[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.