    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [August 7, 1999]
    [Page 1399]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1399]]

    Remarks to the Community in Helena, Arkansas
    August 7, 1999

        Thank you very much. Good morning. Thank you for coming out in the
    heat. Congressman Berry asked me--we were
    standing up here; Congressman Berry said, ``You smell that cotton dust
    that's been in here a hundred years?'' [Laughter]
        I am glad to be back. I want to thank Senator Lambert
    Lincoln who has done such a
    wonderful job; my good friend Congressman Berry. I want to thank Mayor Weaver
    for coming out and Dr. Robert Miller,
    the mayor of Helena, my longtime friend. And I want to thank our
    Secretary of Transportation, Rodney Slater,
    from Lee County.
        Let me say to all of you, I'm about to go down to the Cultural
    Center for a business meeting about the future of the Delta in Arkansas,
    but I just want to say a word or two. And I'll be brief because it's
    hot, and I want to get out and shake hands, and then I want to go to
    work.
        Yesterday in Washington I was able to announce that our country had
    produced 19 million jobs, and then some, since I became President. But
    the unemployment rate in the deep Delta is still twice the national
    average. The income is less than two-thirds the national average. And a
    lot of the things that we have tried to do in the last 6\1/2\ years have
    helped some discrete communities, but not the whole region.
        In my State of the Union Address this year, in an attempt to build
    on the work that we've done with the enterprise zones and the
    empowerment communities, under the leadership of Vice President
    Gore, I proposed that we look at the
    Mississippi Delta, at Appalachia, at the Indian reservations, at the
    small towns and the inner-city communities that have been left behind as
    a big new market for America; that if we had parts of America where we
    hadn't had new investment and new jobs and new opportunity, and we were
    growing like crazy and we had the best economy in a generation, we ought
    to find a way to get people to invest in the areas that have been left
    behind.
        And one of the things that I asked the Congress to do is to give
    people in America with money to invest the same incentives to invest in
    poor communities in America we give them to invest in poor communities
    overseas.
        Now, I just went on a tour. You probably saw the press when I was
    Clarksdale, Mississippi, but I was also in Appalachia; I went up to
    South Dakota to an Indian reservation; I went to Phoenix and East St.
    Louis and Los Angeles. There is an enormous feeling out there in the
    country today that we ought to really make an effort--it's the first
    time I have felt this--there's a great feeling in the Congress, and I
    think in both parties, that we ought to do something for the areas that
    have still not felt the economic recovery of the country. And that's
    what we're here to talk about. That's what I'm going down to the Culture
    Center to discuss.
        So the last thing I want you to know--and I know Secretary
    Slater would echo this--is that you
    couldn't have two better people representing you than Blanche Lambert
    Lincoln and Marion Berry. They wear us out every single week to do something for
    you.
        And finally, let me just say it's good to be back here. All of you
    have been very good to me for more than 20 years now. I probably
    wouldn't be President if it weren't for eastern Arkansas, and I am very
    grateful. And I want you to know that in the year and a half I have left
    on my term, I am going to do everything I can to bring more economic
    opportunity not only to the Delta but to every place in America that is
    not a part of what our country as a whole is enjoying today.
        Thank you, and God bless you. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:50 a.m. in the West Hangar at West Helena
    Municipal Airport. In his remarks, he referred to Mayor Johnny Weaver of
    West Helena, AR.