Remarks to the National Conference on Building Prosperity in the Delta in Arlington, Virginia - Brief Article

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, May 15, 2000

This is a huge issue for the Nation because no one knows how to do this. And as I say, that will be a big debate in the elections. Are we now so prosperous we ought to go back and try what we did in 1981 and later and have a great, big tax cut and hope it works? Or should we have a smaller tax cut and keep paying the debt down and invest in our people? You know what I prefer, but I think that it's important to understand we're going to have this debate in the context of, number one, what should we do with our prosperity, and number two, how do we keep this economy going? And it's already the longest economic expansion in history.

And right there, before the eyes of every American who knows anything about this, is the Delta and every other underdeveloped area in our country. And I'm telling you, there are billions upon billions upon billions of economic growth potential that are totally noninflationary. Because of the problems we've had in the past, it is America's promise for the future, not just yours, that we ought to be developing here.

Now on the other hand, we know that it won't happen by accident. We have to create networks and opportunities and incentives to get this done. I have asked Congress, as Secretary Slater said, to create a Delta Regional Authority with $30 million to invest in the region's economic future. I've asked for another $129 million in targeted assistance for the region. And I thank my Senator, Blanche Lambert Lincoln, and Congressman Marion Berry. They sponsored the regional authority bill in Congress. I thank Senator Bill Frist for his strong bipartisan support. We've got a number of bipartisan cosponsors from across the Delta, and I hope we can bring this authority to life.

And while you're here today, I hope you will ask Senator Cochran and Senator Lott, particularly, to give this thing a shove, because I think they could sort of shove it out there if they wanted to, and we need them.

I'm sure Jess White has already talked about this, but the Appalachian Regional Commission proves that these things do make a difference. They make a difference because they institutionalize concentration on a specific area and its opportunities. And it makes a difference when you've got somebody who is paid to get up every day and think about you and what you can do in an organized, focused way.

We also want to announce today new support for the Delta in three broad areas: attracting new business and economic development, investing in basic infrastructure, and building strong communities.

I know this morning the Vice President presented our new package of $20 million in Delta economic development initiatives, loans and grants for small businesses, training, community technology centers, community financial institutions, and tourism. That's an important issue.

Let me emphasize one part of that, the community technology centers. The congressional majority took that out of my budget, and I'm going to try to get it back in. But let me tell you why it counts. The computers are great for Conn. And in the districts where they can take the computers home and the parents can learn to E-mail the teachers, learn to use it, that's great. But most places in the Delta, we have a lot of adults who could benefit from what they could learn just by learning how to use the computers and learning what resources are available to them on the Internet. That's what these community computer centers are all about. They are designed to set up a thousand more of them and to support the few that are out there now--there's the network out there now in the country--so that all the adults in the low income places in America can go in and learn to use the Internet for their own benefit, both because they developed computer skills and to get the information off of it.