    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [July 9, 1999]
    [Pages 1178-1184]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Interview With Jesse Jackson of CNN's ``Both
    Sides'' in Torrance
    July 9, 1999

    New Markets Initiative Tour

        Mr. Jackson. Welcome to ``Both Sides.'' Last week there was a
    phenomenal mission across our Nation led by President Clinton--a kind of
    journey from Wall Street to Appalachia to the Delta to Indian
    reservations to Watts to south Phoenix, across the country, building
    that bridge to share the wealth, the growth, the prosperity--called a
    new markets initiative. This week we have as our very special guest, our
    esteemed Mr. President, President Bill Clinton. Welcome.
        The President. Thank you.
        Mr. Jackson. In this trip last week--Hazard, Kentucky; Appalachia;
    the Delta; East St. Louis; Pine Ridge Indian Reservation; south Phoenix;
    Watts; Anaheim--what stuck out in your mind the most?
        The President. That in all those places where our prosperity has not
    reached, there are good people, smart people, people with dreams, and
    good opportunities for American business. This is a moment when we can
    do what is morally right, to give everybody a chance to walk into the
    21st century together, and do it in a way that will actually be good for
    the American economy and good for the people who invest there.
        Mr. Jackson. They've missed this booming prosperity. Is something
    wrong with the people?
        The President. I wouldn't say something's wrong with the people. A
    lot of them don't have as much education as they need, and that's part
    of our strategy to do better, and they're going to have to have specific
    job training skills. But what happened is that all these places either

    [[Page 1179]]

    never had a self-supporting economy, or the basis of economic life which
    once was there moved away, and nothing was ever brought in to replace
    it. And now, we've got a chance just to keep our own economy going, just
    to keep our own economy going with no inflation, we have a chance to
    bring investment to these areas, put these people to work, give them
    better lives, and in the process, help everyone else in America.
        Mr. Jackson. But last week there were Republican and Democratic
    Congresspeople on the trip; there were corporate business leaders,
    Democratic and Republican.
        The President. Yes.
        Mr. Jackson. They seem to have found a common accord on this idea of
    new markets. The War on Poverty seemed to--would have been divisive:
    poverty, reaction; affirmative action, division, reaction. But new
    markets seem to have bound Appalachia and Delta, black, white, red.
    What's kind of magic about this notion of new markets initiative?
        The President. Well, first of all, it's not charity; it's a hand up,
    not a handout. Secondly, the people who are being asked to invest in
    these new markets should do so with the expectation that they will
    actually make a profit out of it, that by helping people in areas which
    haven't participated in this prosperity, by starting businesses, giving
    people jobs, having these job training programs, they'll actually make
    money.
        Mr. Jackson. So it's a kind of war for profits, not just a war on
    poverty?
        The President. That's right.
        Mr. Jackson. And therefore, you incentivize broadening the base of
    investment?
        The President. We're not asking anybody to do anything that isn't a
    good business decision. It's a good business decision, and that's one of
    the things--you know, we saw that everywhere. Every place we went--do
    you remember that little--that first place we visited in Appalachia, a
    guy starts out with 40 employees; a few years later, he's got 850. And
    yes, you know, Appalachia's fairly isolated, but he makes those parts
    and--those various component electronic parts--and he's got 850 people.
    He's fixing to expand again because of the incentives that he has in our
    empowerment zone program that the Vice
    President's run for us for the last 6 years. That's the kind of thing we
    want to go nationwide with.
        We believe if we give, in the new markets initiative, if we give the
    same tax credits and loan guarantees to Americans to invest in America's
    new markets we give them to invest in new markets in Africa, Latin
    America, Asia, or the Caribbean, that our people will do very well.
        Mr. Jackson. You take, for example, the black and brown market alone
    is maybe $800 billion in consumer power. How has corporate America--what
    has been missing? How have they missed these markets--markets, money,
    talent--right under their noses?
        The President. I think there are two reasons. I think, first of all,
    they've been doing very well by doing what they're used to doing and
    expanding in ways they're used to expanding, so our economy's grown
    quite a lot in the last 6 years.
        Mr. Jackson. Even though they've missed markets?
        The President. Yes, by taking the nearest thing at hand, the thing
    they're used to doing. Secondly, I think that there is something that
    the economists would call, in purely economic terms, imperfect
    knowledge. That is, I think that a lot of people really don't know how
    well they could do if they gave people in inner-city America, in rural
    America a chance. I think they just don't know. Which is one reason that
    it was so important that these business leaders went on the trip. You
    know--remember, when we started out, the chief CEO of Aetna life insurance company said, ``You know, I may not
    be happy about this, because I had this deal figured out, and now all my
    competitors are going to know there's money to be made out here.''
        Mr. Jackson. So something about imperfect knowledge and our cultural
    blindness, we just don't even look toward those unexplored markets.
        The President. Well, when you see a place so depressed for so long,
    or you see the figures and the education levels low, or you look at the
    maps in and out of a place and you realize it's physically isolated, and
    you think, ``I've got all these other ways to make money that are near
    at hand,'' you don't get around to it. But now, the unemployment rate in
    America has been under 5 percent for 2 years. Everybody is wringing
    their hands, you know, from Wall Street out here to California, about
    how can we keep this economic growth going without inflation. The answer
    is invest in these places.

    [[Page 1180]]

        Mr. Jackson. It's interesting, in politics there's a zero-sum game.
    You have 435 Congress seats; you might change faces, but the seats don't
    change, and so it's forever tight and competitive. But in economics,
    inclusion leads to growth.
        The President. That's right.
        Mr. Jackson. And it seems that they have missed growth. In baseball,
    for example, we thought we had a great major leagues before we let
    Jackie Robinson and Campanella and Hank Aaron and Willie Mays in. But
    once they opened up the market, they now will go to Cuba; they'll go to
    the Dominican Republic and find Sammy Sosa; they'll go to Japan. The
    basketball team, now we'll go to Yugoslavia, go to Croatia--that the
    baseball owners seem to have gotten it; the basketball owners seem to
    have gotten it; now the rest of corporate America must get that
    inclusion leads to economic growth.
        The President. And the important thing in your sports analogy is
    that as we have broadened the pool of talent, we've had more teams.
    There are now more baseball teams than there used to be. There are more
    basketball teams than there used to be. More people get interested as
    you broaden the pool of talent, and you get more people in. That's what
    is happening here.
        So that if somebody invests in these new markets, they don't have to
    quit investing where they were. This is not a zero-sum game. You're
    right; we'll just widen the circle of opportunity.
        Mr. Jackson. But why are they so much more likely, say, to invest in
    Indonesia, Taiwan, South Korea, Eastern Europe, than in Appalachia or
    East L.A., in south Phoenix? What is the incentive factor there?
        The President. I think that we look at Indonesia--let's just take
    Indonesia. We look at Indonesia, and we say, ``Gosh, there's a market of
    200 million people. It's the biggest Muslim country in the world, fairly
    moderate country historically, although they've had some problems
    lately, and we'll invest there and we'll sell to that market.''
        What we miss in America is that if you put people who are unemployed
    to work in distressed areas, you create a new market, first. Second, as
    you just pointed out, even in places with very high unemployment--if you
    go into an inner-city neighborhood with 15 percent unemployment, that's
    high; that's 3 times the national average plus. That still means 85
    percent of the people are working there; they've got money to spend. In
    almost every city in America in the inner-city areas, the people have
    more money to spend than they can spend in their neighborhoods.
        Mr. Jackson. That means breaking down stereotypes. For example, if
    you look at Hazard, Kentucky, you look at Watts, most poor people are
    not on welfare.
        The President. They're working.
        Mr. Jackson. They work every day, and most are not black or brown;
    they're white----
        The President. That's right.
        Mr. Jackson. ----female, young, invisible. So perhaps when you speak
    of markets, you kind of transcend the color/cultural barriers that
    divide and make people terribly anxious.
        The President. Yes, I think that's really important. One of the
    things that we've felt, I think, all of us in this week, is that--like
    there in the Mississippi Delta, we were walking down the street in
    Clarksdale--you've got an African-American Congressman and a white mayor, and
    they're working together. I met in a store with an African-American
    woman and a Chinese grocer who had been in that community for 40-plus
    years. This is a way of bringing people together. It's about much more
    than money. It's about cementing a quality and fabric of life that is
    absolutely essential.
        Mr. Jackson. What is it about this period that allowed this mission
    to go from Hazard, Kentucky, Appalachia, to Clarksdale, Mississippi, to
    the reservation, and yet there was no evidence of racial rancor or
    division? What was it about this period that allowed at least that body
    of people to look toward another agenda, another formation of problem
    solving?
        The President. First of all, I think the American people--it's a
    great tribute to the people in those areas that they've kind of gotten
    beyond that, and they understand that if they can build a common
    economic framework, they can build a home together in their communities.
        Secondly, I think the business leaders who went, the political
    leaders who went were genuinely intelligent, savvy, and human people who
    saw that they could do the right thing and do very well.
        Mr. Jackson. You know, when you were speaking to the Native
    Americans in Pine Ridge, and one of the corporate business leaders
    looked out, and he saw the 7,000 people, and he said, ``I've always just
    seen Indian reservations''--which meant something--but he said, ``Now, I

    [[Page 1181]]

    see two supermarkets. I see a car dealership. I see 7,000 people wearing
    clothes. I see a market.'' He had never seen them as a market; he'd just
    seen them as Indians.
        The President. Yes, and a lot of these people, if we put more
    stores, for example, in these Native American areas and hired the people
    there to work in the stores, then even in--and they're the poorest parts
    of America; they have the highest unemployment rate--but if you get
    their unemployment rate just down to 20 percent, then you have 80
    percent of the people working and you make a whole market. So by
    creating the jobs, you create the market to buy the products that the
    jobs provide.
        Mr. Jackson. What I thought was kind of mystical to me, frankly, was
    when we left Appalachia and got to Memphis, and after we had eaten at
    the Blues Cafe and had big fun eating much too much----
        The President. We did that.
        Mr. Jackson. ----and you, on one of your sleepless nights, decided
    we were going to go to the Lorraine Motel. We went through this whole
    museum, Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. We ended up in the spot
    that Martin Luther King was killed, and there you stood, and we prayed,
    and there was a somber spirit.
        But what struck me about it was that what you did this past week was
    to fulfill Dr. King's last great mission. He knew that slavery was the
    race gap; denial of public accommodations, the race gap--we won that
    public accommodations bill--the lack of the right to vote, the race gap.
        We now argue that that was a resource gap, it was a North-South
    resource gap, not just a race gap. So his last great movement was to
    pull together people from Appalachia, Al Lowenstein, Jewish allies from
    New York, Hispanics from the farm workers, from Chavez; he pulled all
    these groups together, and that was his last great mission, was to tour
    these areas to focus on a shared resource gap. So in some sense, this
    week, you've fulfilled that last leg of his journey.
        The President. If we can make that so, I would be very proud,
    because he was right about that. You know, it's funny how much time we
    lost as a country after he and Senator Kennedy were killed, because both
    of them were trying to--I remember when Bobby Kennedy went to
    Appalachia, went to the Indian reservation in Pine Ridge in '68. They
    understood that the last shreds of our racial problems would be mired
    forever in our economic insecurities until everybody has a chance to
    make it. And now, our country has this phenomenal prosperity for which
    we are very grateful, but interestingly enough, it is becoming the
    enlightened self-interest of the investor community to keep this thing
    going, to finally----
        Mr. Jackson. Sow profits, not fear.
        The President. That's right. Finally, to give all these folks a
    chance to play again.
        Mr. Jackson. Now that you have put the light on it--I mean, a
    Presidential entourage creates that--you put focus on America's
    underserved markets, its underutilized talent, untapped capital. We saw
    in Clarksdale, Mississippi, a man and his wife, both of whom are
    Stanford graduates, MIT engineers, graduates----
        The President. Yes.
        Mr. Jackson. ----selling McDonald's.
        The President. McDonald's, yes.
        Mr. Jackson. Very talented people, and that was--they found a niche
    there. But now, you put light. What must the Congress do to make this
    real? And then what must the business sectors--we have focus; we need
    legislation, and we need business. What's the next two pieces?
        The President. Congress should do two things. First of all, they
    should fund the second round of these empowerment zones, because in the
    empowerment zones, we give special tax incentives for people to put
    business there and to hire people from there, and we give the
    communities extra money to educate and train people--first thing. And
    the Vice President's done a great job of
    managing that program. In addition to that, we have some more money for
    these community development banks. They give capital to first-time
    business people who couldn't get it other places. That's the first
    thing.
        The second thing that Congress should do is to pass the new markets
    legislation which, as I said, basically gives American businesses the
    same incentives to invest in poor areas, urban and rural, in America
    that we today give them to invest overseas.
        Mr. Jackson. What do we give them overseas?
        The President. Well, we give them tax credits; we give them loan
    guarantees; we give them other things to try to lower the cost of
    capital.
        Mr. Jackson. OPIC and the like?
        The President. Right. Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the
    Export-Import Bank.

    [[Page 1182]]

        Mr. Jackson. So you propose APIC--American Private Investment----
        The President. American Private Investment Companies, and here's how
    it would work.
        Mr. Jackson. Do you think it would pass, likely to pass?
        The President. I think so. I mean, the Republicans ought to love it
    because it's a tax incentive thing, you know, it's not a big Government
    program. But here's how it would work. Suppose you and I were trying to
    build a shopping center development in East St. Louis, where we visited,
    and suppose the costs of that were--I'm making this up--about $300
    million, and suppose we could raise $100 million in capital. Well, if we
    could do that, we could get a 25 percent tax credit with that $100
    million investment, which takes our risk down to $75 million right off
    the bat. We've only got $75 million at risk, not $100 million. We could
    then go borrow the other $200 million from the bank with a Government
    guarantee on the borrowing, which would dramatically cut the interest
    rates and save us another several million dollars over the life of the
    project.
        Mr. Jackson. So you've got tax incentive, investment incentive, and
    loan guarantees and markets.
        The President. That's right. So, first of all, you've got a profit
    opportunity. We're not asking anybody for charity here. If there's no
    opportunity there, don't do it. But if there is an opportunity but
    you're worried a little about the risk, we will cut the relative risk of
    this investment, as compared with others, with the tax incentives and
    loan guarantees. It's a real good deal.

    Gun Control

        Mr. Jackson. We've found, in each of these markets, invariably two
    new buildings, a new ball park and a new jail. In all of these schools
    where we visited, the schools were unwired. Those in the jails, 90
    percent are high school dropouts; 92 percent are functionally
    illiterate. The question of lack of education can breed the crime thing.
        Senator Bradley put an article in the Post this week about proposals
    to reduce guns. Just briefly, he says that we should ban the
    distribution and sale of ``Saturday Night Specials,'' registration for
    all 65 million handguns, a licensing and safety course for everyone who
    owns guns, ban gun dealers from selling guns in residential
    neighborhoods, insist on mandatory gun locks. Are these commonsense
    measures from your point of view?
        The President. Sure. You know, we've got the gun locks provision in
    the Congress, and that still might pass. But I have said, we ought to
    have registration. We register our cars. If your car gets stolen while
    you're doing this interview with me, and somebody drives it halfway
    across the country and leaves it in a parking lot--let's say in Lincoln,
    Nebraska--and the police find it, as soon as you report your car stolen,
    it will go into an international computer system. As soon as he, the
    person who finds your car in Lincoln, Nebraska, says, ``Here, I've found
    this stolen car, and here is the license plate and the registration,''
    within 30 seconds, the local police in Chicago will be able to call you
    and say, ``Reverend Jackson, we found your car.'' And so, of course we
    should do these things.
        Mr. Jackson. So the drive to reduce easy access to guns and gun
    registration and gun education become factors in reducing the----
        The President. Yes. And I think it's interesting--I think the NRA
    ought to support this. I don't think it's in their interest what they're
    doing, because nobody's trying to say we shouldn't have hunting and
    sport shooting. And if I were, they never listen to me, obviously, but I
    used to work with them sometimes in Arkansas. One of the best things
    they ever did were their hunter education programs, and they really try
    to teach young people to safely use firearms. Why shouldn't we say, if
    you're going to have a gun and you're a young person, you ought to be
    licensed and you ought to be taught how to use it; they would teach it.
        Mr. Jackson. But you don't hunt rabbit with AK-47's.
        The President. No, you don't. Well, we ought to ban those. You know,
    I'm in favor of getting rid of all that and all those big clips and all
    that kind of stuff. But if they have those guns, they ought to be able
    to use them, and NRA ought to be out there certifying teachers to teach
    them. If somebody steals your gun, you ought to be able to find it, just
    like your car. Then the other thing I disagreed with them about, we
    ought to close the loophole on selling these guns at gun shows and flea
    markets in big cities so that the same background checks are done. These
    background checks work; we keep those guns out of the wrong hands by
    doing that.

    [[Page 1183]]

    Hillary Clinton's Possible Senate
    Candidacy

        Mr. Jackson. In this dialog, we've talked about all of the easy
    stuff, I mean, how to wipe out poverty without wiping out the poor, how
    to begin to close the resource gap and the skills gap. Now, the ultimate
    question: Is Hillary going to run for the Senate? [Laughter]
        The President. I honestly don't know. She's having the time of her
    life in New York this week, and the people have been very good to her.
    And if she decides to do it, I will strongly support her in every way I
    can. She would be a fabulous Senator if she decides to do it. I honestly
    don't know what she's going to do, but she's obviously interested in it.
    If the people of New York were to vote for her and elect her, she would
    be magnificent.
        Mr. Jackson. So you don't think the Presidential issue will last in
    the heat of the campaign?
        The President. No, I didn't say that. I think that she believes that
    it's a legitimate issue; at least, she believes that if she presents
    herself as a candidate, she would have to demonstrate to the voters of
    New York that she understands the State, that she is capable of learning
    about all the local issues, that she cares about them as well as the big
    national things on which she and I spent our lives. And so that's why
    she's up there on her listening tour. And she's going to go back every
    week this summer.
        Mr. Jackson. How do you think she has done this week on her
    listening tour? Because she's had to do some talking while listening.
        The President. I come back at night from our tour--I'd come back at
    night and flip on the TV and see what she had done, and I think she's
    done really well. I'm really proud of her. If this is what she wants to
    do, I'm 100 percent for it.
        Mr. Jackson. When do you think she will decide?
        The President. I think she wants to complete this--I think she at
    least wants to complete her summer schedule and listen to these folks
    and assess where she thinks it is. But I'm happy for her. It's a very
    exciting thing.

    New Markets Initiative Tour

        Mr. Jackson. Let me say to you, I thank you for this interview. This
    trek around America was most historic this week because we measure our
    strength politically by following opinion polls about how well Wall
    Street is doing, but you made the point over and over again that in the
    end you measure character by how you treat the least of these. And your
    dissatisfaction with 15 million children in poverty and 40 million
    without health insurance, your discomfort level with the poverty-
    stricken is a great moral statement and challenge for all of us.
        I hope that in this season that we can, in some bipartisan basis,
    move from the bickering racial battleground to economic common ground, a
    kind of--I lived in Mississippi and saw whites and blacks on a shared
    economic security agenda, you know, Patients' Bill of Rights and
    increased teacher pay and cut the infant mortality rates. I mean, it
    seemed that is--this is a certain pregnant moment with possibility that
    all of us should seize.
        The President. You know, the thing that was so touching to me--and
    we got out there in the country--you know, there were a lot of
    Republicans with us as well as Democrats, and in these areas we went, we
    met a lot of Republicans as well as Democrats.
        These issues, these sort of common ground economic issues--I don't
    think there are partisan issues out there in America, and if we can keep
    them from becoming a partisan issue in Washington, then I'm going to
    reach out to the leadership of the Republican Party in Congress next
    week to talk to them about this trip and ask them to help me pass
    something that will really make a difference out there.
        Mr. Jackson. So beyond the historic economic petitions and political
    petitions and racial petitions, you see this bridge building as
    ultimately your legacy, building bridges to the underserved, the
    unutilized, and the untapped.
        The President. Yes. I think that this country ought to go whole into
    the new century, and we can't do it if not everybody has a chance to
    make a living, get an education.
        Mr. Jackson. Well, thank you, Mr. President.
        The President. Thank you. Thank you for going with me. You were
    fabulous.

    Note: The interview was recorded at 11:35 a.m. in Room 213 at the
    Harbor-UCLA Medical Center for later broadcast on CNN. In his remarks,
    the President referred to Richard L. Huber, chairman and chief executive
    officer, Aetna, Inc.; Representative Bennie G. Thompson; and Mayor
    Richard M. Webster, Jr., of Clarksdale, MS. The transcript was embargoed
    for release by the Office of the Press Secretary until 8 a.m. on July
    10.

    [[Page 1184]]

    A tape was not available for verification of the content of this
    interview.