    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [September 18, 1995]
    [Pages 1367-1368]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1367]]

    Remarks Prior to a Meeting With Community Leaders in Philadelphia,
    Pennsylvania
    September 18, 1995

        First of all, let me say to all of you how much I appreciate your
    taking the time to come here and discuss this with me today. To all who
    have spoken, I appreciate the kind remarks you had about the efforts of
    the administration.
        I think the time and effort we have put in on this is not so much
    rooted in the political party I happen to belong to as the fact that I
    happen to have been a Governor for a dozen years, and I have closed
    defense bases. And I have also worked for a decade on trying to
    restructure the economy of a State that was devastated in the first big
    recession of the early eighties. And if you look at the challenge to
    America of creating jobs and raising incomes that we faced here in 1993,
    when I became President, it is obvious that--it was obvious to me then;
    it's more obvious to me now--that general policies that may generate an
    enormous amount of economic opportunity will still leave great pockets
    of problems, rooted primarily in America today in two things: one is the
    general distress of isolated urban and rural areas, and second and to
    the point here, the aggravated impact in some areas of the defense
    cutbacks in terms of base closings and the defense contracts being cut.
        So in 1993, we developed a plan to try to accelerate the rate by
    which we could turn over these facilities to localities so we could
    begin more quickly to generate jobs. And then, in 1994, we gave, I
    think, some of the property here at the Philadelphia Naval Yard. And now
    what I'm interested in doing is finding out what the remaining problems
    are, what I can do to accelerate it.
        I do believe that we have, as the mayor said, committed over $100
    million to this project. That's not counting the approximately $170
    million in loan guarantees we were prepared to come forward with through
    NARAD if this shipbuilding project goes forward. I think that is an
    appropriate thing for our country to do for a naval yard that built and
    repaired ships for this country throughout virtually its entire history
    and for the workers who have given their entire lives to this work.
        I would like to emphasize that we have also had a very strong
    interest in maintaining and enhancing the shipbuilding capacity of the
    United States. I believe that the international economics have changed
    on that. I think we have opportunities we simply did not have 10 years
    ago. I have seen, because of our efforts and also because of the
    international market and because of the increasing productivity of
    American workers, I have seen a major facility saved in southern
    California; I have seen new contracts from around the world come to the
    Gulf Coast and to the Atlantic Coast. And so, again, I think that this
    project is really worth pressing.
        I think trying to maintain these kinds of jobs for the people here
    is not an unrealistic expectation in the world as it exists today and
    the future as far as we can foresee it. So I would encourage you to do
    that.
        One last thing I'd like to say is that we really want to help you do
    what you want to do. My strong belief is that the Federal Government
    works best, in economic areas and quite often in social policy, when we
    are giving help, giving encouragement, being a partner, but the ultimate
    decisions are being made by people at the grassroots level.
        I just visited a part of Philadelphia that's in your empowerment
    zone today, and the same philosophy for me holds there. In our education
    reforms we've tried to do that. Tomorrow, Governor, we're going to
    announce the next round of grants for the school-to-work project, which
    is developing training programs for people who don't go to 4-year
    colleges. And Pennsylvania will get about $6.5 million in that. Again,
    projects designed by Pennsylvanians for your State, not something that
    somebody in Washington decided that you ought to be doing.
        I also would like to say a special word of thanks to Dr. Singerman
    for leaving the Ben Franklin Partnership and coming to work for us. Now,
    if you don't like what we're doing, you can blame him instead of me.
    [Laughter] And you can literally say that he knows better--[laughter]--
    because of his long experience with you. We thank you.

    [[Page 1368]]

        And the last thing I'd like to say is, again, I want to say a
    special word of thanks to the Members of Congress here and to you,
    Senator Specter, for the work you have done to try to give us a chance
    to develop a bipartisan economic policy, to get the people in this
    country through the economic transition period that we now see underway.
        And lastly, let me just say there can be light at the end of the
    tunnel. I was in northern California a few days ago. There is an airbase
    there that was closed--an Army base--a few years ago that now has far
    more employees than it did on the day that it closed. We are on the
    verge of doing that in three or four other places--and the same or
    higher quality jobs, not just more jobs.
        We can do this here, and we can do it more quickly if we can figure
    out how to serve you better and, obviously, if we could get one big
    project early, a magnet project. All these big developments always work
    better if you can get somebody to anchor it early.
        So I want to be there; I want to help. And I thank you for all that
    you've done so far.
        Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 5:23 p.m. at the Wyndham Franklin Plaza
    Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Phillip A. Singerman, nominee to
    be Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development.