[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.

[[Page 2264]]

    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.