[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 42 (Monday, October 23, 2000)]
[Pages 2465-2470]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on the Job Access Initiative in Denver, Colorado

October 14, 2000

    Well, come in a little closer there. Carmen, stand up here. I want 
you in this picture. [Laughter] Let me, first of all, thank Carmen 
Carrillo for welcoming us here today. I just

[[Page 2466]]

had a wonderful time upstairs. I went up and talked to all the staff 
that were up there and met with a lot of the young people who were there 
who are working on trying to educate kids, give young adults the 
training they need, help young people avoid teen pregnancy and HIV 
infection. I thought they were terrific.
    I just wanted to say, I wanted to come here today, in part, because 
of what you're doing here. And those of you who are here, trying to 
improve your lives represents everything I've tried to do as President. 
I'm very proud of you, and I love this place.
    I want to thank the Secretary of Transportation, Rodney Slater, who 
is, like me, from Arkansas. We've worked together for almost 20 years 
now. He was underage when I first enlisted his services. [Laughter] And 
it will be apparent in a moment why I asked him to come today and join 
us.
    And I want to thank Mayor and Mrs. Webb for their leadership. And 
thank you, Wilma, for your service in the administration. Denver has 
prospered under your leadership, done well, and you've been a great 
partner for the Clinton-Gore administration. We've done a lot of things 
in Denver. We even brought the leaders of the eight big industrial 
nations here to a conference about 5 years ago. My friendship with you 
and the work that we've done with this city have meant a great deal to 
me, and I thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
    This is the first chance I've had in a couple days to make a public 
statement, and I think it's appropriate, in a way, that I make a few 
remarks about--before I get into what I came to talk about today--about 
the troubles in the Middle East and the terrorist attack, which resulted 
in the loss of many of our sailors. I'm sure you've been following it.
    Some of those sailors are being brought home today, and they'll be 
brought home over the next several days, both the wounded and those who 
were killed, and we'll have a memorial service for them on Wednesday. 
But what I'd like to say to you--I don't know if in the local press 
there have been any profiles of them. But a lot of those people who were 
killed came out of neighborhoods like this, several Latinos, one young 
African-American girl, only 19 years old, just completed her Navy 
training. Most of them were trying to do with their lives what you're 
trying to do with your lives, and they wanted to do it by serving their 
country in the United States Navy. And they were not over there on any 
hostile mission. They were simply patrolling and keeping the peace and 
stability of the region. So I hope you'll say a prayer for them and 
their families tonight. This is a difficult time for them.
    It's also very troubling in the region. There was all the troubles 
you've seen between the Israelis and the Palestinians, who were so close 
to a peace agreement. There was a hijacking today in the Middle East. We 
have no idea whether it's related to any of this or not, and we may not 
know for a while. But I'm going to leave--I'm going to the West Coast 
from here, then I'm going to red-eye back to Washington and fly over 
there, to Egypt, tomorrow in an attempt to try to help put things back 
together. So I hope we'll have your prayers on that, too.
    But I ask today you specifically, think about those families that 
lost their loved ones, because most of those folks were just trying to 
do what you're trying to do and serve their country. They were wonderful 
people, very young, so their families need all the support of the all 
the American people.
    Now, let me talk about what I think is the good news of what you're 
doing and what I think we should be doing to help. In 1992, when I ran 
for President, I went to the American people with a very simple but, I 
think, profoundly important vision. I said that I thought every person 
willing to be a responsible citizen should have an opportunity to share 
in the American dream and that I thought to achieve that, we had to be a 
stronger community; we had to understand that we were going forward 
together and that nobody should be left out or left behind.
    Well, it turns out most Americans agreed with that, and together the 
country has made great strides. You all know we've had the longest 
economic expansion in the history of the United States. We have the 
lowest unemployment rate in 30 years. When I became President, 
unemployment in Colorado was

[[Page 2467]]

6.1 percent. It's 2.7 percent now. Unemployment among African-Americans 
and Hispanics is the lowest ever measured. And together we've had over 
22 million new jobs, almost 600,000 right here in Colorado.
    But we're also not just better off. I think we're a better nation 
because poverty is down, crime is down, teen pregnancy is down. Last 
year we even had a reduction in the number of people without health 
insurance, for the first time in a dozen years, thanks to the Children's 
Health Insurance Program. And homeownership, test scores, high school 
graduation rates, and the college-going rate, all those are up.
    So to paraphrase what Al Gore used to say in 1992, when everything 
should be up, was down; everything that should be down, was up. Now the 
things that should be up are up, and the things that should be down are 
down, and we can be grateful for that.
    One of the most important things that would have been almost 
unthinkable 8 years ago is that the welfare rolls have been cut by more 
than half nationwide. Millions of parents have joined the work force. 
Now, how did this happen? Well, first, the strong economy helps, because 
more workers were needed.
    Secondly, we changed the rules so that all able-bodied people who 
can work, have to work. But we obligated the Federal Government to 
enable them to succeed as parents, as well as workers, by investing more 
in training, more in child care and maintaining the guarantee of food 
and medical care for children. And it's working.
    But after all that, it also became necessary to have a system. 
That's what you have here, in Mi Casa. It's this fabulous system. You 
don't just deal with one part of a person's problem. People come here, 
families can come here and be dealt with. And if there weren't a place 
like this, even with a strong economy, even with a better welfare reform 
law, what we've tried to do would not have been nearly as successful.
    So all these innovative welfare to work partnerships between the 
Federal Government and States and local governments are important. And 
also in the private sector--we have 12,000 private companies who've 
joined our welfare to work partnership and committed to hire people from 
the welfare rolls. And they have--these 12,000 companies, themselves, 
some of them are as small as 40 and 50 employees; some of them have tens 
of thousands, but they have hired hundreds of thousands of people from 
the welfare rolls. Right now, I can tell you, the retention rates are 
better than other first hires in all those companies. And they're doing 
very, very well.
    Denver has been a real leader here, thanks to Mayor Webb and people 
like Carmen. You offer education, employment, child care services in one 
place; train potential workers in places like Mi Casa, support employers 
who train new workers for themselves. So the Federal Government--where 
are you--[laughter]--I asked Carmen on the way down here, I said, where 
do you get the money to run this place? And she said, ``Well, we get 
some money from the Department of Labor. We get money from the welfare 
to work partnership.''
    But the point is, you've got to have some place where the people can 
come and get what they really need. And the places that are doing best 
are places that have really put things together. In Denver there's also 
an effort to help fathers get jobs and pay child support and stay 
involved with their children's lives.
    So here's the point I want to make, and here's why I'm here. While 
the welfare rolls have dropped by more than 50 percent nationwide, which 
is huge, in Denver the welfare rolls have dropped 90 percent--90 
percent. Now, once that happens, you've got to focus on making sure the 
people who get off welfare stay off and that hard-working families 
succeed. And that's what is happening here now.
    But I came here today to talk about what more we can do to help more 
people get off welfare and stay off, and also to highlight the 
importance of places like Mi Casa and how we need it everywhere in 
America, because we can drive these rolls down even more if we have the 
kind of operations you have here in Denver. And that's where--there are 
some more things we need to do, too, and that's where Secretary Slater 
and I come in.

[[Page 2468]]

    One of the most important things in helping Americans move from 
welfare to work is making sure they can get from where they live to 
where the job is. And this is still a huge problem nationwide. Listen to 
this. Two-thirds of all the new jobs in America are being created in the 
suburbs, but three-quarters of the Americans who are still on public 
assistance live in inner cities or small, rural towns. So you've got the 
jobs here in the suburbs, and the people in the inner cities or out here 
in the country somewhere. And our public transportation networks simply 
have not kept up with the changing patterns and the disconnect between 
living and working.
    Now, we can help some people move where the jobs are. Under the 
leadership of our HUD Secretary, Andrew Cuomo, we have been able to get 
a bipartisan majority in Congress to go along with giving a lot of 
people who are eligible for public housing, housing vouchers so they can 
go find whatever is available, because, as all of you know, with the 
growth of the economy there is a real housing shortage in America, and 
there is a huge public housing shortage. So the housing vouchers have 
made a difference. I think we have an agreement with the Congress this 
year--I haven't signed the law yet, but I'm pretty sure we got the deal 
done last week to increase the number of housing vouchers next year so 
we can keep doing this.
    But no matter how much we do that, there will still be large numbers 
of people who live someplace different from where the jobs are, who want 
to go to work, can go to work, and are capable of doing whatever it 
takes to be a qualified employee.
    So we can't continue with a system where people have to take three 
or four buses to get to work or they can't get to work at all on public 
transport, so they've got to get a friend or a family member to give 
them a ride to work every day. And a lot of you are nodding your heads. 
You know, what do you do if the friend or family members gets sick? What 
do you do if their kids get sick? What do you do if your kid is sick? 
There are a lot of problems with this sort of ad hoc system.
    And we do have a lot of people, literally, who still can't get a job 
because they can't get to the job. That is inconsistent with our goal of 
opportunity for every responsible citizen. It's inconsistent with our 
responsibilities as a national community to help each other go forward 
together. And it's inconsistent with helping people get off and stay off 
welfare.
    So from the beginning, in our administration, the Vice President and 
I have worked with Congress to try to build transportation links to 
where the jobs are. Three years ago, we proposed something called the 
job access initiative, and we worked with Congress and got a lot of 
support for it. It basically gives grants to communities to figure out 
what the solution is in their community, because it's different from 
place to place. Last year we funded over $71 million worth of grants for 
42 States, and transit authorities have used this money to add new 
routes, to extend the hours of existing routes, which is a big problem 
in some places, and also to create vanpools when there is no practical 
public transit option.
    They have brought work to the doorsteps already with this job access 
initiative, to the doorsteps of 13,500 employers, which has enabled 
hundreds of thousands of people to find new ways to get to work, take 
their kids to school, and expand their own horizons through training and 
education.
    Last year those grants went to six Colorado communities, almost 
three-quarters of a million dollars to help them design and build 
transportation links that connect workers to jobs. Today I'm here to 
announce that this year, we're going to have $73 million in grants to 39 
States and the District of Columbia. There will be three in Colorado, 
and one I hope will particularly benefit those of you who are here at Mi 
Casa: $700,000 to extend bus routes in Denver to help people travel to 
jobs at suburban business parks in the Denver tech center.
    Now, upstairs, one of the women asked me upstairs--she said, ``You 
need to do more to get women training and access to nontraditional jobs, 
jobs that women don't normally hold.'' And we talked about some of the 
things that we've been doing with the unions to train more women to do 
construction-related jobs--like you, right? [Laughter] Is that how you 
hurt your arm?

[[Page 2469]]

    And we talked about the work we're trying to do in Silicon Valley 
and other places to try to train more women to go to work in high-tech 
industries where there is a huge gender gap in employment participation. 
And we talked about really nontraditional things like the massive 
shortage we've got in America for licensed truck drivers now--a huge, 
huge shortage all over America.
    Now, it's tough that you've got young kids, because you've got to be 
gone for big chunks of time, so it's not a practical alternative to 
some. But for some people, it is an alternative. They've got family 
circumstances, or others they can do.
    Our focus here today is to try to do what we can do to help 
communities like Denver succeed even more and also to try to get other 
communities to develop the models that you have that has worked so well. 
You simply can't go to work if you can't get to work; and now more and 
more people will be able to find work, get there, and either move off of 
welfare or stay off welfare.
    Now, let me also say that we're entering the final weeks of the 
congressional session. We are already well past the end of the budget 
year, which ended on September 30th. And the Congress all wants to come 
home and campaign, but they have to finish their business first.
    And a lot of the business I think they ought to finish relates to 
the needs of the people who have come through the doors at Mi Casa. 
Congress should raise the minimum wage, again. I have asked them to 
raise it by a dollar an hour over the next 2 years. That would have 
helped 10 million hardworking American families. I've also asked them to 
provide more tax relief for working people to increase the child care 
tax credit and make it refundable, to help give families a long-term 
care tax credit because a lot of people are caring for elderly or 
disabled family members, and they can't afford to go to nursing homes, 
or they don't want them to, but they need some help at home--to give a 
tax deduction for the cost of college tuition, and to help people even 
with very modest incomes save for their own retirement.
    So there are very important things that can be done. I think the 
earned-income tax credit, for which most of you with children are 
eligible, which has lifted over 2 million people out of poverty just in 
the last few years alone, should be expanded again, particularly for 
people with three or more kids. The way the earned income tax credit 
works, you max out if you have a certain number of children. But a lot 
of people have four kids or five kids, that are tying to work, and I 
believe they should be able to get more relief. So that's all very 
important, and I hope that will pass.
    Something else that I think would be really helpful is that our 
budget has proposals to promote responsible fatherhood and to increase 
child support paid directly to families. Now, if the States collect your 
child support, they can withhold a portion of it because of the cost of 
collecting it. But if the child support check is meager, you may not 
wind up much ahead, even if the father is paying the child support. So 
we propose to change that. I think there is very broad support for this, 
and I hope and believe it will pass before the Congress goes home.
    We also have proposals that would help families save and expand 
access to child care and housing and health care. So I hope very much 
that this will pass.
    And finally, let me say for the people who live where the jobs 
aren't, there is a very important bipartisan initiative that I've worked 
on with the Speaker of the House, called the new markets initiative, 
which would give American investors the same tax incentives to invest in 
the poor areas in America we now give them to invest in poor areas in 
Latin America, Africa, Asia, or some place else.
    I think that a lot more can be done, but I hope and believe that 
this transportation assistance will really help.
    So let me end where I began. We are moving close to a country where 
there really is opportunity for every responsible citizen. But we're not 
there yet. We are a stronger American community than we were 8 years 
ago, but there is still friction and sources of division within our 
American community. Now, we've got the most expansive, strong economy 
we've ever had, and I think we ought to set our sights on big goals.
    Our goals should be prosperity for every family in every community 
still left behind. Our goals should be no child and no working

[[Page 2470]]

family in poverty. And what I want to say to you is that we can achieve 
these goals and still keep the overall economy strong for the rest of 
America. We can pay the debt off in 12 years. That will keep interest 
rates down; it will keep businesses expanding. It will leave funds for 
people to make pay raises.
    We can do this, but we have to decide to do it. And I just hope that 
not only in Colorado but all over America, people will see and hear 
about Mi Casa because of my trip here. And I hope every place where 
people feel good because they've reduced the welfare rolls 40 or 50 
percent will understand that they can do much better when they see that 
Denver, thanks to people like you, got it down 90 percent. The 
transportation will help, but people have to make the initiative at the 
local level, too.
    So thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 11:55 a.m. in the conference room at the Mi 
Casa Resource Center for Women. In his remarks, he referred to Carmen 
Carrillo, executive director, Mi Casa Resource Center for Women; and 
Mayor Wellington E. Webb of Denver and his wife, Wilma.