynum (ph), the CEO and president of ECD, is here. We thank him for being here today. (APPLAUSE) Today, corporations present -- represented here with me are going to invest $14 million more in the ECD so they'll have more money to loan out to people here to create more jobs. Today, around the country, there will be about $150 million more announced to be invested in organizations like this. In addition to that, I'm trying to get Congress to pass a bill which will give tax incentives, tax credits and loan guarantees to people to invest in the Delta and other poor areas of America just like they get today to invest in poor areas around the world. I think that it's a good thing we encourage people to invest in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, but they ought to have the same incentive to invest in the Mississippi Delta and Appalachia, in the Native American reservations and the inner city. (APPLAUSE) That is what we're trying to do here. We're trying to close what Reverend Jackson called the resource gap. Now let me say we've got a lot of other challenges in the Delta. We have a terrible crisis in American agriculture today. Last year we came up with billions of dollars to try to keep our farmers going. +++ Elapsed Time 00:07, Eastern Time 11:32 +++ This year we're going to have to do it all over again. They got a lot other problems, but fundamentally what I want America to know is that every place in the country, and today this place is full of good people, capable of doing good work, that can be trained to do any kind of work. And we are going to do everything we can in the government to give the financial incentives necessary for people to invest here. And I want to make the same point I made yesterday. Everybody in America has a selfish interest now in developing the Delta. Why? Because most economists believe that if we're going to keep our economic recovery going without inflation, the only way we can possibly do it is to find more customers for our products and then add more workers at home. If you come here, you get both in the same place. You get more workers and more consumers. So it's good for the rest of America as well. (APPLAUSE) So again I say, I am delighted to be here. CLINTON: I had a wonderful time in Memphis last night, but I ate too much. I'm sorry it's so hot, but I hope nobody passes out. And I want to give Secretary Slater now a chance to talk to our panelists, and then I want all of you to think about when we leave here what we can do to show people the opportunity that's here now and what you can do to help me pass on a bipartisan basis the necessary tax incentives and loan guarantees to say to any investor anywhere in America, if you come to the Mississippi Delta, you can get at least as good a deal as you could investing anywhere else in the world, and we're right here at home and we need you. Thank you very much. (APPLAUSE) END |
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MORE STORIES:Tuesday, July 6, 1999
• Clinton pushes for job, investment help in untapped markets • Has the vice presidential campaign begun yet? • Weicker mulls independent presidential bid in 2000 • GOP tax bill to include breaks for providers of long-term care • New focus on uninsured springs from patients' rights fight • Senate a haven for senior citizens • Bush success at fund raising makes money a top issue • Is the Medicare drug coverage Clinton proposes a good deal? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
