[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
[May 4, 1993]
[Pages 555-561]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Teleconference Remarks on Empowerment Zones and an Exchange With 
Reporters
May 4, 1993

    The President. So we've got L.A., Kentucky, Chicago, Baltimore, 
York, and New York.
    Q. Sounds like a good lineup.
    The President. Sounds like a good lineup to me. I want to thank you 
all for joining me today. As you know, I have a new proposal we're going 
to be discussing this morning that I believe is a fundamental departure 
from traditional programs offered by Democratic administrations and 
fundamentally different from the previous enterprise zone proposals 
offered by recent Republican administrations.
    All of you represent areas of the country that, while unique, are 
each joined together by a common need. The economic potential of your 
areas, like other urban and rural communities, is still stifled because 
you lack the investment capital you need and a comprehensive strategy 
for jobs and growth. What we want to do is to help you to revive your 
communities economically. And our proposals for empowerment zones and 
enterprise neighborhoods we believe is the right way to begin.
    Federal aid to these areas is certainly not new, but in the past it 
hasn't always worked. There has often been no coordinated strategy for 
using the Federal money. Your growth has been restrained by a maze of 
Federal regulations and the need to appeal to an array of Federal 
Agencies. And these factors have contributed to an unwillingness on the 
part of too many companies to invest in your areas.
    We're trying to change all of that. We begin with a challenge: Under 
our program not a single dollar will go out without a coordinated 
strategy developed at the grassroots level. Yet your communities enjoy 
immense and committed talent at that level. Our plan proposes a 
partnership between local organizations so that they can coordinate the 
use of Federal, State, and local resources.
    I know that your areas need investment capital, both public and 
private. Our proposal provides targeted investment incentives to draw 
investment dollars into distressed urban and rural communities. Your 
areas deal with a confusing maze of Agencies and regulations. This 
proposal features a single point of contact so that the Federal 
Government contributes to rather than stifles the rebirth of your 
communities. We're going to streamline regulations, rules, and paperwork 
so that we reward initiative at the local level.
    These are innovations and new approaches. They're going to result in 
new economic growth, opportunity, and hope in areas long denied their 
piece of the American dream. And just as your local communities will 
have a chance to participate in the planning of their economic revival, 
we also want to offer you a chance now to discuss the economic 
challenges you face, to discuss this new effort to participate in the 
revival of your communities.
    I just want to emphasize two or three things here. First of all, we 
do propose to do something that I discussed with the Mayors a few months 
ago, or several weeks ago, and that is to focus the limited money we 
have to spend here in terms of tax incentives and investments on, first 
of all, 10 empowerment zones that will get an enormous amount of 
concentrated effort to see if it works, a wage credit, credits for 
equipment, credits for rehabilitating existing housing. With a bottom-up 
community-based strategy and with a lot of waiver authority, we're going 
to set up an enterprise board that will provide communities the 
opportunity to come and get waivers from all these Federal rules and 
regulations. I think that's very important.
    In addition to that, we're going to have 100 more enterprise 
communities that will be targets for our other community investments, 
like the Federal funds we're going to spend on setting up community 
policing to make the streets safer, the initiative we're going to have 
in community development banks, and any number of other initiatives 
we're going to have coming out of this Government. Those 100 communities 
will

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be target areas for getting first crack at them.
    So I think that this is the sort of thing that will really support 
what a lot of you have been doing for a long time, cutting out a lot of 
the Federal rules and regulations, letting you consolidate the funds 
that you're getting from these different Government Agencies, and 
getting you the chance to develop a plan to develop your communities.
    I know it's consistent with what I always thought ought to be done 
when I was a Governor, and I think it will meet with a lot of support 
out in the country among Republicans and Democrats. And I hope we'll get 
that kind of bipartisan support here in the Congress. I think there's a 
good chance that we will.
    Well, I've already said a little more than I meant to. I'd like to 
now go to our cities and hear from them one at a time, and of course, 
the State of Kentucky, too. But let's begin with Los Angeles.
    Mayor Bradley?

[At this point, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley stated his support for the 
program. Brenda Shockley of Community Build and Tony Salazar of Rebuild 
L.A. then discussed what empowerment zones would do to assist their 
organizations.]

    The President. Thank you, Tom. And I want to thank Brenda and Tony 
for what they said. And I want to just emphasize that I think we've got 
the proper division of labor here. At the community level, you've got to 
provide for people who are chronically unemployed: job training, child 
care, and other supports. But those needs and the opportunity to meet 
them are going to be so different from community to community. And 
that's why I think it's so important that what we do here in terms not 
only of new investment but in letting you spend the money that is 
presently appropriated in the most flexible way will guarantee that that 
can be done.
    Then the other thing that I want to say, particularly in response to 
what Tony said with the Rebuild L.A. effort, we can't expect, it seems 
to me, a lot of new investment in a lot of our difficult areas until we 
do a couple of things that send the right signals to the private sector, 
which this plan does: first of all, that we appreciate the people who 
are there now and we recognize that they have a potential to expand 
employment in distressed communities, and we ought to take care of the 
people that are there now; and secondly, that the Government needs to 
take the lead in offering some significant tax incentives to people who 
will take an additional risk to try to give people a chance who haven't 
had a chance in a long time. And so those are the things that are part 
of this program. I'm very excited about it, and I'm glad you're so well 
organized to try to take advantage of it.
    Let's go on now to Governor Jones in Kentucky. We asked the Governor 
to join us because we wanted to emphasize that rural areas will be 
eligible to participate in both the empowerment zones and in the 
enterprise areas. And I know that Kentucky, like my home State, has a 
lot of very poor rural communities, and I wanted Governor Jones to have 
a chance to comment on this.
    Governor, can you hear us?

[Gov. Brereton C. Jones of Kentucky spoke in support of empowerment 
zones, streamlining Federal and State government operations, and the 
upcoming environmental conference, From Rio to the Capitals: State 
Strategies for Sustainable Development.]

    The President. Well, thank you very much. I'd just like to make a 
couple of comments about what you said. First of all, most of our 
listeners may know, but some may not, that you had a very distinguished 
career in business before you became the Governor of Kentucky or got 
into Kentucky politics.
    One of the things that I think all of us have noticed who have been 
Governors or Mayors is that an enormous amount of the money that's 
appropriated for special programs is often peeled off before it finally 
gets to its ultimate purpose by all the various administrative layers 
and regulatory requirements that are on the money. And one of the things 
that we're trying to do here by setting up this enterprise board and 
giving people the chance to come up with plans that would put a lot of 
these funds together is to make the money go a lot further. And it 
dovetails very well with what the Vice President is trying to do in 
looking at the whole structure of the Federal Government and how we can 
overhaul it.
    And we're up here now trying to cut spending dramatically and find 
some money to increase targeted investments in areas where we need it, 
to create jobs and improve education and

[[Page 557]]

explore new technologies. And I am convinced that one of the ways we're 
going to be able to both cut the spending programs that ought to be cut 
and increase investment is to get rid of a lot of the layers of 
regulation and management that we've had.
    The second point I want to make is about your conference coming up 
in May on sustainable development. One of our great challenges is to try 
to figure out how to improve the environment and improve the economy at 
the same time. And one of the clear areas of opportunity there that no 
one disagrees with is in the area of environmental cleanup in some of 
our most distressed urban and rural communities. And so I would hope 
that all the people on this telephone call today as well as all the 
people who will hear about this program and will file applications will 
look very closely at some of the environmental problems in their 
communities and at how many people can be put to work in cleaning those 
up and how that can be a part of the enterprise proposal, because that's 
clearly something that we need to do.
    Let's go into Chicago now. Mayor Daley is in Washington today, isn't 
he?

[Valerie Jarrett, Chicago commissioner of planning and development, 
discussed the city's holistic community-based approach to planning and 
development and the adverse impact of Federal regulations. Ted Wysocki, 
Chicago Association of Neighborhood Development Organizations (CANDO), 
then advocated legislation for abandoned land reuse, corporate community 
involvement tax credits, and grants for community projects.]

    The President. Thank you, Ted, and thank you, Valerie. Let me just 
respond to one or two of the things that you said. First of all, the 
comment Valerie made about diverse neighborhoods is clearly true. I have 
walked the streets in every community represented on this phone call 
today. And I remember being so impressed in Chicago more than a year ago 
at seeing some new housing construction in one of the Hispanic 
neighborhoods from a community group that was the lowest cost, highest 
efficiency housing I had ever seen in an urban area. And there are a lot 
of these things going on in our country today which need to be 
supported, not by uniform Federal programs.
    Secondly, I want to say that Mayor Daley was the first big-city 
Mayor to tell me, again more than a year ago, that an enormous amount of 
money being appropriated by the Congress was not being well spent 
because of all the rules and regulations and that we needed to focus 
first on getting more buying for the present dollar we're getting. And 
he cited me, chapter and verse, some of the things that you've mentioned 
today.
    Secondly, I want to say to Ted, I think we have got in our economic 
program and in this proposal significant incentives from our equity 
financing for economic development. But I will look at the ``Community 
Economic Partnership Act.'' And I do agree that we need to be actively 
involved in the cleanup of some of these sites that we can restore to 
industrial development in a lot of our urban areas if we can solve the 
environmental problems. I see this as a really big job generator for 
America over the next few years. It's a big problem just trying to find 
work for all of the people who want to go to work now in our country. 
It's a big problem worldwide. And the environmental cleanup and 
rehabilitation of a lot of these abandoned areas in our urban cities and 
in some of our small towns and rural areas, too, I think is very, very 
important. I thank you for that.
    Let's go on to Baltimore now. Mayor?
    Mayor Kurt Schmoke. Yes, sir. Good morning.
    The President. Are you really at the Parks Sausage Company?
    Mayor Schmoke. Absolutely. And Ray Haysbert, the chairman of Parks 
Sausage, is sitting right here next to me.
    The President. I want you to send me some. I admit that I am hereby 
asking for my own pork. [Laughter] I plead guilty.

[Mayor Schmoke stated his support for waivers to provide flexibility at 
the local level and advocated greater involvement of the Justice 
Department in community policing as part of community development 
initiatives. Raymond Haysbert, chairman, Parks Sausage Co., then 
endorsed the President's community development strategy and his efforts 
to restructure Government.]

    The President. Thank you, Raymond. I've been very impressed with the 
work that the Baltimore Economic Development Corporation has done there. 
And I know you've had a lot of attention to the work that's been done 
there over the last few years. It's evidence that if you've got some 
committed people and some land and some physical structures, that you 
can

[[Page 558]]

really do things to put people to work back in cities and in areas where 
others have given up.
    I think that all anybody has to do is go out there and see--I think 
you've got, my staff has said, about 1,400 people working in the 
industrial park now, and all the different businesses generating taxes, 
attracting private investment. That's the sort of thing we're going to 
have to do. The Government doesn't have enough money to solve this 
problem. We've got to leverage what resources we have to get private 
sector people like you to come in and put folks to work. And I really 
thank you on that.
    And Mayor Schmoke, I should have depended on you as an old 
prosecutor to mention the Justice Department, but I want to assure you 
that the Justice Department is an integral part of this project. These 
cities, both the empowerment zones and the enterprise cities, will be 
considered for priorities for community policing, for alternative 
punishments, for institutions like the drug court which Janet Reno 
helped to set up in Miami, all things which really help communities 
become safer and handle their crime and drug problems better, as well as 
for community development banks and some of the initiatives that we're 
going to have to try to bring capital into these areas.
    But the Justice Department will be a big part of that. And she's 
very excited about it. You'll be able to talk to her about it today. But 
we think there are a lot of things the Justice Department can do to make 
both the perception and the reality of safer streets and safer 
communities a big asset in developing the economy and putting people to 
work.
    Mayor Schmoke. Thanks, Mr. President.
    The President. York? Mayor Althaus, are you on the phone?
    Mayor Bill Althaus. I sure am, Mr. President.
    The President. The first night I spent on my bus trip was York, 
Pennsylvania.

[Mayor Althaus, chairman of U.S. Conference of Mayors, endorsed the 
President's urban strategy. Robert Simpson, executive director, 
Christmas Addicts Neighborhood Association, then advocated cutting 
redtape and implementing a grassroots approach to community 
development.]

    The President. Thank you, Robert. You know, I think you might be 
able to be a model for what we're trying to do in some other cities. But 
I'm sure that this works.
    A few years ago as Governor, I set up a program quite similar to 
this in our poorest counties, and I required all of them to come up with 
community-based development plans and then we worked hard to try to make 
sure all the resources of the State were put at their disposal. And we 
even got the Federal Agencies involved. But I always had the feeling 
that we could have done so much more if the Federal Government had been 
able to fully join our efforts. But I'm very impressed by what you've 
done there.
    I want to say a special word of thanks to you, Mayor Althaus. You 
know, we find, I think, that partisan differences tend to evaporate the 
further you get away from Washington. And when more people get down to 
the grassroots and have to face each other across the table and deal 
with real problems, it's obvious that there are certain things that work 
and certain things that don't, and people tend to work on what works.
    I can't tell you how much respect I have for the leadership you've 
given the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the willingness that you have 
expressed to work with us in trying to find American solutions to these 
problems. I am convinced that at the very basic human level we need to 
make a departure from the approaches of the past. And you've been 
willing to do that, and I take my hat off to you. And I hope that we can 
do that more and more and more on all these problems, because a lot of 
these problems are America's problems, and they don't have a partisan 
label after them. And I think if all of us take our blinders off and 
roll our sleeves up, we'll get a lot further. And I really appreciate 
you.
    Thank you.
    Mayor Althaus. Mr. President, thank you. I have to say, the 
partisanship in Washington is not at your end of Pennsylvania Avenue 
right now. It's really not. It's been a joy working with you.
    The President. Thank you, Mayor.
    New York?
    Mayor David Dinkins. Yes, sir.
    The President. Hello, Mayor.

[New York City Mayor Dinkins complimented the President on members of 
the administration, discussed the success of New York City's community 
policing effort, and stated his support for the empowerment initiative. 
David Jones,

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president and chief executive officer of the Community Service Society, 
then stated his support for the President's approach to community 
development and administration initiatives on health care reform, job 
training, and voluntarism.]

    The President. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, David Jones.
    Let me just comment first on what Mr. Jones said. I think we do have 
to provide some assistance to build up these community-based, nonprofit 
organizations. And I do think the National Government has to take the 
lead in health care, in trying to put together the kind of system that 
will work on job training and apprenticeship programs, as well as trying 
to take a little different direction, as you know I feel we should, on 
the drug front. And that's one reason I asked Lee Brown to be the drug 
czar.
    But I'm also convinced that if we do this, that building these 
things at the grassroots level and having everything driven by that is 
the only way to ever get anything done, in my opinion. You know, we've 
got to help people to help themselves, and that's what this whole thing 
is about.
    The other point I wanted to make in response to what you said, Mayor 
Dinkins, is, first of all, thank you for the compliments on the people 
in my administration. Andrew Cuomo had a lot to do with putting this 
initiative together, and he's sitting here in the Oval Office with me. 
Actually, he's standing in the back, so he grew about 4 inches when you 
were bragging on him in front of America.
    Mayor Dinkins. Very good.
    The President. And I thank you for that. And let me again once again 
emphasize that I am convinced that the experience of New York in 
community policing demonstrates beyond anything I could say that if we 
can put these programs in place in all the major neighborhoods of this 
country that have crime problems, we would immediately make them not 
only more livable and more attractive, we would make them far more apt 
to get private investment.
    This is a huge economic issue as well as a personal security issue. 
And that's why we've just got to wrap the Justice Department and crime 
control initiatives into this whole effort. If we don't do it, we can't 
be successful in some areas, and if we do, of course, the flip side is 
that we can.
    I want to thank all of you so much for giving me a little of your 
time today and for your support of this initiative. I hope you'll talk 
to your colleagues across the country, to the Members of Congress, and 
again reach out across party and other lines and say this is something 
that will be good for America. I need your help now to pass it, and I'm 
ready to go to work to do that.
    Thank you very, very much.
    Mayor Dinkins. Thank you, Mr. President.
    The President. Goodbye.

[At this point, the teleconference ended, and the President took 
questions from reporters.]

White House Staff

    Q. Mr. President, now that you've had your--what changes do you plan 
in the White House staff to make your administration more effective?
    The President. Keep in mind that, before you ask that question, this 
administration is the only one in 17 years to pass a budget resolution 
within the legal time limit. Nearly as I can tell, we have put more 
major initiatives out there in 100 days than any of my recent 
predecessors, and we're working on some very major problems. So I think, 
on balance, the staff has done a good job.
    We've lost one initiative in the Congress that took way too long, 
dealing with a relatively small program to put some people to work. What 
I think we need to do, frankly, is to get the focus back on the things 
that I have been working on from the beginning, passing the major 
economic program, making sure the Congress will adopt the spending cuts, 
reaffirming that I have no interest in raising taxes until spending is 
cut--no tax increases without the spending cuts--getting the budget 
program so that we can keep interest rates down.
    I talked to more people today, just people around here; I asked how 
many people have refinanced any housing loans or other loans that save 
money on that. That's going to be the biggest stimulus we can ever 
provide if we can keep the interest rates down with deficit reduction. 
And then going on to health care and passing these empowerment 
initiatives, that's the one we're here talking about today.
    So will we make any changes in the way our process works, to try and 
improve it? I hope we can make some. We've got that under review. We've 
been discussing it for, oh, about

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5 weeks now: What we can do to be more effective. After all, I just got 
here. I've never operated here before, and there are some things that 
are very different about the way Washington works, some good and some 
not so good.
    But I think we're on the right track, and I just want to focus now 
on the work before us, which is passing this budget. If we don't pass 
the final budget with the spending cuts and the revenue increases and 
keep them focused on the people who got all the benefits out of the 
eighties, having the upper income people pay the vast bulk of the load 
but not taxing them until the spending cuts were in place, that's what I 
think we have to do now. And that's what I'm focusing on.
    Q. Specifically, sir, will Mack McLarty be hiring a deputy to 
tighten things up in the operation?
    The President. One of the things that we've looked at--keep in mind 
one of my first spending cuts was committing by the end of the next 
fiscal year to have a White House staff that was 25 percent smaller than 
my predecessor's. But when I got to looking at it, every other Chief of 
Staff has always had basically three major; the recent ones, at least 
have had three major aides, and Mack's been functioning with one. So I'm 
trying to figure out how to give him at least one more. He still 
wouldn't have as many--if he had two instead of three, he wouldn't have 
as many as most of his predecessors have.
    But we think that there needs to be a little tighter coordination 
here to make sure that we've got our priorities straight and that those 
priorities are communicated all the way down to the staff, and a little 
better focus. One of the things that you risk when you try to get a lot 
of things going in a hurry--and we tried to get a lot of things going in 
a hurry because 4 years passes in a hurry--is that you wind up having 
people work very, very hard, but maybe getting a little out of focus. 
And I think we can tighten the focus a little, and I think that's what 
we ought to do.

The Economy

    Q. Leading economic indicators are pretty grim. Do you think 
anything beyond what you've done, the empowerment zones, the economic 
stimulus package, has it got you thinking about either delaying the tax 
cuts further or any other kind of emergency push at this point?
    The President. I'll answer the specific question first. The best 
thing we can do for the economy this year, this year, is to clearly pass 
a multiyear deficit reduction plan because of what it will do to 
interest rates. As Americans borrow money at lower rates or refinance 
their existing debt, the economists estimate that over the next year and 
a half, that will put $110 billion back into this economy if we can get 
the interest rates down. That's a huge stimulant to the economy, totally 
in private sector investment to refinancing debt.
    So my present feeling is that we have got to pass the multiyear 
deficit reduction package, which requires the spending cuts first and 
the tax increases, focused on people who have basically benefited from 
the last 12 years of lower taxes. Now, I think we're going to have to--
we need to pass that, keep the interest rates down, and see what 
happens.
    What I tried to do was make a down payment on the jobs plan. And I 
still would say what I've been saying since--well, all last year and 
even after the election, I tried to say that we were part of a global 
economy, where there was a lot of economic slowdown in Europe and 
elsewhere, and that people could not expect immediate results, and we 
were going to have to really focus on what it took to create jobs.
    I will say that again: My major focus--if I can pass the budget, 
then we will move on to health care and job creation. And I think that 
we may try a lot of things over the next 4 years because we're in a 
period of new and different economic forces which are all working to 
make it more challenging for us to create large numbers of new jobs.
    But I'm not at all surprised. I started saying back in November that 
there's too much recession in the rest of the economy, and we have cut 
defense spending in America without offsetting investments in our people 
and new jobs on the civilian front. And we were being burdened by 
enormous debt. But I can't tell you that I think we ought to come off 
the deficit reduction. I think bringing that deficit down and keeping 
interest rates down is the best investment program we've got right now.
    But we are going to have to keep our ears and eyes open, because 
this is a new and difficult and unprecedented time, and we've got to put 
the work of the American people first. So I wouldn't rule out anything 
down the road, but I'm confident we need to pass the budget

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first.

Bosnia

    Q. Are there special forces in Bosnia on the ground?
    The President. There aren't any. I saw the report, Ron [Ron 
Fournier, Associated Press]. I don't know what the basis of it is. I 
have not authorized that at all.

Note: The teleconference began at 10:30 a.m. The President spoke from 
the Oval Office at the White House. In his remarks, he referred to 
Andrew Cuomo, Assistant Secretary-designate for Community Planning and 
Development at HUD. A portion of the teleconference could not be 
verified because the tape was incomplete.