[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
[January 25, 1996]
[Pages 96-102]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the U.S. Conference of Mayors
January 25, 1996

    Mayor Rice; Mayor Daley; Mayor Helmke, my old classmate, it's good 
to see you here. Mr. Vice President, you are the only person in the 
country that could have transformed a straight-man routine into the best 
comedy act in America. [Laughter]
    I used to be able to be on a platform with someone I liked, and when 
they cracked a joke, I'd just write it down. And when no one else was 
looking I would use it. [Laughter] All of his jokes are now so carefully 
bound to the persona he has created--[laughter]--they aren't stealable. 
They don't even need to be patented anymore. [Laughter]
    We are, all of us, very glad to have you here. I speak for Secretary 
Cisneros, Secretary Pena, for Carol Browner. We're glad to have you here 
in your house.
    I want to say a word of thanks to Tom Cochran for being a good 
representative of your interests and your concerns and of working so 
closely with Marcia Hale and others here in

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the White House. I want to thank you for the work you do every day and 
for so many of you who have made me feel welcome over the last 3 years 
as I've come to your cities.
    As I said in the State of the Union a couple of days ago, the state 
of the Union is strong. We have the lowest combined rates of 
unemployment and inflation we've had in 27 years. We've had 7.8 million 
new jobs. Those big numbers don't mean much to people; they really want 
to know how they are doing in their communities, ``How is it on my 
block?'' But I think we can take some encouragement from knowing that 
the unemployment rate has dropped 3\1/2\ percent in Detroit; it's about 
4\1/2\ percent total in Chicago; it's dropped to under 5 percent in 
Philadelphia; 2 percent decline in Los Angeles; 2\1/2\ percent decline 
in New York. We could go through city and city and community after 
community to say that. That is good news.
    It is good news that our country is helping peace to take root 
around the world, from the Middle East to Bosnia. It is good news that 
all over our country we see a lot of the social indicators that have 
troubled so many of us for so long turning around. The crime rate, the 
welfare rolls, the food stamp rolls, the poverty rate, the teen 
pregnancy rate, all down over the last 2 to 3 years; that is very, very 
good news.
    But we also know that we've got a lot of work to do. And we know the 
world is changing very quickly. And we know that there are an awful lot 
of Americans that have not been privileged to participate in this 
recovering economy. And we know that saying that all these things are 
going down masks the fact that the crime rate, the welfare rolls, the 
food stamp rates, the poverty rolls, the teen pregnancy rates, they're 
all still far too high, unacceptably high.
    In the State of the Union Address, as I was preparing for it, I 
really tried to say to myself, if I were in anybody's living room, what 
would I say to them? If I were just talking to one family about what the 
future of our country would be like 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 
20 years from now, what is it I would say that we have to do to keep the 
American dream alive for all of our people, to keep this country coming 
together and moving together around its basic values, and to maintain 
the leadership of the United States in the world?
    That is what I tried to talk about on Tuesday night. I think we 
should start with our families because we know now that families that 
work together and stay together are almost never in poverty. We know 
that their children are far less likely to have the problems which have 
consumed so much of our time and our emotions and so much of the public 
treasure.
    An important part of helping our families is passing the right kind 
of welfare reform, not the wrong kind of welfare reform. I believe, 
since almost every parent in America has to work to make ends meet, 
whether in a one-or a two-parent household, it is perfectly acceptable 
to require people on welfare who can work to work. I think we ought to 
do that. We ought to be moving people from dependence to independence. 
But it's also important to remember that we want people to succeed as 
parents and as workers, and that all of us have--our first job is to our 
children.
    That's why I say that I hope we can reach a bipartisan agreement on 
a welfare reform bill that will be very tough when it comes to work 
requirements and time limits and child support enforcement, but will 
understand we need adequate child care and we need adequate support for 
those children because what we really want in America is for every 
single parent to be able to succeed at home and at work.
    The second great challenge we have is to provide our people with the 
educational opportunities they need for the 21st century. The 1990 
census had, if you went through all of the data, it had one stunning 
piece of information that I personally felt was the most important 
information I got out of the '90 census. It was the first time we could 
see from 1990 and 1980, looking backward, one clear reason for the 
growing inequality in America. Why were so many middle class people 
working harder and harder and not getting ahead? Why was the rising tide 
not lifting all boats? If you look at the '90 census, you will see 
Americans who had at least 2 years of education after high school tended 
to get jobs that they were able to keep, where the incomes tended to 
grow; those who didn't were in the other boat.
    We have got to create a whole set of opportunities in education that 
will sustain the American dream for everyone. We've got to get more 
parents and teachers able to run their own schools and able to have 
flexibility from redtape, but they ought to have national standards of 
excellence and a recognized way of measuring it, and people should be 
held accountable for re-


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sults; more flexibility to meet higher standards. And one of the things 
that we can do together, one of the things the National Government can 
do is to implement this initiative that the Vice President has worked 
with the telecommunications industry to develop to hook up every school 
and every library in America to the Internet by the year 2000, every 
single classroom, and make sure that we not only have a hookup but that 
we have good software and skilled teachers, so that every single one of 
our children will be part of the information age. We're committed to 
that.
    The third thing I think we have to recognize is that in this 
increasingly mobile economy we have to redefine what security means to a 
working family. It's amazing, the Fortune 500 companies keep laying off 
people, but there have been more people hired by just--only by 
businesses owned by women in the last 3 years than have been laid off by 
the Fortune 500. Interesting statistic. There is that much dynamism in 
this economy. And all this change is real exciting, unless--except in 
the times when you come out on the short end. Golly, elections are 
exciting, unless you don't win them. [Laughter] Then they're less 
interesting.
    So the big picture is very exciting. But we have always recognized 
that the American people who are working hard and playing by the rules, 
obeying the law, and doing the very best they could were entitled to 
some level of security.
    Let me just give you one example about how the old security systems 
don't work. And a lot of you, particularly before you became public 
officials, I'm sure were involved in the unemployment system as 
employers or employees, where you paid--if you were an employer you paid 
tax to the unemployment system. The unemployment system was a great idea 
the way it worked for decades. You paid the money in, and then when 
times were tough and you had to lay your workers off they could at least 
draw a living wage, a little less than they were making but a living 
wage, until you called them back.
    For decades, 85 percent of the people who were laid off from work 
were called back to the job from which they were laid off. Today, over 
80 percent of the people who are laid off are not called back to the job 
from which they were laid off because of the changes in the economy. So 
how do we deal with that?
    For decades people had a pension they could rely on in addition to 
Social Security if they worked for a big company because they knew 
they'd go to work for one company and they'd stay there until their work 
career was over. And the same thing with health insurance. But a million 
people in America lost their health insurance in the last 2 years, and 
we've had real trouble trying to maintain the integrity of pension 
systems. In December of 1994, an almost unanimous vote of the Congress 
in both parties basically stabilized the pensions of 8 million Americans 
that were in real trouble and 32 million more that could have gotten in 
trouble.
    So how are we going to define this kind of security for the working 
families that you represent? I think, at a minimum, we have to do the 
following things:
    We have to give people access to affordable health insurance that 
they don't lose when they change jobs or when somebody in their family 
gets sick. And there's a bipartisan bill before the Congress today which 
they could adopt which would do that.
    Secondly, we ought to recognize that people know their own best 
interests when they're laid off, and we ought to do what we can to move 
help to them as quickly as possible. And what I favor doing is 
collapsing 70 of the Government's training programs, which were each 
developed for little problems--collapse them, put the big pot of money 
there, and when somebody in your community is laid off or is grossly 
underemployed and they would qualify for these training programs, 
instead of having to figure out what training program for which they 
should sign up, just send them a voucher and let them go to the local 
community college or whatever training institute is there.
    Then the third thing I think we have to do is to figure out a way to 
make it easier for small businesses, and farmers particularly, to take 
out their own pension plans for themselves and their employees. There's 
a bill in the Congress today--it hardly costs any money, but it would 
make some changes. I think--it was one of the top three or four 
priorities of the White House Conference on Small Business. It would 
make some changes which would make it possible for almost every business 
that could possibly afford to do it, including a lot of them that cannot 
even afford the legal costs today, to begin a pension program.

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    So these are good beginnings. And they would strengthen your 
communities by enabling your families that are working out there in this 
more dynamic economy to succeed.
    The fourth thing we have to do is do a better job of helping you to 
bring the crime rate down. But you--this is a great success story in 
America. The crime rate is going down in most communities in this 
country, thanks to the efforts that you and your police chiefs, your 
police officers, and your community leaders are making. Finally, a 
couple of weeks ago, there was a big cover story in one of our major 
magazines acknowledging that, saying we can have some hope that we can 
drive crime down.
    Yesterday I was with Mayor Abramson in Louisville, and we sat and 
talked to the citizens and the community police officers that were 
working together in Louisville. Just a few days ago I was with Mayor 
Lanier in Houston. We were conducting a funeral service for our friend 
Barbara Jordan. And he was telling me about the work that they have done 
there to drive down juvenile crime. They have 3,000 young people in a 
soccer program. And 2,500 of them get their uniforms and shoes from the 
city. They are kids that would never otherwise be able to afford to 
participate in that sort of activity.
    These things are going on all over our country, and we are taking 
our streets back. And I want to say a little bit about this because this 
is--the model we've had together in fighting crime is the model that I 
believe we should try to replicate in other places. We've worked 
together. We passed the crime bill of 1994. We passed the Brady bill. 
That needed to be a national law, uniform standards; 44,000 people with 
criminal records have not gotten handguns as a result of it. We passed 
the assault weapons ban. That needed to be a national law. It wouldn't 
be worth--you know, a city ordinance on assault weapons? A State law on 
assault weapons? It wouldn't have worked.
    We passed the crime bill, and we said, ``Okay, this money can only 
be used for police,'' but that needed to be a national standard. Why? 
Because for 30 years we saw the violent crime rate triple, and the 
aggregate size of America's police force only went up 10 percent. But 
the Attorney General worked very hard to clean away all the sort of 
bureaucratic hassles to getting the money. No one said--the cities 
decided whom to hire, how to train them, where they'll be deployed, how 
they'll work. The cities decide what the relationship with the 
communities are. You make all the decisions of any significance within 
the framework of saying we've got to go to community policing, we've got 
to drive this crime rate down.
    That is the kind of community-based partnership that I think ought 
to be the model. And the results are pretty hard to quarrel with, as all 
of you know. Now, the only thing I want to say about that is we have 
made progress bringing the crime rate down, but everybody knows it's 
still too high. You go out and interview any 20 citizens in America, and 
they'll tell you it's still one of their deepest concerns.
    We have to keep working on this. What should our goal be? Our goal 
should be to make crime the exception rather than the rule. It's a 
simple goal. Our goal should be to make crime the exception rather than 
the rule so that people feel comfortable when their kids are on the 
street playing, people aren't afraid to walk down the street to the 
movie. We know that we will never abolish crime in America. You will 
never take--we can't transform what is inside every human being, but we 
could go back to a time when it's the exception rather than the rule. 
And we have to keep working until we achieve that goal.
    The other challenges that I put before the country were, obviously, 
the important ones that you've worked on: to make sure that we continue 
to protect the environment and that we find even more ways to grow the 
economy while we're cleaning up the environment instead of the reverse; 
to maintain our country's leadership in the world; and to give our 
Government greater and greater and greater capacity to do more while it 
costs less and serves the people better.
    And we don't have--the era of big Government is over, but the era of 
strong, effective Government in partnership with people is not over. 
We're not going back to a time when people can fend for themselves. Why 
do people come to cities in the first place? What do cities give people? 
The ability to make more of their lives together than they could if they 
were apart. I mean, the whole concept of cities is the symbol of what it 
is we ought to be trying to do in America. People live together because 
they think they'll all be better off than if they were all out somewhere 
else by themselves.
    That is the idea. And that is, to me, the model that we ought to all 
have in our minds of what the role of Government ought to be

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as we move into the 21st century, to make people to make more of their 
own lives, not to do anything for anybody that they ought to do for 
themselves but to help people make more of their own lives.
    And that is the kind of partnership we have tried to have with you. 
It is very difficult to do that and to say you're doing it in Washington 
because everything here compulsively is filtered out to you through 
party politics, no matter how hard we try to avoid it. You don't have to 
worry about that quite as much as we do. I think it was Mayor LaGuardia 
who once said, ``There is no Republican or Democratic way to clean the 
streets.'' [Laughter] And I believe we need to take some of that wisdom 
and bring it back here. There is, yes, a Democratic and a Republican way 
to balance the budget. I understand that. But there is also a whole lot 
of overlap, and that's what we ought to be focused on.
    So let me just mention four things very quickly that I know you'll 
be discussing here that I think ought to be the basis of our partnership 
within this framework that I outlined in the State of the Union.
    First of all, I want to thank again the Vice President and Secretary 
Cisneros for the work they've done on the empowerment zones and the 
enterprise communities. We are trying to find ways to take the lessons 
we learned there and apply them to other communities. And as we work 
through this budget and next year's budget, I believe that there should 
be a bipartisan consensus to find ways to use the power of the Federal 
Government in ways that essentially help build public-private 
partnerships to redevelop our cities. And I would urge you to support 
that and to give us any other ideas you have for that.
    We have the HOME initiative, which all of you are familiar with, 
which provides funds for you to build and rehabilitate houses for your 
citizens. We continue to strongly support the community development 
block grants. They've been around a long time, but they really are the 
symbol of what it is we're trying to do: Here are the subjects; you do 
it, be accountable at the end. If you mess up, we'll tell you, but 
otherwise why should we be telling you how to do all this? Those 
community development block grants have worked well for America. This is 
a stronger country because of the way that program worked.
    We have, secondly--let me just make one other comment. I believe 
that the way the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development has worked 
with you on the problem of homelessness has worked well, too. You know 
how to move the homeless people off your streets. Every community has a 
slightly different homeless problem. And one of the things I would like 
to say is, while we do this budget, I know we're going to have to cut a 
lot of things, but I think we've made some real progress in dealing with 
homelessness in the last few years, and I think it would be a great 
mistake if we reverse that progress. I think it would be a great mistake 
if we reverse that progress. We need to continue to reduce the number of 
homeless people on our streets. This, again, should not be a partisan 
issue. I don't believe there is a single person in America that really 
believes that we should weaken our effort to do that.
    The second thing we've done is to work on these community 
development banks. They're quite controversial now in the Congress 
because they seem like an easy thing to cut because they haven't been 
fully implemented. But if you look at the experience of the South Shore 
Development Bank in Chicago, or if you look at the experience of any of 
the other microenterprise loan programs that have been done in the 
United States, or if you look at how much our aid program has done in 
other countries, setting up development banks in places where they would 
be a lot harder to start than it would in most of your cities, it is 
obvious that if we had a source of capital to start more new businesses 
and small businesses, no matter if they're just one-person businesses, 
in a lot of our poorest areas we could grow the economy more quickly 
there than anyplace else.
    What's the greatest opportunity for American business today? The 
distressed neighborhoods in our urban and rural areas. Where do the 
largest number of people live in America that we could use to expand the 
work force in a hurry or to expand the number of our consumers in a 
hurry? In the distressed neighborhoods of our urban and isolated rural 
areas.
    AID gave a $1 million grant several years ago to a Central American 
country to set up a loan program. An average loan was $300 apiece. That 
loan program now accounts for one percent of all of the jobs in that 
country, and the $1 million fund that AID put down there now has--
there's $4 million in that bank account

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now. Those loans have been paid back several times with interest over 
and over again.
    If we really believe that free enterprise and not Government 
spending is the answer to the problems of the inner city, we're going to 
have to give them some free enterprise. And free enterprise begins with 
capital. And there is lots and lots and lots of evidence that this can 
be successful. So I urge you to support that.
    The third thing that I know is very important--I think more mayors 
have mentioned this to me than any other single issue--is our 
brownfields initiative, and I want to thank Carol Browner for the work 
that she has done on it. We were getting ready to come over here, and I 
was preparing it and I said we ought to call this Browner's brownfields. 
[Laughter] It sounds like a kids' softball team, you know? It was great.
    This is a very important thing. If we can get these vacant spaces 
that you have to put fences around, that basically divide neighborhoods 
and are inviting targets for all kinds of destructive things, to turn 
back into safe, sustainable economic endeavors, we could do more in less 
time with less money to move our cities forward than nearly anything 
else we can do. So we want to help communities clean up old waste sites 
by giving tax incentives to those who will buy and clean them up. We 
want to clear away regulatory burdens. We want to do whatever we can to 
support you. But I know that the mayors have been on this issue, and I 
just want to assure you that we want to be there with you. And I 
believe, again, we can build broad bipartisan support for the 
brownfields initiative.
    The fourth thing that I want to comment on is the reinvention of HUD 
that Mayor Cisneros is overseeing. I call him ``mayor'' when he starts 
talking to me about this. HUD has now got 81 field offices. They've 
moved huge numbers of people out of Washington. They're collapsing their 
divisions down to four basic programs. For communities of over 150,000 
there will be a single point of contact in the community so you can do 
all your business in one place. Grants that once required 12 separate 
applications will now require only one.
    So that's the kind of flexibility that I think we ought to have. Our 
goal is to reach, by the year 2000, 67\1/2\ percent homeownership in 
America. We're already at a 15-year high right now. We're moving. And if 
we can keep going in this direction and you'll help us and we work 
together, we can get up to the point where 67\1/2\ percent of the people 
are in their own homes. That has never happened in the United States 
before. And that, again, will carry with it a certain amount of economic 
growth and development in all your communities.
    And let me just say one other word, since Secretary Pena is here. We 
have been quite successful and, again, have had a good support from the 
Congress in our efforts to maximize the amount of money we're putting 
out through the Department of Transportation in communities for 
infrastructure development. That's one place where we have worked 
together with hardly a hitch. And because we have, it's attracted hardly 
any notice. [Laughter] But we're moving in the right direction there, 
and I want to thank you for doing that.
    So these are the things that we believe we can do with you. And I 
hope that they will be symbolic and will exemplify the kind of 
partnership that will take this country a long way down the road.
    Let me just say one other thing about the budget. Since I gave the 
State of the Union Address, there have been some encouraging things said 
by the congressional leaders about the prospects of our getting a budget 
agreement and continuing to work to bring the deficit down. But I would 
remind you that we still have some roadblocks in the way that I think 
need to be cleared away. I urge Congress to keep the Government open and 
to pass the straightforward continuing resolution until we pass the rest 
of the appropriations bills for this year.
    We've also seen news that just today--of the serious consequences 
that could result if the Congress was to default on the debt limit. No 
mayor would ever consider doing such a thing; the repercussions would be 
far too harmful. And the Congress should not either. Congress must 
choose not to shut the Government down again and must choose to honor 
the full faith and credit of the United States.
    We are a very great nation, and we are a very great nation not just 
because we're big, not just because we're wealthy, and not just because 
we've got a powerful military. It's because people know that we stand 
for certain things. They know we can be trusted. They know we keep our 
word. When the United States of America borrowed that money, the United 
States gave its word it would honor its

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obligations. And we should not, under any circumstances, for any reason, 
ever, ever, not a single one of us, break the word of the United States 
of America.
    Let me say, too, to all of you, I have been very honored to fight 
the battles that we have fought together, across party lines, for the 
crime bill, to end unfunded mandates. You have been a source of great 
inspiration to me. But this organization has been a source of 
inspiration for progressive, positive change ever since you convinced a 
reluctant President Hoover to sign a municipal assistance bill in the 
Depression.
    So I ask you to keep working with us. Help us to pass the 
``Community Flexibility Act.'' Help us to protect the community 
development banks. Help us to support the reform of HUD. Help us to get 
real welfare reform. Help us to keep the crime rate coming down. Help us 
to do these things. We can do these things if we do them together.
    The cities are the model. Why did people begin to live in cities? 
Because they knew instinctively they could do things together that they 
could never do on their own. America can do what we have to do if we do 
it together. And the mayors, the cities, the community leaders can lead 
the way.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 3:02 p.m., in the East Room at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to U.S. Conference of Mayors officers 
Mayor Norm Rice, Seattle, WA, president; Mayor Richard Daley, Chicago, 
IL, vice president; Mayor Paul Helmke, Fort Wayne, IN, advisory board 
chair; and J. Thomas Cochran, executive director.