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