    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [July 5, 1999]
    [Pages 1131-1133]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Community in Hazard, Kentucky
    July 5, 1999

        Thank you very much. Well, the Governor
    always told me, if I would only come to Appalachia, I would get a very
    warm welcome. I want to thank the good people of Hazard and Perry County
    for giving me that warm welcome. I want to thank all the people of
    eastern Kentucky who have made me and my party feel so welcome today:
    Paul and Judy Patton; I thank Mayor
    Gorman and Judge Noble. I thank those who have come with me today: our
    Agriculture Secretary--you heard from Secretary
    Glickman--our HUD Secretary, Secretary
    Cuomo; SBA Administrator Alvarez. We have two
    Congressmen here: Jim Clyburn from South
    Carolina and Paul Kanjorski who came all
    the way from Pennsylvania because they have places like Appalachia
    there, and they wanted to come down here to be with you.
        I want to thank Duane Ackerman and the
    other CEO's who are here, including Dick Huber of Aetna; the One Central Bank Kentucky CEO, Kit
    Stolen; Sara Gould from the Ms. Foundation; John Sykes from Sykes Enterprises. I'll mention him in a moment.
        I want to thank the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who keeps hope alive, and the others in our group,
    including Al From, the leader of the Democratic
    Leadership Council, and David Wilhelm, who is
    from nearby in Ohio and was my first Democratic National Committee
    chairman. I'd like to thank the young people here in AmeriCorps, and I
    would like to say a special word of thanks to Cawood Ledford. Boy, he is--I was thinking that if old Cawood had been
    a political announcer instead of a basketball announcer and I could have
    kept him with me these last 25 years, I'd have never lost an election.
        You know, Kentucky has been good to me and Hillary and to the Vice President. It has been brought to my attention that, in addition to
    the economy, we've been pretty good for Kentucky. Since I've been in
    office, UK basketball has had the most successful 6 years since Adolph
    Rupp was the coach, and Tim Couch hasn't done
    badly, either.
        You know, yesterday we celebrated the last Fourth of July of this
    century, the last Fourth of July of this century. Think of it: 223
    Independence Days. I want you all to drink plenty of water, and I'll
    make this quick, but you need to know why we came here. I wanted to come
    to the heart of America and Appalachia to talk about whether we're all
    going forward into the

    [[Page 1132]]

    21st century, whether we really can build a bridge over which we can all
    walk together.
        I'll bet you some of you here are actually the descendants of those
    people Governor Patton talked about, the
    Revolutionary War heroes who helped to settle this State. But you know,
    whether our parents and their parents came here on the Mayflower or
    slave ships, whether they landed on Ellis Island in the 1890's or came
    to Los Angeles Airport in the 1990's, around the Fourth of July we're
    supposed to celebrate what we have in common as Americans, to reaffirm
    that what unites us is more important than what divides us. Well, if we
    believe that, we have a shared stake in one another's success.
        I came here to say to you, I believe at this time of prosperity, if
    we can't find a way to give every single hard-working American family
    the chance to participate in the future we're trying to build for our
    country, we'll never get around to do it. Now is the time to move
    forward.
        Our country is the world's leading force for peace and freedom and
    human rights. We have the lowest crime rate in 25 years, the lowest
    welfare rolls in 30 years; 90 percent of our little children are
    immunized against serious childhood diseases for the first time in
    history. We have the longest peacetime expansion we've ever had, almost
    19 million new jobs. Wages are rising for the first time in 20 years for
    ordinary people. We have a million kids lifted out of poverty, the
    lowest minority unemployment rate ever recorded.
        And yet, even though this is a blessed time for America, not all
    Americans have been blessed by it. And you know that as well as I do.
        So I came here to show America who you are, and when I leave here,
    I'm going on to the Mississippi Delta, to my home country. Then I'm
    going up into the middle West, and then over to Phoenix, Arizona, and up
    to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, and then ending
    this tour in East Los Angeles to make a simple point, that this is a
    time to bring more jobs and investment and hope to the areas of our
    country that have not fully participated in this economic recovery. We
    have an obligation to do it.
        I started out the morning in the town of Tyner, a little village,
    with a wonderful woman who took me to see her
    69-year-old father that just lost his wife
    after 51 years of marriage. And I saw four generations of that family.
    And I walked in the neighborhoods, and I listened to the people tell me
    they needed better housing and better transportation.
        And then I went on to Mid-South Electronics, a place that had 40
    employees 10 years ago and has 850 today and about to expand some more,
    to make the point that any work that can be done by anybody in America
    can be done here in Appalachia and throughout the other places in this
    country where they're not fulfilling their promise.
        I came here in the hope that, with the help of the business leaders
    here, we could say to every corporate leader in America: Take a look at
    investing in rural and inner-city America. It's good for business, good
    for America's growth, and it's the right thing to do. If we, with the
    most prosperous economy in our lifetimes, cannot make a commitment to
    take every person along with us into the 21st century, we will have
    failed to meet a moral obligation, and we also will have failed to make
    the most of America's promise.
        You know, these economists in Washington and New York used to tell
    me that, if the unemployment rate ever dropped below 6 percent in
    America, we'd have inflation out of control. Well, it's been under 5
    percent for 2 years now, and inflation is still low. And I'm telling
    you, it can go lower. We can hire more people; we can have more jobs.
    But we've got to go to the places where there have not been enough new
    jobs and there has not been enough new investment, and we have to
    provide incentives for people to go there.
        I asked these business and political leaders to join me because we
    wanted to send a signal to America that we know that Government can't
    solve these problems alone. But we know that we'll never get anywhere by
    leaving people alone, either--you've tried it that way here in the hills
    and hollows of Kentucky and West Virginia and Ohio and Virginia and
    Appalachia, for years; that didn't work out very well--that what works
    is when we go forward together.
        I came here to say that I believe the Government's part is to create
    the conditions of a strong economy; to give individuals the tools they
    need to succeed, including education and training; and to give
    incentives to businesses to take a second look at the places that they
    have

    [[Page 1133]]

    overlooked. And then the job of the private sector is to give you a
    chance to make the most of your God-given ability. That is what we are
    trying to do.
        With the help of Vice President Gore,
    we've had 135 empowerment zones and enterprise communities. I was in one
    earlier today. They've helped to create tens of thousands of jobs. But
    we have to do better nationwide. We've worked with people like the
    Kentucky Highlands Investment Corporation. But we have to do better
    nationwide.
        So that's why I'm going around here. I want to do two things--well,
    really three. Number one, I want people to know a lot of good things are
    going on here now; number two, I want them to understand that more good
    things can go on; and number three, I want us to do more. I want us to
    pass a law in Congress to create new markets in America, to say we're
    going to give a businessperson the same incentives to invest in new
    markets in America we give them today to invest in new markets overseas.
        Now, meanwhile, I want to thank the companies represented here,
    companies like Bell South, ready to help provide jobs and training for
    your people; the Ms. Foundation. The Appalachian Regional Commission,
    with my friend Jesse White, here, will
    help Appalachian entrepreneurs create new small businesses. Sykes
    Enterprises is making a major commitment--listen to this--to construct
    two information technology centers in eastern Kentucky that will bring
    hundreds of new jobs to Pike and Perry Counties. Thank you, Mr.
    Sykes.
        Across our Nation, banks like Bank One, Citigroup, Bank of America,
    First Union will invest hundreds of millions of dollars to finance new
    small businesses and other promising enterprises. I want to thank all
    these companies for their support.
        But again, I say: Look here, America. We've got people working out
    here and doing fine and doing marvelous things. Look here, business
    community. Take another look. There are great opportunities here. But I
    also want to say to the Congress, just simply give me one more tool for
    them: Give people the same incentives to invest in Appalachia or the
    Native American reservations or the Mississippi Delta or the inner
    cities we give them today to invest in poor countries overseas, and let
    the American people show what they can do.
        Ladies and gentlemen, it's been a hot day. But when I'm gone, I hope
    you'll remember more than that the President came and you were hot. I
    hope you will remember that it was the beginning of a new sense of
    renewal for this region and for all the people in our country to go
    forward together.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 4:10 p.m. on Main Street. In his remarks he
    referred to Gov. Paul E. Patton of Kentucky and his wife, Judy; Mayor
    William D. Gorman of Hazard; Perry County Judge-Executive Denny Ray
    Noble; F. Duane Ackerman, chairman and chief executive officer, Bell
    South; Richard L. Huber, chairman and chief executive officer, Aetna,
    Inc.; Alvin T. (Kit) Stolen III, president and chief executive officer,
    Bank One Kentucky/Lexington Market; Sara Gould, executive vice
    president, Ms. Foundation for Women; John H. Sykes, chairman and chief
    executive officer, Sykes Enterprises, Inc.; civil rights leader Jesse
    Jackson; retired University of Kentucky basketball broadcaster Cawood
    Ledford; former University of Kentucky quarterback and top 1999 NFL
    draft pick Tim Couch, Cleveland Browns; Jean Collett and her father, Ray
    Pennington, Tyner, KY, residents; and Jesse L. White, Jr., Federal
    Cochairman, Appalachian Regional Commission.