[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 28 (Monday, July 19, 1999)]
[Pages 1340-1343]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Interview With Bob Herbert of the New York Times in Anaheim, California

July 9, 1999

[The interview is joined in progress.]

New Markets Initiative

    The President. ----the successful work that's been done in the 
empowerment zones by these community development financial institutions. 
If you look at the banks that have vigorously pursued the Community 
Reinvestment Act and what they've been able to achieve, there is a lot 
of evidence that this will work.
    Secondly, this is not like either the Great Society of the sixties 
or the great neglect of

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the eighties; this is about getting good jobs into the inner cities and 
the rural areas by building an economic infrastructure that is part of 
the private economy, where the primary role of the Government is to, 
through tax incentives and loan guarantees, reduce the relative risk and 
to provide and to support these intermediary institutions so--like the 
community development banks and the microenterprise loan programs where 
there are relationships with people in the community--so good decisions 
will, in fact, be made. And there's just a lot of evidence that this 
works, not just in the United States but all over the world.
    And what I'm trying to do with this tour is to, building on what 
we've already done, show the investor community in America and the 
business community that there are a lot of good opportunities out here 
in the cities and in the rural areas, and secondly, to try to highlight 
the need for this new markets legislation which will, unlike the 
empowerment zones of the community development financial institutions, 
be nationwide in scope. It will be available to investors in every 
underdeveloped area in the country whether or not they have a community 
development bank, whether or not they have an empowerment zone or an 
oppressed community, whether or not they have any of these other things. 
And it emphasizes the most important thing, which is incentives to get 
that first equity capital to start the investment.
    Essentially, what none of these programs in the past have ever 
seriously done is to try to build a self-sustaining economic 
infrastructure. So that's why you see these apparently contradictory 
numbers. You see wages for the lowest income workers finally going up 
again substantially over the last 2 years; you see the lowest African-
American and Hispanic unemployment rates ever recorded, but you still 
see these pockets of real difficulty because there is, in these places, 
no indigenous economy.
    Mr. Herbert. What do you say to those Americans who are already 
doing well, especially Republicans? What do you say to them? Why should 
they get behind an effort like this? Why is it good for them?
    The President. I would say three things. Number one, anybody who has 
done as well as most of them have done in the last 6\1/2\ years ought to 
want other people to do better. They ought to feel like they should do 
it. But if they don't feel that way, the second thing I'd say is, there 
is money to be made out there. You know, the Aetna chairman who went 
with us on the first half of the trip, he also took our little advance 
trip down to Atlanta, you know, when we were down in the market down 
there, and he made a joke. He said, ``I may be the only guy that's not 
happy about this, because I had this figured out, and now all my 
competitors are going to find out.'' There's money out here to be made 
by creating businesses and jobs and tapping the consumer markets.
    The second thing I would say is, even if--to a Republican who would 
not invest in this area, even not getting money, I would say they ought 
to think about the larger economy. How can we keep the economic growth 
going the last 6\1/2\ years? We've already got the longest peacetime 
expansion in history. Soon, if we--knock on wood--can keep it going, it 
will be the longest expansion in history. How are we going to keep 
growth without inflation?
    The answer, it seems to me, is there are only three options: We've 
got to sell more American goods and services around the world, which is 
why I think--and most of them agree with that.
    Secondly, you can bring more discrete groups of people who are 
outside the work force now into the work force so there will be workers 
and consumers--that's principally the remaining people on welfare and 
the disabled. You know, we had this big initiative before the Congress--
I think is going to pass--to legislate when people take their Medicaid 
insurance in the work force.
    But by far, the biggest opportunity is the third one, which is to 
find new markets here at home, basically to both create producers and 
consumers in the areas of our country which have not participated in 
this recovery. That is a noninflationary way to continue to grow the 
economy, to continue keep the unemployment rate down.

Tax Cuts and New Markets Initiative

    Mr. Herbert. The Republican Party would like to pull a large tax cut 
out of the

[[Page 1342]]

surplus. What are the implications of that for this effort that you've 
been spotlighting for the past 4 days?
    The President. Well, I think they, of course, could include my tax 
cuts and loan guarantees along with what they want. The larger 
implications are that if you look at their tax cut, what it will do is, 
if you pay for their tax cut and their defense proposal, it would 
restore the deficit and dramatically cut our investments in these areas, 
in education, in health care and the environment, and in medical 
research and everything else. I think that's also important.
    I don't think we should stop investing in these areas. If you look 
at the program we just visited, one of the problems that's held a lot of 
these areas back is the enormous premium that goes to education in the 
world we're living in, with the economy that's emerging based on 
information technology. So here you've got all these inner-city kids--
that handsome young man that's going into the Army today, that is 
working that computer program to set up international trades from his 
Los Angeles--his Watts high school, was once a gang member. So I think 
it would be a terrible mistake to walk away from our education 
obligations. And it would be, I think, very dumb to restore the deficit 
if we can avoid it.
    You know, the Republicans have made a lot of money out of our 
economic policy. That's one reason they can afford to finance their 
campaign so generously; they've done well. And now they say, ``Okay, 
you've made us a lot of money; now we want to be in power again and 
change the economic policy.'' [Laughter]
    Think about this. If we kept on the path we're on now and we paid 
the deficit off--I mean, we paid the debt off and we essentially were 
debt-free in 15 years, that's a bigger boost of money in the pocket to 
the people who would benefit from their tax cut than their tax cut would 
be. Keep in mind, I'm for a tax cut, too; I just think it ought to be 
affordable, and I think it ought to be targeted to the people that need 
it most.
    But if you look at this--if we sent a signal this year to the 
markets we were going to be debt-free in 15 years and, yes, it might 
not--I know, I've read all these stories saying, ``Well, but you won't 
have 15 years of constant growth.'' That's true. But all these 
projections are based on an average rate of growth which allow for good 
years and bad years.
    So if we sent that signal to the markets, then--and, you know, we 
start materializing and playing down this debt, it keeps interest rates 
lower. That means ordinary people get money in their pockets: lower home 
mortgages, car payments, credit card payments, college loan payments. It 
means that business investment is less expensive, so there will be more 
of it, and incomes will be higher and growth will be more. It means we 
will be less vulnerable to things like the turmoil that gripped Asia 2 
years ago. And it means that since we won't be taking that money out of 
the world economy, when other countries who are our trading partners and 
who are poorer than we are get in trouble, they'll be able to get money 
more cheaply because we won't have to be taking it away from them to pay 
for our debt.
    So I think, to me, this is clear, that if you're imagining what the 
21st century economy will be like 20 years from now, that the richer 
states will need to be as nearly debt-free as possible so that when they 
borrow money, they're borrowing it for something like dramatically 
improving their infrastructure or rebuilding all their schools and 
cooking on computers or something like that. But on a year-to-year 
basis, the richest countries ought to be debt-free so the countries that 
need to borrow money to elevate their standard of living and also be 
trading partners for the richer countries can do so at less cost and 
with less turmoil. And it will be better for the ordinary citizens in 
the United States for all the reasons I said. So that's my answer to the 
Republicans.

Mrs. Clinton's Possible Senate Bid

    Mr. Herbert. And final quick question--Mrs. Clinton's run for the 
Senate. Are you guys--and welcome to New York--but, two, are you guys 
committed to living in New York if she loses this Senate race?
    The President. She decided irrespective of the Senate race--I told 
her when we moved here, I said, ``You know, ever since you came to 
Arkansas in 1973, we've lived

[[Page 1343]]

where my work dictated and where I wanted to move. When we get out of 
here''--this is a 1993 conversation we had--``when get out of here, I'm 
going to have to spend a lot of time at home because I've got to build 
my library and my center there, and''--but I said, ``but I will live 
wherever else you want to live.'' And she told me years ago that she 
wanted to go to New York. And I said that's fine with me. I love New 
York. I'd be happy to live there. It would be fine. So I'm going to 
divide my time between New York and Arkansas no matter what happens.
    I talked to her three times yesterday; it was really, I think, an 
exciting day for her. She felt really good about it.
    Mr. Herbert. Tough for a New York reporter--I've got to decide 
whether to cover her or cover you.
    The President. She's a better story now.
    Mr. Herbert. She's a great story.
    The President. She's a better story, but this is an important story, 
what we've been doing these last 3 days. I'm so thrilled. I hope I can 
persuade them to adopt the legislation by the end of the year. But I 
think all these business guys get interested; it's really amazing. There 
is no partisan difference on this in the business community, and a lot 
of these guys that were with us in the last 2 or 3 days are Republicans. 
They're just excited about it. They think it's the right thing to do, 
and they think they can make money doing it. So do I.
    Mr. Herbert. Thank you very much.
    The President. Thanks.

Note: The interview began at approximately 11:30 a.m. on July 9 in the 
Presidential limousine en route to the Hilton Anaheim. The transcript 
was embargoed for release by the Office of the Press Secretary until 6 
a.m. on July 11. In his remarks, the President referred to Richard L. 
Huber, chairman and chief executive officer, Aetna, Inc. A tape was not 
available for verification of the content of this interview.