[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
[July 6, 1999]
[Pages 1136-1140]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Remarks in a Roundtable Discussion on Investment in the Mississippi
Delta Region in Clarksdale, Mississippi
July 6, 1999
The President. Thank you. Please be seated everybody. Well, it's hot
as a firecracker in here. [Laughter] So I feel right at home. [Laughter]
I don't know whether Bob Koerber and the
people at Waterfield are insured against heatstroke by strangers
happening in along the way, but let me say that I am delighted to be
here today. I've had a good day already.
And I've got a large group with me, and I can't mention them all,
but I'd like to mention a few of them. First I want to thank Secretary
Slater, who is, as all of you know, also
from Arkansas and worked with me on the Delta commission. I want to
thank our Secretary of Agriculture, Dan Glickman; our Secretary of Labor, Alexis Herman, who is here with me; our SBA Administrator, Aida
Alvarez. Reverend Jackson, thank you for being here.
I'd like to thank David Bronczek from
FedEx; Jack Haugsland from Greyhound.
We'll introduce our panelists later. I'd also like to say a special word
of thanks to Lieutenant Governor Ronnie Musgrove and his family. They're here, and we thank him for his
interest in the development of the Delta.
Our Congressmen, Bennie Thompson,
from this district, thank you; and I understand Congressman Ronnie
Shows from Mississippi is also here. Ronnie is
standing up there. Thank you. And we have two visitors who have come
from a long way away to be with us, Congressman Jim Clyburn from South Carolina and Congressman Paul
Kanjorski, all the way from Pennsylvania,
down here. Thank you very much.
And we thank Attorney General Mike Moore for
being here and all the other people from Mississippi who are here.
Let me say again to Bob Koerber and
all the folks here at Waterfield, we thank you for giving us a chance to
both tour this plant and to camp out in some of your space.
[[Page 1137]]
And I would like to be very brief. I've learned to attenuate these
remarks of mine. Yesterday it was 100 degrees in Hazard, Kentucky. We
had 10 or 15,000 people outside, and I said I don't believe I'd better
give this speech I was going to give.
Hello, Governor Mabus. It's nice to see you.
Welcome. Thank you very much for being here. And I think my friend
William Winter is here. Governor Winter, are
you here somewhere? He met me at the airport. So anyway, I talked for
about 5 minutes, and I'd like to do that.
I just want to tell you exactly why we're here. First of all, the
people in the Delta know better than anybody else that, while this
country has had an unbelievable run--we've had the longest peacetime
expansion in our history, nearly 19 million jobs since the day I took
the oath of office. We have the lowest recorded rates ever of
unemployment among African-Americans and Hispanics. We have the highest
rate of homeownership ever. We have a million kids lifted out of
poverty.
Now, having said all that, in the Delta, the poverty rate is much
higher than the country as a whole. In this county, it's over twice as
high. The unemployment rate is higher than the national average, and the
investment rate is lower.
Now, a lot of you--I remember when I was out on a barge in the
Mississippi River outside Rosedale with Ray Mabus
back in the mideighties, and we signed this agreement with the then-
Governor of Louisiana about all the
things we wanted to do with the Delta, and then we worked on the Delta
commission for all those years. A lot of good things have happened here,
and I want to talk a little about some of them. But I want you to know I
am making this tour of America for one simple reason: I want everybody
in America to know that while our country has been blessed with this
economic recovery, not all Americans have been blessed by it, that it
hasn't reached every place.
I want our country to know that there are great opportunities out
here for investment for jobs in America. I want them to know what we
have done already to make it easier for people to make the most of those
opportunities and what we're still trying to do.
Now, let me say, ever since I became President, I have done what I
could to increase investment in undeveloped areas through the
empowerment zones, which give tax credits and put tax money into
distressed areas, through the enterprise communities, through getting
banks to more vigorously approach the Community Reinvestment Act, and
setting up community development financial institutions or supporting
those that are already in business, like the Enterprise Corporation of
the Delta. It's a private, tax-exempt business group. It is a real
success story. Just since 1994, it's given financial or technical
assistance to more than 600 companies, including Delta Laundry and
Computers here in Clarksdale.
Now, we set these operations up all over the country. Overall, the
ECD here has helped to generate more than 5,000 jobs and $200 million in
annual sales. Bill Bynum, the CEO and
president of ECD is here. We thank him for being here today.
Today corporations represented here with me are going to invest $14
million more in the ECD, so they'll have more money to loan out to
people here to create more jobs. Today, around the country, there will
be about $150 million more announced to be invested in organizations
like this.
In addition to that, I'm trying to get Congress to pass a bill which
will give tax incentives, tax credits, and loan guarantees to people to
invest in the Delta and other poor areas of America, just like they get
today to invest in poor areas around the world. I think that it's a good
thing that we encourage people to invest in Africa, Latin America, and
the Caribbean, but they ought to have the same incentives to invest in
the Mississippi Delta and Appalachia and the Native American
reservations and the inner cities. That is what we're trying to do here.
We're trying to close what Reverend Jackson
calls the ``resource gap.''
Now, let me say, we've got a lot of other challenges in the Delta.
We have a terrible crisis in American agriculture today. Last year we
came up with billions of dollars to try to keep our farmers going. This
year we're going to have to do it all over again. And we've got a lot of
other problems. But fundamentally, what I want America to know is that
every place in the country, and today this place, is full of good
people, capable of doing good work, who can be trained to do any kind of
work, and we are going to do everything we can in the Government to give
the financial incentives necessary for people to invest here.
[[Page 1138]]
And I want to make the same point I made yesterday: Everybody in
America has a selfish interest now in developing the Delta. Why? Because
most economists believe that, if we're going to keep our economic
recovery going without inflation, the only way we can possibly do it is
to find more customers for our products and then add more workers at
home. If you come here, you get both in the same place. You get more
workers and more consumers. So it's good for the rest of America as
well.
So again I say I am delighted to be here. I had a wonderful time in
Memphis last night, but I ate too much. I'm sorry it's so hot, but I
hope nobody passes out, and I want to give Secretary Slater now a chance to talk to our panelists, and then I
want all of you to think about, when we leave here, what we can do to
show people the opportunity that's here now and what you could do to
help me pass, on a bipartisan basis, the necessary tax incentives and
loan guarantees to say to any investor, anywhere in America, if you come
to the Mississippi Delta, you can get at least as good a deal as you
could investing anywhere else in the world. And we're right here at
home, and we need you.
Thank you very much.
[At this point, the discussion began.]
The President. I just want to emphasize for everybody who is here
listening, because a lot of you may be able to come to Bill with a good idea, there are--it's not just that
there is not enough money available in this area for good investments;
someone has to decide what's a good investment. And what he has done is
to basically go out and get money from other people who, on their own,
would never have the time or effort or maybe even the inclination to
make these investments, but they trust them to do it--including our
community development fund, which, as you heard, they've given him $4\1/
2\ million. Hillary and I, when we were in Arkansas, helped to set up
the Southern Development Bank in Arkansas, as you know, so we believe in
this.
In addition to that, I want to emphasize one other thing. In the
empowerment zone program, that the Vice President has run for us over the last 6 years, people who invest
there can get substantial tax benefits for investing, and then they get
tax benefits for hiring people. But they don't get them if they're
outside of these zones.
One of the reasons that I'm trying so hard to pass this legislation
is not every place in America can be in an empowerment zone, even if we
keep increasing them every year. So what I want to do is to make every
area in America that needs an investor equally eligible to get the
investor's attention by being able to get these kinds of tax benefits,
so we can get more money into these development corporations and then
have equal tax incentives for investors to go into high unemployment
areas. Those two things, if we have enough people like you who are as
good as it as you have been, I think will make a huge difference. I
think it will--really, in the next 5 or 6 years, would make a
breathtaking difference, because people are out here looking at these
markets now. And I want to thank you.
[The discussion continued.]
The President. Let me say this very briefly. I was there when you
started, and I was delighted when I heard you were going to be on the
program. I wish we'd had time today--we don't--to tell everybody the
fascinating story of how you got started, how you found the equipment to
do the brown rice in the first place, and someday you ought to write it
up, because no one who understands what was going on in America at the
time would believe it. And it's a real tribute to your initiative. And
I'm glad you're still doing well and glad you're still growing. Thank
you for being here today. Thank you.
[The discussion continued.]
The President. Let me say, I'm delighted that you've done so well
over these years since you began in Arkansas. I remember when you
planted roots in Pine Bluff. I just think it's worth pointing out that
the South Shore Bank of Chicago, which financed you, was really the
first great community development bank in the United States, and they
were inspired, among others, by a man named Muhammad Yunus from Bangladesh who has now made millions of loans
to poor, poor village people in Bangladesh through the bank you set up.
Hillary and I had some contact with him.
That's what led to the establishment of the bank in Arkadelphia and to
my belief that we in the National Government ought to do more to support
people like Bill. I think--again, you've just
[[Page 1139]]
heard now three stories, and two of them involve people who have had to
get credit. A lot--I always say one of Clinton's laws of politics is,
when somebody tells you that a problem is not a money problem, they're
almost always talking about someone else's problem, not their own. To a
great extent, this is a money problem. You have all these talented
people and all these good ideas; there is a pretty even distribution of
human resources and ability in this whole world, but there is not an
even distribution of access to capital. And that's what it is we're
trying to fix. So I thank you.
[The discussion continued.]
The President. You're being way too modest. Now, you know, this
lady is the assistant plant manager here.
According to my notes, she also is the mother of five children. When
this place was in bankruptcy, they took it out, and they've turned it
around. They're doing good business; they're expanding their work force.
And I think what we need, frankly, are more people that have this
particular expertise, particularly in the Delta, because there's more
than one place like this.
Our host was telling us there's
another place across the river in Arkansas that he's been looking at
now. If we had a core of people who had this skill to go with what our
local venture capitalist and banker here is doing for us, we could
really do some good. But I think we ought to recognize that what these
people have done here and the jobs that they've given folks the
opportunity to hold is quite important and could be a good model for
others in the Delta. So I thank you for what you've done.
[The discussion continued.]
The President. Well, I know we've got to wrap up. If you don't
remember anything else when you leave, remember what Cathy said, not just the $500 million, although that's
real money even in 1999; that's very impressive. This is a good business
opportunity here. If we cannot fully develop the Delta now when we have
the strongest economy in our lifetime, when will we ever get around to
it?
And remember, if you--put yourself in my position. I sit in
Washington all the time, trying to think about how can we keep this
economic recovery going, adding more jobs, raising incomes, without
having inflation. If we get inflation, then the Federal Reserve will
have to raise interest rates so much, the economic recovery will slow
down.
The only way to do it--I will say again to all of America--the only
way to do it is more customers, which then makes possible more
employees, when you can do that with higher productivity and no
inflation. The best place in America to do that is a place which has not
yet felt the recovery. This is a big deal.
I want to thank all of our business leaders for coming, and all of
our great entrepreneurs here in the Delta. I want to thank you. I know
we could stay here until tomorrow if we could all keep breathing.
I do want to point out that except for the occasional reverend of
the cloth and the odd politician, the head of the electric
utility is the only guy still wearing his
coat because he wants you to use more juice. [Laughter] And I think that
is very impressive. I want to thank our friend from Greyhound because we may always need some people to be able to
get to and from jobs that aren't in the small towns of rural America but
who want to live in rural America. That's been one of the big challenges
Secretary Slater has tried to face with
welfare reform, even; trying to make sure people who live in the inner
cities can at least get to the suburbs or who live in small towns can
get to a big city so they can take a job without having to undermine
their ability to be good parents.
And I want to thank my friend Bob Cabe
from Blue Cross. You need to know that in our former lives, we were both
lawyers. And he's a very special economic development expert for me,
because in 1981, I was the youngest ex-Governor in the history of
America with very limited future prospects, and he and his firm offered
me a job. So I am living proof that economic development works, thanks
to Bob Cabe, and I thank you very much. And I want to thank, again, all
these people for their wonderful work.
The story needs to go out across America. This is a good investment.
This is a good deal. We will help you. We will help you. We have
institutions to help you. We have tax relief to help you. And more and
more, our financial institutions are coming up with the money. But
America needs to wake up and recognize that the best new market for
American products and for new American investment is right here in the
U.S. of A.
Thank you very much, and God bless you.
[[Page 1140]]
Note: The President spoke at 10:25 a.m. at the Waterfield Cabinet Co. In
his remarks, he referred to Robert C. Koerber, president and chief
executive officer, and Cora Porter, assistant plant manager, Waterfield
Cabinet Co.; civil rights leader Jesse Jackson; David J. Bronczek,
executive vice president and chief operating officer, Federal Express;
Jack W. Haugsland, executive vice president and chief operating officer,
Greyhound Lines, Inc.; Lt. Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, State Attorney General
Mike Moore, and former Governors Ray Mabus and William Winter of
Mississippi; former Gov. Charles (Buddy) Roemer of Louisiana; William J.
Bynum, president, Enterprise Corporation of the Delta; Muhammad Yunus,
founder and chief executive officer, Grameen Bank, Bangladesh; Catherine
P. Bessant, president, Community Development Banking Group, Bank of
America; J. Wayne Leonard, chief executive officer, Entergy Corp.; and
Robert D. Cabe, executive vice president for legal, governmental
relations, and community services, Arkansas Blue Cross & Blue Shield.
Former Governors Mabus and Roemer were vice chairs of the now-defunct
Lower Mississippi Delta Development Commission.