    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [December 10, 1999]
    [Pages 2261-2266]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Community in West Memphis, Arkansas
    December 10, 1999

        Thank you. Was she great or
    what? Let's give her another hand. [Applause] She was unbelievable.
    That's great.
        Well, to Dr. Glen Fenter and your board
    chairman, my longtime friend Alex Coulter; and
    to Sandy and all the students from
    the college and all the faculty members, thank you. Thank you for being
    exhibit A for the new economy in eastern Arkansas.
        Mayor Johnson, Judge
    Williams, Representative Jones, Representative Steele, I
    think I speak for all of us when I say we are delighted to be here. I
    want to thank Lieutenant Governor Rockefeller and the other people from State government who came over
    to be with us. I thank Secretary Riley for
    coming down with us; and my longtime friend Carl Whillock, who I'll say a little more about in a minute; and Rodney
    Slater, who I'll say a little more about in
    a minute.
        I also would like to thank this White House staff who have heard me
    say now 5,000 times, we have to do more for the Delta. My Deputy Chief
    of Staff, Maria Echaveste; Lynn
    Cutler; Lisa
    Kountoupes, it is their job to monitor everything the Federal Government
    does that might, in their wildest imagination, have a positive effect on
    Arkansas and the other States in the Delta. And I thank them.
        But I want to say a special word of thanks to Senator Blanche
    Lambert Lincoln and to Marion
    Berry who, long before he was a Congressman,
    was the farmers' advocate in our administration in Washington, and long
    before he did that, he used to host all of us at the Gillette coon
    suppers. [Laughter] That's my ultimate trump card with every Congressman
    or Senator from every other State in America who tells me they know more
    about rural America than I do. I say, ``Well, how many coon suppers have
    you been to?'' [Laughter] I haven't lost an argument in 7 years up
    there. [Laughter]
        You have absolutely no idea the amount of time and effort and the
    passion that these two people have put in to trying to help eastern
    Arkansas and the Delta. You cannot imagine. They have been magnificent.
    I deal with Members of Congress from all across America. I deal with
    people who are really good at what they do. There is nobody--nobody--who
    has done a better job standing up for the people they represent than
    Blanche Lambert Lincoln and Marion
    Berry.
        I may have a little trouble getting through this speech today.
    First, I'm a little tired. I talked to Hillary last--about 1 o'clock last night, and we talked three
    times between 11 and 1. And she was kind of jealous that I was coming
    down here. And I want you to know she's doing great, and I'm proud of
    her for what she's doing, and my daughter is
    doing great.
        I woke up early this morning and started thinking about what I
    wanted to say. It's a little harder now. I look out in this crowd, and I
    know half of you by your first names. There's old Bobby Glover sitting there, gave me the first contribution I got
    when I ran for attorney general in 1976. You could have stopped this
    whole thing if you hadn't done that. [Laughter]

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    Mary Louise Poindexter had me to the first revival of the Elaine
    Christmas parade. I've been colder in Elaine than any public official in
    the history of America. [Laughter] We know east Arkansas--that's not the
    royal ``we;'' that's all of our crowd here--and we owe eastern Arkansas.
    Rodney's roots are here. He did such a good
    job for you as a highway commissioner and at ASU, and he's been a superb
    Secretary of Transportation. Carl Whillock was
    the president of ASU, head of the co-ops. When Marion went home, he came to Washington; he thought somebody
    ought to stick up for the ordinary farmers in the Department of
    Agriculture. I see Kevin Smith out there. I've
    had so many people here. You can't imagine how many people from Arkansas
    we've got working in Washington. It's sort of a subterranean plot.
    That's how we stayed in all these years; we had people that showed up
    and remembered who they were working for.
        I was thinking about the first time I came to Crittenden County to
    John Gammon's wild game dinner when they were
    still meeting in that--that's before the dinner moved uptown--when they
    were still meeting in a place that had a tin roof. And the first night,
    a woman got up, a young woman got up to sing ``If I Can Help Somebody,''
    and the darndest rain came up you ever saw. And it was raining on that
    tin roof and it sounded like a musical background, and she was just
    beautiful, singing.
        Ness Sechrest reminded me that the
    first time I saw him, I had to traipse all the way out to Horseshoe Lake
    and fish with him and do other sundry things that he thought were
    necessary to decide whether he should support me or not. [Laughter] He's
    been making the same mistake for 24 years now.
        And I came here today to make another installment on the work we've
    been doing together for two decades. I'm very proud that I signed the
    bill when I was in my very first term as Governor to create the vo-tech
    school here. And then in 1991 I signed the bill that enabled you to
    convert it to a community college. And since I have been President, the
    enrollment at this college--the stories like Sandy's--the enrollment has increased by tenfold of
    accredited students--tenfold. And that's something you can be really
    proud of, and it will make a difference.
        I was thinking when I was coming over here today, all the time I
    spent in the eighties when the whole State, the whole country, this part
    of the country was in trouble economically, trying to get plants to come
    in here and save the ones that are here. When I got reelected Governor
    in '82, I remember going up to I think it was Poinsett County, and they
    closed the Singer plant for the last time. I stood there and shook hands
    with 600 people when they walked off the job for the last time. That was
    right before I got inaugurated Governor the second time. I had this
    emblazoned memory of all these people leaving their jobs for the last
    time.
        I remember going all the way to Japan to try to get the Sanyo people
    not to close the plant in Forest City, and then working with all the
    folks in Brinkley and other places to help start this Wal-Mart buy
    American campaign, to get them to buy the TV's from Sanyo and shirts
    from Brinkley and first one thing, then another.
        I have a vivid memory of what you have been through and the
    struggles you had and the struggles you continue to have. And we're here
    to try to fulfill our duty, not only to you but to people like you
    throughout the country. I'm very grateful that I've had the chance to
    serve these last 7 years. I'm grateful that we're ending the 20th
    century on a high note.
        In February we will have the longest economic expansion in the
    history of the country--already the longest peacetime expansion. In
    February it will be longer than the one we had in World War II, when we
    had to fully mobilize.
        Since 1993, we've got over 20 million new jobs. We've got the lowest
    unemployment rate and welfare rolls in 30 years, the lowest poverty
    rates in 20 years, the lowest African-American unemployment and poverty
    rates ever recorded since we kept separate figures for about three
    decades now. We have the lowest unemployment rate for women in 40 years
    and the lowest poverty rate for single-parent households in 46 years in
    America. And I'm proud of that. But you couldn't prove it by some places
    in this country, because there are still people in places that have been
    totally left out of this remarkable upswing, and that's what we're here
    to say. All of you know that. Maybe they're too rural. Maybe they're too
    undereducated. Maybe they're too this, that, or the other thing. Maybe
    their power is too expensive or the transportation is too distant.
        I've been across America now, doing what I used to come over here
    and do, county by county. I've been in the hills and hollows of

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    Appalachia. I've been in upstate New York which, interestingly enough,
    would be 49th in job growth in this country of all the 50 States if it
    were a separate State. I've been in rural Maine, where it's a long way
    from everything. The State's 90 percent timberland. I've been on the
    Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the home of the Lakota
    Sioux, the tribe of Crazy Horse, where the unemployment rate is 73
    percent. So you can go to bed tonight thanking God for small favors. I
    have seen these inner-city neighborhoods where every other store is
    still boarded up.
        And what I want to say to you is, if we, with this economy, in the
    absence of foreign threat or domestic crisis, can't bring free
    enterprise and opportunity to the people and places who have been left
    behind now, when will we ever get around to doing it?
        We are determined to try to convince everybody in America that
    places like the Delta are the new markets for the 21st century. We sit
    around in Washington all the time, and Mr. Greenspan sits over at the Federal Reserve all the time, and we
    have the same debate now. We say, we've already got the--in February
    we're going to have the longest economic expansion in history, and we
    didn't even have a war. How did it happen? Can we keep it going? How can
    we keep it going? How can we keep it going without inflation, because if
    we have inflation, then, to protect everybody else, they'll have to
    raise interest rates a lot, and that will kill the recovery.
        And I'll tell you one way to keep it going is to get money invested
    and jobs created and consumers created in the places that have been left
    behind. That's an inflation-free way to continue to grow the economy. So
    it is in the interest of every single American in places like Nebraska
    where the unemployment rate is 2.4 percent statewide, it's in their
    interest for us to do what is necessary to bring opportunity to the
    people in places who have been left behind. And if we don't do it now,
    we'll never get around to doing it.
        So I want to look at this. Now, let's look at Crittenden County. In
    Crittenden County, unemployment has dropped from over 7 percent in '93
    to 5 percent today, but it's much higher in the rest of eastern Arkansas
    than the Nation as a whole. Wages are up in the Delta, but wages are
    still way below the national average. Infant mortality rates are better
    than they were, but they're still much, much higher than the national
    average.
        Now, I want to thank all of you for stepping up to the challenge of
    trying to change all that. Before I came over here, I was over at the
    community college meeting with Dr. Fenter and a
    group of CEO's from some of America's largest transportation companies.
    They're working together to design a curriculum and to build a facility
    to train young people for good jobs in the transportation industry.
        Now, these jobs pay good money, and there is a shortage today, I
    learned at our meeting, of 80,000 jobs for entry-level truck drivers and
    other transportation jobs that would pay an average of $35,000 to
    $40,000 a year--entry-level jobs.
        So what we want to do is train everybody in the Delta who wants one
    of these jobs here so that they can continue to live in the Delta. You
    have to travel 3 or 4 or 5 days a week, but you don't have to move away
    from here to get a job. I mean, you all know you can move away from here
    and get a job, but you don't want to leave.
        So this is the kind of thing that we should be doing. This is one of
    the most important transportation hubs in the country, and education and
    training is the key to providing these opportunities.
        In August I was here in Helena, and we had kind of a listening
    session, and in September Secretary Slater
    had another meeting like that here in West Memphis. In October we
    invited a delegation from here to meet with senior officials in the
    White House, and today we want to respond to that.
        First of all, to try to address the unacceptably high rates of
    poverty that still plague the region, I intend to propose in next year's
    budget more than $110 million to create and fund a new Delta regional
    authority, as recommended by Senator Lincoln and Representative Berry. This
    will fund their legislation. It will provide funds for economic
    development and assistance from Federal agencies to help improve the
    quality of life. It already has a number of bipartisan cosponsors from
    throughout the Delta, and I want to work with the Congress, and
    particularly with all the Members from this region, to ensure that we
    get quick enactment of this legislation. This should not be a partisan
    issue. This is about economics.

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        Second, we're going to help rural communities again access the
    myriad of Federal programs that already exist. Today I am signing a
    memorandum directing 14 Federal agencies to provide comprehensive
    technical assistance to the region in a pilot program we're calling the
    circuit rider project. You know, preachers and judges used to ride
    circuits and go from town to town. That's what the Agricultural
    Extension Service did for decades, seeing people one-on-one.
        It is almost impossible for a little town to be able to afford--to
    find out what kinds of grants they could be eligible for in every
    conceivable Federal agency, much less how to apply for them and get
    them. So we want to organize that effort and bring them to you.
        I'd like to thank Wilbur Peer and the others
    at the Agriculture Department who have been involved in our rural
    economic development issues. I want to thank all the departments for
    agreeing to do this. We're going to get out there, be aggressive, and
    try to bring the benefits of the Federal Government that's already being
    paid for to the people who are paying but not getting, and the circuit
    rider project will work, I think.
        Third, we're announcing the creation of a $16 million fund to
    provide resources to develop and improve rural health infrastructure in
    the seven counties served by the Arkansas Health Education Center--
    including Crittenden County--funds used to make loans to hospitals,
    clinics, and health providers to help close the health care gaps that
    are also a problem here and a problem in attracting new investment.
        Fourth, we're announcing an award of $1.2 million from the Economic
    Development Administration to the Blytheville-Gosnell Regional Airport
    Authority to create a 35,000 square foot mail sort facility out of one
    of the former hangars at Eaker Air Force Base. This will help create
    more than 350 new jobs. It will create more than 350 new jobs and
    protect some that are already there.
        Finally, we're expanding trade opportunities in the region by
    opening a Commerce Department rural export office at Mid-South Community
    College to help east Arkansas businesses take advantage of export
    opportunities through E-commerce. This is no idle thing. I was out in
    Los Angeles the other day, and I went to a training facility where a
    young man was in a program buying and selling things in South America,
    in Russia, and you wouldn't believe where else. In this poor inner-city
    neighborhood, he was making a living. He established a business
    identifying people in other countries that needed to buy things and
    identifying people in third countries who had them, and putting them
    together.
        We can sell a lot of the things produced in east Arkansas all over
    the world if we have the right kind of networks. And one of the things
    that--we just had last week a conference at the White House, bringing in
    big executives in the communications business all over America to try to
    figure out how to close the so-called digital divide, because if you
    look at the places where not only computer usage but Internet access is
    roughly as dense as telephone access, they're growing faster.
        And one of the things that I am determined to do is to finish the
    job of getting all of our schools and libraries and hospitals connected
    to the Internet so that all of our kids will have access to that
    educational information. But we need to make that available for adults,
    too, in commercial centers so that no part of the country is denied
    these opportunities.
        I'll bet you there are people here--and I'll just give you one
    example--I'll bet there are people in this audience who have bought
    something off the Web from eBay. Have you ever used eBay? I see some of
    you nodding. I'll tell you an interesting thing. I was out with the eBay
    people in California a couple of weeks ago, and they told me there are
    now 20,000 Americans, including many former welfare recipients, who are
    making a living on eBay. They don't work for eBay; they make a living
    buying and selling on eBay because it's basically America's trading mart
    now on the Internet.
        It is very, very important that we bring the benefits of E-commerce
    to the poorest parts of America and to teach people how to use it. It's
    simple. It's getting increasingly user friendly. It's about gotten to
    where even I can figure it out. [Laughter] And I think it is profoundly
    important.
        Finally, I want to ask you one thing that I want you to do for us,
    for me and for Senator Lincoln and for
    Congressman Berry. I'm trying to pass a couple
    of simple bills in Washington. I got two of them actually passed to
    provide some funds for my so-called new market initiative. But what I'm
    trying to do is to get money, tax credits, and tax incentives basically
    so that

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    I can say to anybody in America, we think you should have the same
    financial incentives to invest in the poor areas of America that you now
    have to invest in the poor areas of Latin America or Africa or Asia or
    any other part of the world.
        Now, I hope and pray I'll be able to pass that this year. We have
    more bipartisan support for this endeavor than we've ever had before.
        I went to Chicago the other night with the Speaker of the House, and we met with the two local Members of
    Congress who were there. We had a great joint meeting. And there is a
    chance we can just totally put this beyond politics. But if you think
    about it, sure there are some extra risks in going to an extremely rural
    area where the average education level may not be as high as it is in
    some other places, but it's not as great as the risk of going thousands
    of miles from home.
        I'm not against asking Americans to help the people of Africa and
    Latin America and Asia. I'm all for that. We just passed through the
    Congress a bill forgiving the debt of some of the poorest countries in
    the world that can't pay it back anyway, and all we're doing is keeping
    them mired in poverty. We can't educate their kids or make them
    vaccinate them or do anything else, because they spend all their money
    paying interest on the debt, and they never make any headway. I'm all
    for that.
        But I think we have areas in the country, as prosperous as we are
    now, and we still have areas as poor as some of our areas are. It is
    wrong not to give the same incentives to invest there, whether it is the
    Delta or Appalachia or the Indian reservations. So I want you to help me
    do that.
        I want you to help make sure every Member of this congressional
    delegation votes for that legislation. I want you to help make sure
    anybody you can reach in Tennessee or Mississippi votes for that
    legislation, and I want you to tell people that the dignity of the job
    and of a thriving community has nothing to do with party politics, and
    every American ought to be entitled to it. And if we can't do it now, we
    will never get around to it, because we are more prosperous now than we
    have ever been.
        We'll keep working at it every day to the last hour of the last day
    of our term. When I come home and set up my library and public policy
    center, I'll keep working at it some more. I'll always be doing this.
    I'll always be indebted to the Delta.
        When I was a young college student and I used to drive back home
    from Washington, I used to take off a day every Christmas vacation and
    just drive to the Delta and ride around. I never knew I would be
    Governor, much less President, and I was just fascinated with it. But I
    always promised myself, if I could do anything about it, I would.
        I never will forget the first time I ran for Governor, and I
    discovered how many communities over here had no water and sewer. And we
    tried to do something about it. I don't even know if I can tell this
    story. The most emotional moment I ever had in all the years I was in
    government in Arkansas occurred when I was running for reelection as
    Governor in 1982. And there was a big meeting in a barbecue joint in
    Forest City of all the black leaders in the Delta. And they were trying
    to decide whether they were going to be for me or not. I had just gotten
    beat 2 years before, when I had the distinction of becoming the youngest
    former Governor in American history, with very limited career prospects.
    [Laughter] And no one in Arkansas had ever been Governor and then
    defeated and then reelected again. It had never happened before.
        So they were having this meeting, and an articulate young lawyer,
    whom I still know well, got up and said--I was there, and one of my
    opponents had been there, and he had left--so this young lawyer got up
    and said, ``You know, Governor Clinton was a good Governor, but we can't
    be for him; he's a loser. And we've got to win; we can't afford to
    lose.'' And he had a point. [Laughter] I mean, I had lost, and no one
    had ever been elected, defeated, and reelected again.
        I wouldn't be here today if this meeting turned out that way, in the
    Delta. I'm telling you, my whole life since then was riding on the
    outcome of what these 85 people in this barbecue joint were going to do.
        Wilbur is smiling. He knows all this. I
    don't know if I can tell this story. And you could feel the tone of the
    meeting go cold. And all of a sudden, this guy stands up in the back,
    named John Lee Wilson, who was the mayor of a little town called Haines,
    Arkansas--150 people. He's not alive anymore. I'd give the world and all
    if he were here today. John Lee was in jeans and a white T-shirt. He
    wasn't

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    a lawyer. He weighed about 300 pounds, on his light days. [Laughter] He
    had arms bigger around than my neck. And he said, the young lawyer might
    have had a point, but all he knew about this whole deal was that before
    I became Governor the first time, sewage was running open in the streets
    of Haines and the children were sick. And after I had served, they
    weren't sick anymore.
        And he said, ``If we don't stick with people who stick with us, what
    kind of people will we be?'' He said, ``Governor Clinton may be going
    down, but I'd rather go down with him than run off from him.'' And they
    all--and the room changed again. And the Delta stayed with me, and the
    rest is history.
        I owe you, and I owe the memory of John Lee Wilson, whom I revered
    and loved and remember to this day. And I'll do my best to be faithful.
        Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 3 p.m. in the Civic Auditorium at Mid-South
    Community College. In his remarks, he referred to student Sandra Eason
    O'Sullivan, who introduced the President, Glen Fenter, president, and
    Alex Coulter, board of trustees chair, Mid-South Community College;
    Mayor William H. Johnson of West Memphis; Crittenden County Judge Brian
    Williams; State Representatives Steve Jones, Marvin Steele, and Bobby L.
    Glover; State Senator Kevin Smith; Lt. Gov. Winthrop P. Rockefeller of
    Arkansas; Carl Whillock, former president, Arkansas State University;
    Wilbur Peer, Associate Administrator, Rural Business-Cooperative
    Service, Department of Agriculture; and John Gammon and N.S. (Ness)
    Sechrest, long-time friends of the President.