[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 27 (Monday, July 12, 1999)]
[Pages 1278-1281]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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--

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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 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.

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    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 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,

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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 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; and Jesse L. White, Jr., Federal 
Cochairman, Appalachian Regional Commission.