[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George H. W. Bush (1992, Book I)]
[May 12, 1992]
[Pages 749-751]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks on Urban Aid Initiatives and an Exchange With Reporters

May 12, 1992
    The President. I will be talking to the leadership in a few minutes, 
and we will be proposing these initiatives, all of them designed to 
increase personal responsibility, offer hope to these communities. And 
it's a good program.
    I think most are familiar with ``Weed and Seed,'' to weed out the 
criminals and then seed the neighborhoods. We talked about this up in 
Philadelphia yesterday and in Los Angeles last week, and I think there's 
strong support for this program.
    HOPE is a homeownership program. And we believe that owning the home 
is the best way to strengthen the family and to give the community 
stability.
    On enterprise zones, that almost is universally accepted now. It's a 
proposal that will bring businesses, act like a magnet to bring 
businesses into these communities. We are going to increase the 
attractiveness of this proposal that we've had up there. But in any 
event, it's going to be--I think it will be accepted by the Congress. 
We're going to push hard for it, as we will for the others.
    I think most are familiar in the country now with our America 2000, 
but again, we believe that educational choice will help. This is a 
little longer range proposal, but it fits in. Without education, we are 
not going to restore hope to our cities.
    Welfare reform is important. We're going to go forward not just with 
waivers that encourage work- and learning-fare, but we're going to try 
to broaden out the amount of monies that a family can keep before they 
have to go off of welfare. I believe the limit now is $1,000, and I 
think we're talking now about $10,000, which would say to a person, if 
you save anything, you're not going to be thrown off of welfare right 
away.
    Then on a youth job program, we have a program of $683 million, I 
believe it is. But with our apprentice program and our job opportunity 
program that I've announced and that we talked about down there in terms 
of job training, we want to go forward with some new legislation on 
that.
    All of these are designed to restore hope and to bring some cohesion 
to these communities and offer these young people some opportunities. So 
I will be taking this to the

[[Page 750]]

leadership; in the spirit of working together, I hope we can get it 
done.
    Q. Is there anything new, and does it require----
    The President. These are all new. Most of these--well, ``Weed and 
Seed'' is in operation now a little bit. There are some model grants 
right now. Philadelphia is working on one. But all of these need to be 
tried. They're all new in a way, yes.
    Q. New monies?
    The President. Yes. Well, we'll be asking for some.
    Q. Price tag, please?
    The President. On what?
    Q. On this whole program, on your agenda.
    The President. I don't know that I can give you the price tag on the 
whole program. I've written down some numbers. On the ``Weed and Seed,'' 
for example, with going up from the model demonstrations of nine to, I 
believe, half a billion dollars, that's new.
    Q. That's the same figure, though, that was announced in February, 
the $500 million.
    The President. We haven't gotten it yet. It's new. It has not been 
enacted. This has not been done. A proposal that hasn't been tried is 
new. We need to try these new ideas; that's the figure.
    Q. And where----
    Q. Sir, did I understand you to say you were going to give the 
families going off of welfare $10,000?
    The President. No. I think what it is now is that if you save more 
than $1,000, you're off of welfare. We're talking about making it 
$10,000 so people can at least save a little bit of money while they're 
on welfare.
    HOPE, $1 billion in '93, that's what we're asking for.
    Enterprise zones, it's hard to put a price on that because we are 
trying to make it more attractive in terms of how the tax structure will 
treat these investors. But there's no price tag on that one. It is a 
very, very important part of it.
    Education, you know the numbers there, I think. We're not asking for 
anything different than we've proposed on that one.
    Welfare reform, I've told you the difference there.
    And on youth jobs there's, I think it's 683 for the summer, and now 
we're going up for new authorization on youth apprenticeship and Job 
Training 2000.
    Q. Mr. President, where would this money come from? The Democrats 
say that if you're serious about this program, that you would agree to 
either a tax increase or reducing even further the Pentagon budget.
    The President. I don't think the American people need to pay more 
taxes right now. I think this is a good program. It is coming from 
within the budget. Some of it, as I say, is asked for new authority in 
fiscal '93, but the idea that you have to raise taxes at this time when 
the economy is just starting to recover, I'm sorry, I will not support 
that.
    Q. But then where would the money come from specifically?
    The President. You will have to ask Dick Darman to tell you because 
it's all in the very complicated budget proposal.
    Q. Would you give us a little more detail about that welfare, going 
off of welfare?
    The President. Well, you know, I think----
    Q. You think people can save up to $10,000 before they go off of 
welfare?
    The President. No, I just think that that's a good thing for them to 
be able to do. That's not going to get them off of welfare. What's going 
to get them off of welfare is jobs, and that's what all this is designed 
to do, is to create jobs in the private sector. Now there are summer job 
programs, but we are trying to work to bring hope to the cities.
    You know, it's very interesting to me that the community workers in 
both Los Angeles and Philadelphia, heavily impacted areas, are saying 
now is the time to try enterprise zones. We think they'll act like a 
magnet to bring private business into these areas of despair, and it 
ought to be tried. It is new, and it has not been tried at the Federal 
level.
    Q. Did it take riots to do all this for all of you?
    The President. No, because as you know and have been pointing out to 
me, some of these things have been proposed before. But we're going to 
now fight for them to

[[Page 751]]

get them passed. I'm going in there in a couple of minutes in the spirit 
of cooperation, holding out my hand to Congress and saying, ``Look, 
let's not try to get credit; let's try to get something done for this 
country. Get it back to work, help these cities.'' And I think this is a 
good program, and the fact that some of these ideas have been proposed 
before and have not been enacted does not mean that they're not new. 
They are new.

Race Relations

    Q. Mr. President, how are you going to address the racial divisions 
and racial misunderstandings in this country?
    The President. Speak out against it as I've been doing and continue 
to. And I think that's the best thing a President can do, speak out 
against bigotry and racial hatred. I believe I've been doing that over 
and over again, and I'll keep doing it.

U.N. Conference on Environment

    Q. The Secretary-General of the U.N. Is here today. Have you decided 
to go to Rio? Are you going to tell him that you're going to Rio?
    The President. Stay tuned. We'll talk about that when I see him.

Cooperation With Congress

    Q. Sir, will you be listening to the Democratic proposals as well? I 
know some match, but----
    The President. Yes, some match. And certainly what we want to do is 
find common ground and move this country forward. And I think we've got 
to do that, Helen [Helen Thomas, United Press International].

HOPE

    Q. Can you give us a little more detail on number two?
    The President. Homeownership?
    Q. Yes.
    The President. Well, it's just simply a question of encouraging 
people to own their own homes instead of building more projects. You 
know, some accuse us of pulling back on housing funds. That is not 
correct. Now, we don't believe that building these projects is the 
answer. We want to see the money going into tenant management and 
homeownership.
    Thank you all very much. We've got to get ready for the meeting.

Philadelphia and Los Angeles

    Q. How did you like Philadelphia? Pretty bad, huh?
    The President. Interesting, though. Golly, I like the spirit of the 
people. But yes, the last part was more desolate than the first part. 
But the first part showed that the police getting involved like that 
made a tremendous difference on the drug fight. The message was very, 
very encouraging and upbeat. We would go out into these satellite 
precinct stations, and it was wonderful.
    Incidentally, in here I have not talked about the things we have 
done in terms of dollars for Los Angeles up to now, some $600 million-
plus, not counting the law enforcement part of that. So there's a 
substantial amount of money going into L.A. that I----
    Q. Do you think, though, that the riots are going to at least make 
it more possible for these programs to be accepted?
    The President. I hope so. I think so. Yes, I do, because I think 
people are saying we've got to do something new. And I hear that from 
both sides of the aisle, so we'll see.

Cooperation With Congress

    Q. Are you willing to meet the Democrats halfway, sir, compromise?
    The President. I don't know what that means. I'm willing to try to 
get some new programs going, and these are the ones I'm going to push. 
So I don't know what halfway is on a proposal like that.
    Q. Is this a new, new you?
    The President. No, same me. [Laughter] Actually, it's not a bad way 
to do it.
    Q. You like being conciliatory, don't you?
    The President. I've always been that way, Helen; you've known that 
for years.

                    Note: The President spoke at 9:35 a.m. in the Oval 
                        Office at the White House, prior to a meeting 
                        with congressional leaders. Part of this 
                        exchange could not be verified because the tape 
                        was incomplete.