Remarks in a roundtable discussion on small business development in Phoenix, Arizona

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, July 12, 1999

Now, let me say that there are a lot of good things that are happening and I want to thank some of the people who are here. I want to thank Safeway for the new store at 16th Street and Southern Avenue, and the new shopping center that it will anchor. That will create a lot of jobs. And, interestingly enough, we're trying to highlight this everywhere, because in almost every city in America, even with high unemployment, there are obviously a lot more people working than not working, and there is more purchasing power in our cities than there are stores to take it up. So we thank Safeway.

I also want to thank Univision, because they are about to build a new multimillion-dollar broadcast facility for its local station, KTVW 33, and they're going to build it right here in south Phoenix, and that will help your economy to grow. Thank you. Thank you, Myrna Sonora.

I want to thank the community development institutions like Arizona Multibank, the microenterprise organizations like MICRO. That's a fancy way to saying they loan small amounts of money to people to start small businesses who couldn't get the money anywhere else, and guess what? They usually make good loans and they make money doing it, by giving people a chance who couldn't get a chance anywhere else.

I want to thank Arizona Multibank for launching Magnet Capital, which is a new venture capital fund, backed by the Small Business Administration, that will give lower-income entrepreneurs the equity they need to grow and expand. So thank you very much, Mr. Gordon.

Now, there's lots of other things that all you have to say. Just remember, we came here for three reasons. One is to show the business community of this country that we have the kind of partnership between government and the private sector that makes it more attractive to invest in places with higher unemployment and with too few businesses. Two, to make the point that there is a huge amount of opportunity out here right now. And the more American business knows about it and the more they invest in it, the better they'll do. And three, we have a proposal before the Congress to go nationwide to give big tax breaks to people to help provide equity capital.

And I want you to know what I'm doing. I'm basically asking the Congress to give investors like those on this stage with me today the same incentives to invest in south Phoenix that we give them right now to invest in the developing countries of Latin America and Africa and the Caribbean. I want to do that, but you should have the same incentives here.

So thank you all for coming and, Congressman, the floor is yours. You want to introduce the folks who are going to talk? I think maybe you're going next - our hostess.

[At this point, the discussion proceeded.]

The President. Thank you very much. Let's give him a hand; I thought that was good. [Applause]

If I could just make one point. One of the things that I learned traveling around the country in 1990 and 1991, before I decided to run for President, was that the crime rate was going down in areas where more police were on the street and in the communities and working with their neighbors, not just because they were catching people quicker, but because it was actually preventing crime from occurring in the first place.