    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [May 11, 1999]
    [Pages 737-738]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 737]]

    Remarks on the New Markets Initiative
    May 11, 1999

        Thank you very much. I'd like to begin by thanking all the business
    leaders who have come here to be with us today, the members of the
    administration who are here, and especially the Vice President for the work that he has done to spearhead our
    community empowerment effort over the last 6 years and a few months.
        I'd like to just say just a word or two by way of introduction to
    try to highlight why I asked these business leaders here today. You
    heard the Vice President talk about what we have tried to do since we
    came here, since we passed the first economic plan to give genuine
    economic opportunity to all of our citizens: the empowerment zones, the
    community development banks, the kinds of incentives we were trying to
    give to create jobs and opportunity for people who hadn't had them.
        And we are very grateful for the record declines in unemployment
    among African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans and for the fact that the
    unemployment rate has dropped dramatically, not only overall but in many
    of our toughest, toughest neighborhoods throughout the country.
        On the other hand, even though we have the lowest peacetime
    unemployment rate since 1957, there are still 37 cities--37--where
    unemployment is double the national average. There are lots of smaller
    communities where children still have to go past abandoned storefronts
    to get to a grocery store to buy a carton of milk. There are rural areas
    and very small towns which have had almost no new investment in the last
    6 years. And of course, in many, many of our Native American areas and
    communities there is still a great deal of economic distress and
    uncertainty.
        So what this whole effort has been about from the beginning for me,
    and especially what we are working on now, is the idea that we should go
    into the 21st century leaving no one behind. We should genuinely create
    opportunity for every responsible citizen. And we are being given a
    chance to do it.
        I told the folks we met with today, it's very--I've spent a lot of
    time over the last 6 or 7 years studying how the American economy works
    as compared with other advanced economies in the world. And on balance,
    we've done a better job of creating jobs, while others have worked
    harder to maintain a sense of community and a greater degree of equality
    among working people. The price they have paid is that they have higher
    unemployment rates than we do.
        We have been given an opportunity now, because we've got the
    strongest economy in at least a generation, to prove that we can bring
    the benefits of free enterprise to every neighborhood in America. We can
    prove that you can have low unemployment and increasing opportunity. The
    Vice President pointed out today that the wealth that minority families,
    for example, and families that live in poor rural areas have is still
    dramatically less than the wealth that average Americans have. They
    don't ever have a chance to accumulate anything.
        This initiative that we are taking, we believe can change all that.
    We believe it builds on what we've done with the empowerment zones, with
    the enterprise communities, with the community development banks. We do
    want the Congress to give us another round of empowerment zones, and we
    want more.
        In July I am going to visit communities for 2 or 3 days in our most
    stubborn pockets of poverty. I'm going places not just to remind America
    of the plight of the Americans who live there but to highlight their
    enormous economic potential and the visionary businesses who are helping
    to develop it.
        Let me say again, the people who are here behind me, I was
    astonished when we listened in the meeting this morning about some of
    the things that they're already doing to bring opportunity to people in
    the areas they serve. But we have to do more.
        You know, for years our Government has worked to give Americans
    incentives to invest in emerging markets around the world. But we now
    know, as we look forward to how we can continue to create jobs and have
    economic growth without inflation, that our greatest untapped markets
    are here at home--at least $85 billion in untapped markets.
        So how are we going to do this? First, the business leaders of our
    country have to help

    [[Page 738]]

    us. We have to mobilize the private sector to bring new jobs and
    opportunities. We know that, since the Government, the Federal
    Government is the smallest it has been since 1962, what we can do is to
    do what we have been doing. We can find a new way to create the
    conditions and give the private sector the tools to bring investment to
    these areas to put people to work.
        Now, how can we do that? More empowerment zones, more community
    development banks, but also our new markets initiative. Many of the
    people here with me today said, ``What we need, if we want more
    investments in the inner cities, more investments in the medium-sized
    cities and small towns, more investments in rural areas, you've got to
    have more equity investment.'' So in the State of the Union, I proposed
    this new markets initiative to leverage billions of dollars in that kind
    of investment by providing tax credits of up to 25 percent of the equity
    placed in untapped markets.
        I also proposed to create American private investment companies and
    new market venture capital firms to bring more equity capital to
    investors who develop or expand in these areas with loan guarantees that
    would cover up to two-thirds of the investment. If you have 25 percent
    tax credit for what's at risk and a loan guarantee of two-thirds of the
    rest and a plain market there and we can actually get this out in simple
    terms that people can understand, I think we have a chance to spark an
    enormous amount of economic development in America before this
    administration's work is done.
        We should not be thinking of our success without an equal
    determination to give every one of our fellow citizens a chance to be a
    part of it as we go into a new century. We don't have to leave anyone
    behind. And if we can't do this now, when in the wide world will we ever
    get around to it?
        So, July we'll make the tour. In a few days we'll go down to south
    Texas, to the Vice President's annual
    empowerment conference. And we will continue to work with the business
    leaders that are here to do things that make sense. But the bottom line
    is we need the Congress to work with us in a bipartisan way. Of all the
    things in the world, this should not be a partisan political issue. We
    want to provide the economic incentives necessary to create jobs, keep
    growth going in America, keep inflation low, and go into that new
    century with everyone--everyone--walking hand-in-hand together.
        Thank you very, very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:25 a.m. in the Rose Garden at the White
    House.