[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
[July 5, 1999]
[Pages 1131-1133]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the Community in Hazard, Kentucky
July 5, 1999

    Thank you very much. Well, the Governor 
always told me, if I would only come to Appalachia, I would get a very 
warm welcome. I want to thank the good people of Hazard and Perry County 
for giving me that warm welcome. I want to thank all the people of 
eastern Kentucky who have made me and my party feel so welcome today: 
Paul and Judy Patton; I thank Mayor 
Gorman and Judge Noble. I thank those who have come with me today: our 
Agriculture Secretary--you heard from Secretary 
Glickman--our HUD Secretary, Secretary 
Cuomo; SBA Administrator Alvarez. We have two 
Congressmen here: Jim Clyburn from South 
Carolina and Paul Kanjorski who came all 
the way from Pennsylvania because they have places like Appalachia 
there, and they wanted to come down here to be with you.
    I want to thank Duane Ackerman and the 
other CEO's who are here, including Dick Huber of Aetna; the One Central Bank Kentucky CEO, Kit 
Stolen; Sara Gould from the Ms. Foundation; John Sykes from Sykes Enterprises. I'll mention him in a moment.
    I want to thank the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who keeps hope alive, and the others in our group, 
including Al From, the leader of the Democratic 
Leadership Council, and David Wilhelm, who is 
from nearby in Ohio and was my first Democratic National Committee 
chairman. I'd like to thank the young people here in AmeriCorps, and I 
would like to say a special word of thanks to Cawood Ledford. Boy, he is--I was thinking that if old Cawood had been 
a political announcer instead of a basketball announcer and I could have 
kept him with me these last 25 years, I'd have never lost an election.
    You know, Kentucky has been good to me and Hillary and to the Vice President. It has been brought to my attention that, in addition to 
the economy, we've been pretty good for Kentucky. Since I've been in 
office, UK basketball has had the most successful 6 years since Adolph 
Rupp was the coach, and Tim Couch hasn't done 
badly, either.
    You know, yesterday we celebrated the last Fourth of July of this 
century, the last Fourth of July of this century. Think of it: 223 
Independence Days. I want you all to drink plenty of water, and I'll 
make this quick, but you need to know why we came here. I wanted to come 
to the heart of America and Appalachia to talk about whether we're all 
going forward into the

[[Page 1132]]

21st century, whether we really can build a bridge over which we can all 
walk together.
    I'll bet you some of you here are actually the descendants of those 
people Governor Patton talked about, the 
Revolutionary War heroes who helped to settle this State. But you know, 
whether our parents and their parents came here on the Mayflower or 
slave ships, whether they landed on Ellis Island in the 1890's or came 
to Los Angeles Airport in the 1990's, around the Fourth of July we're 
supposed to celebrate what we have in common as Americans, to reaffirm 
that what unites us is more important than what divides us. Well, if we 
believe that, we have a shared stake in one another's success.
    I came here to say to you, I believe at this time of prosperity, if 
we can't find a way to give every single hard-working American family 
the chance to participate in the future we're trying to build for our 
country, we'll never get around to do it. Now is the time to move 
forward.
    Our country is the world's leading force for peace and freedom and 
human rights. We have the lowest crime rate in 25 years, the lowest 
welfare rolls in 30 years; 90 percent of our little children are 
immunized against serious childhood diseases for the first time in 
history. We have the longest peacetime expansion we've ever had, almost 
19 million new jobs. Wages are rising for the first time in 20 years for 
ordinary people. We have a million kids lifted out of poverty, the 
lowest minority unemployment rate ever recorded.
    And yet, even though this is a blessed time for America, not all 
Americans have been blessed by it. And you know that as well as I do.
    So I came here to show America who you are, and when I leave here, 
I'm going on to the Mississippi Delta, to my home country. Then I'm 
going up into the middle West, and then over to Phoenix, Arizona, and up 
to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, and then ending 
this tour in East Los Angeles to make a simple point, that this is a 
time to bring more jobs and investment and hope to the areas of our 
country that have not fully participated in this economic recovery. We 
have an obligation to do it.
    I started out the morning in the town of Tyner, a little village, 
with a wonderful woman who took me to see her 
69-year-old father that just lost his wife 
after 51 years of marriage. And I saw four generations of that family. 
And I walked in the neighborhoods, and I listened to the people tell me 
they needed better housing and better transportation.
    And then I went on to Mid-South Electronics, a place that had 40 
employees 10 years ago and has 850 today and about to expand some more, 
to make the point that any work that can be done by anybody in America 
can be done here in Appalachia and throughout the other places in this 
country where they're not fulfilling their promise.
    I came here in the hope that, with the help of the business leaders 
here, we could say to every corporate leader in America: Take a look at 
investing in rural and inner-city America. It's good for business, good 
for America's growth, and it's the right thing to do. If we, with the 
most prosperous economy in our lifetimes, cannot make a commitment to 
take every person along with us into the 21st century, we will have 
failed to meet a moral obligation, and we also will have failed to make 
the most of America's promise.
    You know, these economists in Washington and New York used to tell 
me that, if the unemployment rate ever dropped below 6 percent in 
America, we'd have inflation out of control. Well, it's been under 5 
percent for 2 years now, and inflation is still low. And I'm telling 
you, it can go lower. We can hire more people; we can have more jobs. 
But we've got to go to the places where there have not been enough new 
jobs and there has not been enough new investment, and we have to 
provide incentives for people to go there.
    I asked these business and political leaders to join me because we 
wanted to send a signal to America that we know that Government can't 
solve these problems alone. But we know that we'll never get anywhere by 
leaving people alone, either--you've tried it that way here in the hills 
and hollows of Kentucky and West Virginia and Ohio and Virginia and 
Appalachia, for years; that didn't work out very well--that what works 
is when we go forward together.
    I came here to say that I believe the Government's part is to create 
the conditions of a strong economy; to give individuals the tools they 
need to succeed, including education and training; and to give 
incentives to businesses to take a second look at the places that they 
have

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overlooked. And then the job of the private sector is to give you a 
chance to make the most of your God-given ability. That is what we are 
trying to do.
    With the help of Vice President Gore, 
we've had 135 empowerment zones and enterprise communities. I was in one 
earlier today. They've helped to create tens of thousands of jobs. But 
we have to do better nationwide. We've worked with people like the 
Kentucky Highlands Investment Corporation. But we have to do better 
nationwide.
    So that's why I'm going around here. I want to do two things--well, 
really three. Number one, I want people to know a lot of good things are 
going on here now; number two, I want them to understand that more good 
things can go on; and number three, I want us to do more. I want us to 
pass a law in Congress to create new markets in America, to say we're 
going to give a businessperson the same incentives to invest in new 
markets in America we give them today to invest in new markets overseas.
    Now, meanwhile, I want to thank the companies represented here, 
companies like Bell South, ready to help provide jobs and training for 
your people; the Ms. Foundation. The Appalachian Regional Commission, 
with my friend Jesse White, here, will 
help Appalachian entrepreneurs create new small businesses. Sykes 
Enterprises is making a major commitment--listen to this--to construct 
two information technology centers in eastern Kentucky that will bring 
hundreds of new jobs to Pike and Perry Counties. Thank you, Mr. 
Sykes.
    Across our Nation, banks like Bank One, Citigroup, Bank of America, 
First Union will invest hundreds of millions of dollars to finance new 
small businesses and other promising enterprises. I want to thank all 
these companies for their support.
    But again, I say: Look here, America. We've got people working out 
here and doing fine and doing marvelous things. Look here, business 
community. Take another look. There are great opportunities here. But I 
also want to say to the Congress, just simply give me one more tool for 
them: Give people the same incentives to invest in Appalachia or the 
Native American reservations or the Mississippi Delta or the inner 
cities we give them today to invest in poor countries overseas, and let 
the American people show what they can do.
    Ladies and gentlemen, it's been a hot day. But when I'm gone, I hope 
you'll remember more than that the President came and you were hot. I 
hope you will remember that it was the beginning of a new sense of 
renewal for this region and for all the people in our country to go 
forward together.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 4:10 p.m. on Main Street. In his remarks he 
referred to Gov. Paul E. Patton of Kentucky and his wife, Judy; Mayor 
William D. Gorman of Hazard; Perry County Judge-Executive Denny Ray 
Noble; F. Duane Ackerman, chairman and chief executive officer, Bell 
South; Richard L. Huber, chairman and chief executive officer, Aetna, 
Inc.; Alvin T. (Kit) Stolen III, president and chief executive officer, 
Bank One Kentucky/Lexington Market; Sara Gould, executive vice 
president, Ms. Foundation for Women; John H. Sykes, chairman and chief 
executive officer, Sykes Enterprises, Inc.; civil rights leader Jesse 
Jackson; retired University of Kentucky basketball broadcaster Cawood 
Ledford; former University of Kentucky quarterback and top 1999 NFL 
draft pick Tim Couch, Cleveland Browns; Jean Collett and her father, Ray 
Pennington, Tyner, KY, residents; and Jesse L. White, Jr., Federal 
Cochairman, Appalachian Regional Commission.