    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 3 (Monday, January 24, 1994)]
    [Pages 101-105]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks on Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities

    January 17, 1994

        I want to thank Arland for reminding us all that we can make a
    difference in people's lives and that there are a lot of good people out
    there who are dying to make more of their lives if given the
    opportunity. It's so easy for us here to come here and talk in
    Government language about Government programs that never seem to reach
    to the human level and to the reality of what is actu-

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    ally at stake among the young people of this country. And he did that
    better than I think that I will be able to in following up. But for all
    of you who are here to talk about this today, if there was ever an
    argument for why we needed to find ways to give people and communities
    the capacity to develop themselves, I think Arland Smith made a better
    argument than any of the rest of us ever could. I thought when he said,
    ``I couldn't believe I was here in Washington; I used to be a
    knucklehead,'' I thought he was going to say there were a lot of
    knuckleheads here, but he was delicate enough not to say that.
    [Laughter]
        First, let me if I might, comment on the earthquake that struck Los
    Angeles and the San Fernando Valley very early this morning. I have
    spoken with Governor Wilson and with Mayor Riordan by phone. I've
    assured them that we intend to do everything we possibly can to help the
    people of Los Angeles and southern California deal with the earthquake
    and its aftermath.
        I've also spoken with James Lee Witt, the Director of the Federal
    Emergency Management Agency. He is probably, as we meet here, on his way
    to California. Secretary Cisneros, I know, is going out later today. We
    may have other representatives of the Government there. We have done
    everything we can both to provide the resources and the backup we need.
    I believe that later today it will be possible for us to issue the
    appropriate Federal declaration for California. We're going to go out
    there anyway, and our people will be doing the necessary work to try to
    do that. FEMA has had a lot of challenges this year, what with the 500-
    year flood in the Middle West and the fires in southern California. But
    the good news is, I think they're well organized and ready to deal with
    this, and I have been very impressed with the work that's already been
    done since the early morning hours in southern California.
        We do know that at least three people have lost their lives, that
    many people have lost their homes, that there's been a severe disruption
    of life there. There are at least three major freeways that are
    seriously damaged, and if you've been watching it on television you know
    that. So I ask the American people to remember the people of Los Angeles
    County in their thoughts and prayers today. It's going to be a very
    difficult few weeks for them as they try to come through the immediate
    dangers. And there are still some immediate dangers there and in the
    aftermath.
        On this Martin Luther King Day, we honor our Nation's challenging
    and most eloquent voice for human rights and human potential, a person
    who gave his life to guarantee better opportunities for people like
    Arland Smith. When Martin Luther King died in April of 1968, I was
    living here as a senior at Georgetown, and I remember so clearly putting
    a big red cross on my car and driving it down into the burning areas of
    town to deliver supplies to people who had lost a lot of hope. It was a
    very troubling time for our country and, indeed, for the whole world.
        And not long after that I had a chance to go to Eastern Europe and
    to Russia for the first time in my life, right after the hope of freedom
    had been extinguished in Czechoslovakia. Well, I just got back from that
    trip, as you know. And while the problems those people are facing are
    far from over and while their future is far from free of difficulty, if
    you could have been with me walking the streets of Prague, you would
    have seen the great cause for hope, a people who for decades were
    shackled to a Communist system with their personal freedoms and their
    personal ambitions held in check now really looking forward to a very
    different and broader and brighter future; to see a man like Vaclav
    Havel, a former prisoner under the Communist system, living his life the
    way Dr. King challenged the rest of us to live, rewarded by his people
    with the Presidency of his country. I say that because if you think
    about where we are now compared to where we were when Martin Luther King
    died there is a great deal to hope for around the world and here at
    home.
        But I couldn't help thinking as I was going across the world trying
    to help other nations deal with their problems, that I was coming home
    to Martin Luther King Day, and the honest hard assessment that a lot of
    things that were obsessing and burdening this country 25 years ago when
    Martin Luther King died are just as bad today as they were then. A lot
    of things are

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    better. A lot of things are better. There is more individual opportunity
    for people who are educated and who developed it. There is less overt
    prejudice. But there is more violence, less opportunity, and more
    destruction of family and community for the places that are really hard
    hit than there even was 25 years ago. And I think the only way we can
    honor Martin Luther King's memory is to be honest about that and to ask
    ourselves what we can do to rebuild the communities and families of this
    country and to give more young people like Arland Smith a chance to be
    what he is becoming.
        For a long time, the Government really thought that if we just had a
    solution designed here in Washington that was properly funded, we could
    solve the problems of every community in the country. Well, we learned
    that that wasn't true. But we've also learned, after several years of
    neglect, that neglect is not a very good policy either, that somehow
    there needs to be a new partnership between Washington and the
    communities and the individuals of this country and that there needs to
    be a way of doing business in which we try to create the conditions in
    which people can seize opportunities for themselves. That's what this
    empowerment zone concept is all about and these enterprise communities
    are all about. The business leaders who are here today are here because
    we know that we cannot succeed in Government unless you are our
    partners. And we have stopped trying to tell everybody exactly how to do
    what needs to be done, but instead we have begun to create the
    conditions in which people can do what needs to be done at every level.
        I want to thank all the members of our administration who are here
    who worked so hard on this project. I want to say a special word of
    thanks to the Members of Congress who are here without whom we could not
    have passed the whole empowerment zone concept. I tell you freely that
    it was not without controversy in the Congress. There were a lot of
    people who said, ``Well, we're trying to bring down the deficit, and we
    just shouldn't do this. This might not work.''
        But when we looked at the history of what had happened to--[
    inaudible]--community, when we see what happens when work disappears,
    when families are under stress, when a void is created into which gangs
    and guns and drugs move, we realized, I think, as a people here in
    Washington last year, that we had to do something to try to change the
    rules of the game, community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood.
        We also know that we can't do it without help from the business
    community. So I say to you here on this Martin Luther King Day, America
    needs your help. The real reason Arland Smith's got a good story is that
    after he paid the price to go through the educational system and to
    change his own habits and the way he presented himself and his own
    aspirations for his own life, the only real reason he's got a story to
    tell is that he also has two jobs. And if there were no job at the end
    of the rainbow, then this man would be standing up here giving a very
    different speech: ``Why did you all hold out false hopes? Why did you
    tell me to be a good student, to be a good citizen, to be a good father,
    to do all these things, and then there was nothing at the end of the
    effort for me?''
        Our most urgent task is to restore to young people like Arland all
    across this country the conviction that if they do work hard, they will
    be rewarded, the absolute, unshakable belief that they can make their
    future better. And we cannot do that without a community-based effort
    and without a partnership with employers all across this country.
        In Martin Luther King's last book, ``Where Do We Go From Here,'' he
    said that community-based businesses, no matter how small, are vital
    because they are a strength among the weak though they are weak among
    the mighty. If we want people to live by the work ethic, we've got to
    give them work. It's as simple as that. We have advanced, from the
    beginning of this administration, a new approach, coordinated in
    partnership here in Washington between the private and public sector and
    also coordinated at the grassroots level, to focus on a community
    investment strategy which would empower people to determine their own
    future. That's what the empowerment zones and enterprise communities are
    all about, and that's what our efforts to strengthen the community
    investment act and to develop community development banks are all about.
    And that's what our effort to pass a crime bill that would put another

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    100,000 police officers on the streets in grassroots communities are all
    about.
        All these things are not about imposing Federal formulas on
    communities; they're about giving communities the right to define a
    future for themselves and the resources to succeed. That's what the
    strengthening of the Head Start is all about. That's why on April 15th,
    15 million working families will get a tax cut because their incomes are
    modest and because we want them to succeed as workers and as parents.
    That's what the earned-income tax credit is all about.
        This empowerment zone initiative, therefore, is a central part of a
    broadly coordinated strategy. With business people in mind, the plan
    seeks to make places more attractive for new investment so that people
    can--Arland Smith can fulfill their dreams. We built about $2.5 billion
    in tax incentives into this plan. They say if you hire a new worker in
    this zone, you'll get a tax break. If you retrain a worker who lives in
    this zone, you'll get a tax break. In other words, the plan rewards
    people for results, for reaching people in communities that presently
    are seeing disinvestment instead of new investment.
        It's much better than welfare, and it recognizes that it doesn't
    make any economic sense for us to be trying to build new markets all
    around the world when we have huge, untapped, undeveloped markets right
    here at home: millions and millions and millions of potential consumers
    for American products and services who cannot be part of the American
    market because they, themselves, do not have the education, the
    training, the jobs, and the supports that they need. If we simply can
    apply our international economic policy to south central Los Angeles,
    Harlem, Milwaukee, Detroit, you name it, the Mississippi Delta, south
    Texas, we're going to do just fine in this country. We should see the
    American people who have the ability of this fine young man who just
    spoke as an enormous asset that we are not tapping. And we have no
    excuses now for not doing it, because we know better, and we know it.
    How many times did I give that speech during the NAFTA debate? The only
    way a rich country grows richer is to find more people who buy its
    products and services. In America we have millions of people who don't
    buy our products and services, because we have not invested in them and
    their potential and created the conditions in which they can succeed. So
    that is what this is all about.
        Nobody in our strategy gets something for nothing. The rules for
    businesses that participate are the same as for the rules of
    communities. It tells everybody if you assume certain responsibilities,
    if you make certain investments, if you make certain commitments, there
    are rewards. And it gives you all, again I would say, the chance to
    develop the systems that work best community by community.
        Now, I have given a lot of thought, having been a Governor and
    having tried to do this on a State level with mixed results, to what
    works and what doesn't. When I became Governor of my State for the
    second time in 1983, we had an unemployment rate 3 percent higher than
    the national average. And the Mississippi Delta was then and
    unfortunately still is the poorest part of America. But I could take you
    through towns in the eastern part of my State--Mr. Nash, the Under
    Secretary of Agriculture, and I went week after week, month after month,
    year after year into town after town after town. And we would go into a
    county and see 2 towns 10 miles from one another, the same income
    makeup, the same racial makeup, the same educational makeup, and one
    would have an unemployment rate 4 points lower than the other. One would
    have a school in which there was no white flight but instead
    coordinated, integrated, high-quality education. And it was always
    because of the leadership and the vision and the discipline and a common
    concern for the people who lived at the local level. They created
    empowerment zones without even knowing what the idea was or what it
    meant. So what we have really argued over and over and over again now
    for a year in Washington is what we could do to set up a system that
    would accelerate the creation of those success stories, so there can be
    millions more Arland Smiths.
        I asked the Vice President to head a new Community Enterprise Board
    to try to come up with that sort of system, to change the Federal
    relationship with America's communities but also to set in motion a
    process for

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    American communities which would require them to undertake the
    discipline of examining where they are, what they're doing right and
    wrong, and how to come up with strategies to succeed. I am very proud of
    the work that they've done so far.
        And this occasion today in which we open the applications for the
    empowerment zones, I am absolutely convinced, will benefit every single
    community in America that participates in it whether they win the first
    round of zones or not, because they will be able to see that by doing
    the things that work, we can open up opportunities for people to live up
    to the fullest of their capacities.
        Again, I want to thank Arland Smith for coming here today and
    reminding us what is really at stake and what can be done. I want to
    thank the business leaders for being here today, because we can't do
    this without you. You know it, and we know. And his story is an example
    of it. And I want to thank the Vice President and everybody who has
    worked on the Community Enterprise Board for an outstanding piece of
    work which he will now describe.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:18 p.m. in the East Room at the White
    House. In his remarks, he referred to Arland Smith, a Youth Employment
    Training Program graduate.