    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [January 13, 2000]
    [Pages 45-51]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Wall Street Project Conference in New York City
    January 13, 2000

        Thank you. The reason we were scurrying around up here is that
    Reverend Jackson had taken my speech.
    [Laughter] That's okay. I've taken a lot of his over the years.
    [Laughter]
        Sandy, thank you for that wonderful
    introduction. I'm glad one of us made money out of this administration.
    [Laughter] I want to congratulate Robert Knowling and my longtime, wonderful friend Berry Gordy on their awards. I thank Mr. Ivester and Mr. Seidenberg for
    supporting this important work. I thank Secretary Slater and our SBA Administrator, Aida Alvarez, for being here with me. And I think Secretary
    Cuomo spoke here earlier today. He and the

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    Vice President have done a wonderful job
    with our empowerment zone program and the other HUD economic development
    initiatives.
        I want to say a special word of appreciation here today to the
    Members of Congress who are here--Congressmen Rangel, Velazquez, Owens, Maloney,
    Engel, and Jackson. And my personal thanks to two former Members of Congress
    who are here, the leader of the NAACP, Kweisi Mfume, and my good friend Reverend Floyd Flake, who went home to his mission in life. And I thank him.
        I saw my friend Mayor Willie Brown
    from San Francisco, and we congratulate him on his reelection. And
    former Mayor David Dinkins of New York, thank
    you, Mayor Dinkins; and our comptroller, Carl McCall; and so many others who are here.
        I want to thank Hugh Price for the Urban
    League's work. And I'd like to thank all the business leaders here who
    have helped the whole effort that Reverend Jackson has made over the last several years, but I would like
    to say a special word of appreciation to three who have been close to me
    and also close to Reverend Jackson: Willie Gary and Ron Burkle and Dennis
    Rivera. Thank you all very much for what you
    have done.
        Now, we've got a lot of folks here who have done things, but I want
    to say also how much I appreciate Reverend Jackson's family,
    Jackie and all their wonderful children.
    They've been great friends to Hillary and to Chelsea and me, and I just
    get a big rush every time they stand up and get introduced. It's quite
    exciting. Reverend, you've done a lot of important things in your life,
    but those kids are the most important, by a long, good way, and I want
    to thank you.
        Let me say, I always look forward to this event, but it keeps
    getting bigger and bigger and bigger. If it gets any bigger, we've going
    to have to start holding it in Yankee Stadium--[laughter]--and that's a
    good thing. I would like that very much.
        You know, I'm just practicing for my--did you see the way I got
    Berry up here and I took out the stand and
    then I picked up his glasses when he dropped them? I'm practicing for my
    role as a Senate spouse. [Laughter] Did you catch my wife on ``Letterman''
    last night? Was she great, or what? [Applause] You know, it's bad enough
    that I have to give up being President; now I've got to give up being
    the funny one in my family. [Laughter] Life is always teaching you
    lessons of humility. [Laughter]
        Although the press, you know, they keep saying I'm a lame duck. I
    think what a lame duck is, you know, you show up for one of these
    things, and nobody else comes. [Laughter] So I want to thank all of you
    for making me feel like I'm still President today.
        Now, to the business at hand. We all know why we're here, and we all
    know what we're supporting. I am profoundly grateful, not only as
    President but as a citizen, for the work that Reverend Jackson has done with this Wall Street Project. I am profoundly
    grateful that so many business leaders have supported it.
        I want to say, also, a special word of appreciation to the Members
    of the Congress that I have already introduced and to the current and
    former leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional
    Hispanic Caucus, Representatives Waters,
    Clyburn, Roybal-Allard, and Becerra. I want to
    thank Senators Sarbanes, Kerry, Robb,
    Rockefeller, and Congressman
    LaFalce from New York, because they've been
    especially supportive of this new markets initiative.
        Now, you heard Sandy Weill say some
    very kind things about the economic record of the administration, but I
    would like to put it in a little different context. It is true that we
    have the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years, that in just a few weeks
    we'll have the longest economic expansion in the history of America.
    We'll then be over 20 million new jobs, surpassing the expansions that
    occurred in World War II when we were fully mobilized for war. It is
    true that we have the lowest recorded Africa-American and Hispanic
    unemployment rates, the lowest female unemployment rate in 40 years.
    That's all true. But it's also true that the minority unemployment rate
    and the minority poverty rate is still about twice the national average.
        I was just in Brooklyn with Nydia Velazquez to kick off a small business center with Aida
    Alvarez. You heard her talking about it. In
    Brooklyn, a borough in New York City that has been very good to me and
    to the Vice President--the national unemployment rate is 4.1 percent;
    the Brooklyn unemployment rate is still over 9 percent. The national
    poverty rate down to about 11 percent; the Brooklyn poverty rate

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    way over 25 percent. The national homeownership rate, 66 percent;
    Brooklyn homeownership rate about 28 percent.
        A lot of good things are happening there. And the whole area has
    been reborn on the energy of new immigrants, and I feel very good about
    it long term. But I want to make a point here. If we're in a position--
    which we weren't in 7 years ago because the whole country was in a mess,
    economically and otherwise. But if now it is true that we have perhaps
    the best economy we've ever had--instead of having the biggest debt in
    history, we're now paying the debt off for the first time in the history
    of the country. The Treasury Department started buying the debt in
    early, so we could provide more capital for the private sector at lower
    interest rates, and our goal is to have America debt-free, the
    Government debt-free in 15 years.
        Now, if we're in a position to do that, there will never be, number
    one, a better time for us to bring economic opportunity to people and
    places that have been left behind. Number two, it has to be done in a
    partnership with the public and private sector, because we've still got
    a debt to pay off and an economy to keep strong, and the Government
    can't do this alone. This needs to be driven by private sector
    investment, private sector expertise, the kind of thing that will change
    for the long term not only people but whole neighborhoods and rural
    areas, Native American reservations, by empowering them to shape a
    different future for themselves.
        If we can't do this now, we will never do this. We will never get
    around to doing this if we don't do it now. So, point number one, we
    have a moral obligation to use our prosperity at this moment,
    especially, to lift up the areas not only of New York City but upstate
    New York, which would rank 49th of all our States in job creation--if
    you took the city and the suburbs out, the rest of New York would be
    49th of the 50 States in job creation. And there are lots of things that
    need to be done there that creative entrepreneurs can deal with, in
    terms of transportation and investment, lots of other issues--and all
    over America.
        The second thing I want to say is, this is in the economic self-
    interest of the people who are doing very well, the people whose stock
    has gone from 5 bucks to 55 bucks. Why? Why is that? Well, Sandy stole Bob Rubin from
    me, and he probably figures that now he's bulletproof from whatever we
    do in the Government, you know. But let me tell you, you would be
    astonished at the time we spent both when Secretary Rubin was there and
    after he left, in the White House and a few blocks down, the time
    Chairman Greenspan and his staff spend at the
    Federal Reserve thinking about the following question: How can we keep
    this going? How much longer can this go on, after we even eclipse the
    record of expansion in wartime in just a couple of weeks? How can we do
    it?
        How do economic expansions end? Well, sometimes they just run out of
    steam. There's nobody left that doesn't have any loose money to buy more
    stuff. You know? And then, sometimes they run out of steam because
    everybody starts making so much money that they ask for higher pay, or
    supplies get tight and they become so expensive they could get inflation
    in the economy. And then you have to raise interest rates to stop
    inflation, and the cure for stopping inflation also breaks the economic
    growth. Unemployment goes up, growth goes down, and it happens over and
    over again.
        Have we sort of repealed the laws of the private economy? No, we
    haven't repealed it, but technology and open markets and competitiveness
    and productivity have changed it and made new things possible. But how
    are we going to keep this going?
        Well, I would argue the only way to keep the growth going without
    inflation is to find both new businesses and new employees and new
    customers at the same time. If you have new people with money to spend
    and jobs to hold, then you can have growth without inflation--so that if
    the unemployment rate in Brooklyn drops from 9.4 percent to 4.1 percent,
    where it is nationwide, because you've got a whole lot of new jobs
    there, and then those people that have the jobs spend their money there,
    that won't contribute to inflation; it will keep the economy going.
        And the same thing is true all across the country. And don't forget,
    folks, this is not just an inner-city problem. One of the best things
    Jesse Jackson ever did was go to Appalachia.
    We were out there in Appalachia with this new markets tour last summer,
    in this little courthouse town in West Virginia, and he got a bigger
    hand than I did because he had been there before. [Laughter] The face
    of--today we celebrate the fact that the face of wealth is colorblind
    and that there is an equal distribution of talent in our country. You
    also see that the

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    face of poverty and deprivation and the lack of opportunity is
    colorblind. This is an American challenge.
        We were in Appalachia; we visited a company called Mid-South
    Electronics that now makes communications equipment--some of you might
    buy it--that makes its way onto the desktops of many Fortune 500
    companies represented in this room. Ten years ago, in a distant place in
    Appalachia that's hard to get to, they had 40 employees. And now, thanks
    to the availability of capital, they have 850--way back in the hills in
    Appalachia.
        In East St. Louis, with the great Mel Farr, Jesse Jackson and I visited a
    large new Walgreens store, first store that had been built in this
    distressed neighborhood in 30 years. And the manager of the store was a
    24-year-old woman who just graduated from college a couple of years
    ago--running that store with 30 employees. And I believe every one of
    them but two were older than her, and they thought she was great. And
    the neighborhood was coming alive because of capital.
        In Mississippi we met a woman who had been working for years in a
    small computer store and never made any money at all--just in this
    little, bitty store in a town in Mississippi. She had no money in the
    bank, and they were going to close her store. But she got an equity
    capital investment, and then she could get some loans. And she bought
    her business, where she had just been an employee all these years, but
    within a year she had more than doubled the size of the business and was
    making good money. She went from modest wages to being a proud business
    owner.
        And there are lots of stories like this everywhere. But for every
    story like it, in these distressed places there are 10 more people who
    could be this story and aren't yet. And that's why people like you come
    to events like this.
        This country owes a lot to visionary business people who are part of
    this movement. We owe a lot to the Members of Congress who are trying to
    help me pass my initiative, without which I could do nothing, and I
    thank them for being here. And we owe a lot to you, Jesse
    Jackson, for understanding that this was the
    next great frontier in the civil rights movement, years and years ago,
    and fighting for it all these years.
        Now, here's what I'm going to try to do this year, in our last year
    in office, to set up a framework that will enable us to bring
    opportunity to the people and places that have been left behind. First,
    I will resubmit, with certain changes, my new markets initiative. The
    general idea is that I want to give people the same incentives to put
    money in underdeveloped neighborhoods and towns in America that we give
    them today to put money into poor areas in Latin America and Africa and
    all over the developing world.
        Now, I strongly support that, too. I believe that when Americans
    give people in distant villages a chance to build a decent life, they're
    more likely to be good citizens and to support democracy and less likely
    to join the narcotraffickers or the people that are trying to corrupt
    governments and end freedom or later try to cause problems in the world
    that the United States will have to deal with. So we need to keep
    reaching out there. But we can't say, at this moment of heightened
    prosperity and a real challenge to keep our growth going, that we're not
    going to give the very same opportunities to our own people.
        Now, what are we going to do? First, I will propose a major
    expansion of the new markets and empowerment zones tax credits, to give
    investors tremendous incentives to give a long look to the
    underdeveloped areas in urban and rural America. I want to thank
    especially Representative Charles Rangel
    for the very large role that he has played in leading the charge on both
    these tax credits. I'll ask for more than twice the funding I asked for
    last year for this tax credit to spur $15 billion in new investment.
        I'm also going to ask Congress to authorize two new components of
    our new markets agenda. First, our New Markets Venture Capital Firms, a
    program geared toward helping small and first-time entrepreneurs; and
    then America's private investment companies, modeled, as I said earlier,
    on the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, to help larger
    businesses expand or relocate to distressed inner-city or rural areas.
    Now, together, all these components of the new markets initiative will
    leverage over $20 billion of new equity investment in our underserved
    communities.
        Here's how it works. Through our New Markets Venture Capital
    initiative and the American Private Investment Corporation, we'll spur
    new investments in both small and large businesses by telling investors
    the following: If you put

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    up $1 of equity capital for new markets investments, we'll provide $2 of
    Government-guaranteed loans. In some cases, we'll even defer interest
    payments for up to 5 years.
        What is the practical impact of this? It says, if you're willing to
    take the chance of seeking a profit in the new markets with new
    partners, we'll help to lower your financing costs and some of your
    risks. Then, on top of that, the new markets tax credit will give
    investors a 25-percent tax credit on investments in the Private
    Investment Corporation, in the New Market Venture Capital Group, in
    community development banks, and other funds that invest in our new
    markets. This will enable us, alone, to increase the amount this tax
    credit serves, from 6 to 15 billion dollars.
        Now, is anybody going to, all of a sudden, put money into a sinkhole
    where they think they'll lose it? No, not unless we give you a 100
    percent tax credit. But if you know there is a marginal increased risk
    but a potential big reward, not only for your investment but for our
    country as a whole, what these initiatives will do will say, hey, take a
    look at these places in America that have been left behind. And they're
    out there, and they're gifted people.
        I ordered Christmas presents, a few Christmas presents on the
    Internet this year for the first time. But you know who my seller was?
    One of America's Indian tribes. When we went to the Pine Ridge
    Reservation in South Dakota--do you think it's tough in Brooklyn--do you
    know what the unemployment rate on the Pine Ridge Reservation is,
    because it's so far from everyplace? One of the most noble places in
    America, the home of the Oglala Sioux, the tribe of Crazy Horse--their
    unemployment rate in this economy is 73 percent.
        I met--I was taken around through this neighborhood by this young
    woman who had had a very difficult childhood, but she was one of the
    most impressive, self-possessed, articulate people I have met in a long
    time for her age. And I thought to myself, there is an equal
    distribution of talent and intelligence everywhere in our country, and
    it is wrong for these people to be denied good jobs, good education,
    good housing, decent businesses, and the opportunity to build a
    different kind of 21st century community. Now, this is wrong.
        So I say to all of you again, I want you to help me pass this new
    markets initiative. I want you to help me increase the empowerment zone
    tax credits. And I want you to help me keep doing the things that are
    working. I want you to help me work with Vice President Gore and Secretary Cuomo
    to get a whole other round of empowerment zone communities, so we can
    put even more intense efforts there. And I want you to help me make it a
    nonpartisan deal.
        The Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, a Republican from Illinois, joined Reverend
    Jackson and me and Congressman Bobby
    Rush and some others in Englewood, Illinois,
    recently, and he pledged to work with us to find common ground on these
    proposals. Economic opportunity should not be the political province of
    any particular party. Economic opportunity should be the birthright of
    every American.
        Let me just mention one other thing I'm going to do, which is
    related to this, because I think it's important. Our new budget will
    carry a new initiative we call First Accounts to expand access to
    financial services to low income Americans--an idea long championed by
    Maxine Waters and many other leaders in
    Congress. Today, it's hard for some of you to believe, but far too many
    families have no bank accounts at all. They wind up spending a lot of
    their precious money on unnecessary fees, therefore, when they pay bills
    or cash checks.
        Under this First Accounts initiative, we're going to work with
    financial institutions to encourage the creation of low cost bank
    accounts for low income families; to help bring more ATM's to safe
    places in low income communities, like the post office; to provide
    training to help families manage household finances and build assets
    over time, which will work very nicely with the financial education
    efforts you're launching at this conference.
        And then, finally, I want to convene a roundtable at the White House
    to build even greater awareness in the corporate community of the
    benefits of the Community Reinvestment Act. You've already heard a lot
    of talk about that, but we had to work hard to ensure that when we
    passed the financial modernization bill and expanded the powers and
    opportunities for banks, we expanded the CRA, as well, and kept it
    instead of weakening it. That law has been on the books for over 20
    years, with more than 95 percent of all the money loaned under it has
    occurred in the last 5 years. And I'm very proud of that because more
    than a $1 trillion in long-term commitments have been made to invest in
    our communities.

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        So I say to you, we've got to do more of this. Especially when you
    put the responsibilities of financial institutions on the Community
    Reinvestment Act with all these incentives--if we can pass them through
    Congress, we can have a flood of money into areas that have never before
    had it, to people that have never before been able to get a loan, in
    ways that are good for all the rest of us, because they'll keep this
    engine going with no inflation.
        Anyway, that is the idea. And I loved all this new markets tours
    we've done. And Reverend Jackson and I, many Members of Congress, we've
    stopped at a lot of places where Presidents never go. And I'm having
    such a good time, we're going to do another one this spring. So,
    Reverend, you've got to clear your calendar;
    we're going to go. And we're going to specifically focus on something
    that I hope all of you will help us on. We're going to focus on the
    digital divide.
        This very conference is being broadcast live over the Internet to
    people all over the world. But a lot of the people you're trying to
    reach don't have a computer, can't afford the hookup. We have worked
    very hard, under the Vice President's
    leadership, to get something called the E-rate as a part of reform of
    the telecommunications system, which gives a couple of billion dollars
    in subsidies to schools and libraries around the country that are in low
    income areas, so everybody can afford to be hooked up.
        When we started 5 years ago we had--only about 14 percent of the
    schools in our country were connected to the Internet; now over 80
    percent are. We're really working hard, and we've had a wonderful
    partnership with the private sector. But it's not enough for the
    schools.
        I went to Hudson County, New Jersey, which has a lot of first-
    generation immigrants, in a school that had so many problems it was
    almost closed by the State. And then the principal of this high school
    not only started making sure all the immigrant kids whose first language
    was not English were trained on the computer, they started putting
    computers in the parents' home and showing them how to do it, so that
    all these low income working people could E-mail their parents,
    teachers, and their principals every day. The dropout rate went way down
    and the performance of these kids in a low income neighborhood, most of
    them immigrant kids, rose about the State average of New Jersey.
        We can do this if we close the digital divide. Your company had a
    lot to do with that, and I thank you.
        So again I say, you know, when you know something works and you know
    you ought to do it, you know, by the way, it will help you as well as
    help other people, you need your head examined if you don't do it.
        I see this as a part of America making the most of this precious
    moment. This week--I'll just close with this--this week I had one of the
    great sort of personal encounters with beauty in my whole life. I flew
    to the Grand Canyon, and I got there late at night. And I stayed in this
    old lodge built in 1905 which is right out on the edge of the Grand
    Canyon.
        Thirty years ago, when I was a young man, not long after I met
    Hillary, I drove all the way to
    California to see her. And I stopped at the Grand Canyon late in the
    afternoon. And back then, you had greater access, before we lawyers got
    hold of everything. And I crawled out on a ledge, and I watched the Sun
    set over the Grand Canyon for 2 hours. And you know, that canyon was
    formed over millions of years, and there are lots of layers of rock and
    lots of different shapes. So when the Sun sets, the light comes out of
    the Canyon until it disappears, and it changes everything. So for the
    first time in my life, this week I got to see the Sun rise over the
    Grand Canyon. So when it rises, it goes down into the Canyon and has the
    same impact.
        And I went there to set aside another million acres to protect it
    there, under authority that Presidents have had since Theodore Roosevelt
    got Congress to pass something called the Antiquities Act in 1908. And
    really, 100 years ago the times were--bore a lot of similarities to
    today. We were becoming a nation of immigrants; we changed from being an
    agricultural country to an industrial country--just like we're going
    from being an industrial country to an information-based global society
    now.
        And Theodore Roosevelt said that the great hallmark of every young
    and growing society must be that it takes the long look ahead. It's a
    nice phrase, isn't it? So if we are what we dearly want our children and
    grandchildren to believe we are, we will take the long look ahead.
        We'll deal with the challenge of the aging of America, the children
    of America, the need to balance work and family, the need to prove that
    we can improve the environment as we

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    grow the economy, the need to put a human face on the global economy,
    the need to stand against the new threats of terrorism and weapons of
    mass destruction and the old demons of racial and ethnic and religious
    hatred around the world. But we need to start in the long look ahead
    with the clear understanding that this is the only time in the lifetimes
    of most of us here when we ever had a chance to give everyone their shot
    at the American dream.
        When Martin Luther King was preparing to go to Chicago a long, long
    time ago, and Jesse Jackson was not still in high school but he was very
    young--[laughter]--in preparation for Dr. King's arrival, Jesse launched Chicago's Operation Breadbasket, an effort to
    open the dairy, the grocery, the other segregated industries to African-
    Americans. In just 2 years, he helped more than 3,000 men and women
    secure good jobs and an income that totaled over $22 million a year. So
    decades ago, Chicago got a glimpse of how good business could be when
    more people could play, to use the Reverend's phrase. Now, everyone in
    America knows this. You are all here in recognition of this.
        In a little more than a year, I'll just be a citizen again. And when
    I leave, I want to know that my country took the long look ahead, to
    give every poor person a chance to have the dignity that comes when your
    mind and your body and your spirit are engaged in productive labor for
    yourself and your family and your children.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 2 p.m. in the Imperial Room at the Sheraton
    Towers Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to civil rights leader Rev.
    Jesse Jackson, founder and president, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, and his
    wife, Jacqueline; Sanford I. Weill, chief executive officer, Citigroup;
    Robert E. Knowling, Jr., president and chief executive officer, Covad
    Communications Co.; Berry Gordy, Jr., founder, Motown Record Co.; M.
    Douglas Ivester, chairman of the board of directors and chief executive
    officer, Coca-Cola Co.; Ivan Seidenberg, vice chairman, president, and
    chief executive officer, Bell Atlantic; Kweisi Mfume, president and
    chief executive officer, National Association for the Advancement of
    Colored People; former Representative Floyd H. Flake, pastor, Allen AME
    Church, NY; State Comptroller H. Carl McCall; Hugh B. Price, president
    and chief executive officer, National Urban League, Inc.; attorney
    Willie E. Gary, 1999 Horatio Alger Award winner; Ronald W. Burkle,
    chair, Yucaipa Companies; Dennis Rivera, cochair, board of directors,
    Rainbow/PUSH Coalition; late night television talk show host David
    Letterman; former Secretary of the Treasury Robert E. Rubin; and former
    NFL Detroit Lion Mel Farr, Sr., president, Mel Farr Automotive Group.