Remarks in a discussion on youth opportunities in Los Angeles, California

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, July 12, 1999

July 8, 1999

The President. Thank you. Please sit down. We're running behind now. I've got to get to be more businesslike. Since Alexis has been so fulsome in her kind comments, that was an example of Clinton's second law of politics - always be introduced by someone you've appointed to a high position. [Laughter]

Let me say to, first, our host here in Representative Maxine Waters' district, we're delighted to be here. I want to thank all of you who made it possible for us to come to this beautiful facility. Let me say I am doing something today I never thought I would ever do, for those who have been on the tour with me; I came to Los Angeles to cool off. [Laughter] It was 100 degrees in Washington when we left; it was 100 degrees in Appalachia; it was 100 degrees in the Mississippi Delta; it was 100 degrees in East St. Louis; it was only about 94 on the Indian reservation yesterday; and it was over 100 in south Phoenix. So I came to Los Angeles to cool off, and I thank you very much for that.

I want to thank Secretary Daley and Secretary Slater who are here. And Reverend Jackson, thank you for making this tour with us, and all the business leaders who have been with us. I want to thank Congresswoman Millender-McDonald. We were just over at the transportation academy in her district, and I enjoyed that very much. Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, thank you for being here. Congressman Xavier Becerra; and Congressman Paul Kanjorski, who came all the way from Pennsylvania, has been on every step of this tour, and I thank him.

Governor, thank you for making us feel welcome. And Yvonne Burke, thank you. And I'd like to thank all the business leaders and all the leaders from entertainment and athletics and other things that are here today.

I will be very brief because I want to hear from the young people here. I have believed from the beginning of my tenure as President that in order for the American economy to really work, and in order for the American society to work, every American should believe that he or she had a chance to be a part of it. And we've worked on this for some time. And you heard Alexis talking about the economic statistics: we now have the longest peacetime expansion in history, the lowest minority unemployment rates ever recorded. But everyone knows that there are still substantial numbers of people in our distressed urban and rural areas and on our Indian reservations that basically have not been part of this recovery.

In Watts, for example, the unemployment rate has dropped by almost 50 percent, but is still three times above the national average, just for example. And so it seemed to me several months ago - and I talked about this in my State of the Union Address way back in January - that there was a way to tap the enormous feeling that a lot of our business leaders have that they've done very, very well in a stock market that's more than tripled in 6 years and a strong economy, and that they ought to give something back with the idea that it would actually be good economics to give something back.

Those of you who follow the business news know that every time the Federal Reserve meets there's all this tense speculation, will they raise interest rates or not? Well, what does that mean to these young people here with their yellow T-shirts on? It is that most economists believe that there is a limit to how low the unemployment can go, and a limit to how high the economic growth can go, before you have so much inflation that you have to stop it, which kills the economic recovery.

Now, how can you keep it going? How can we keep this recovery going - never mind all these kids we're here to hear about, just for those of you who have done well in the stock market? How could you keep it going? The easiest way to keep it going is to go to places where there aren't enough jobs and there aren't enough consumers, and create more of both - create more business owners, create more workers, create more consumers. That's all growth completely without inflation.

It allows America's economic expansion to continue, so there's a real sense in which every time we hire a young person off the street in Watts and give him or her a better future, we are helping people who live in the ritziest suburbs in America to continue to enjoy a rising stock market. And it proves beyond any doubt that we are all in this together, that we're all better off when the least of us do well.

And also, we have a chance here that we've never had before, at least in my lifetime, certainly not since the American economy began to unravel in the late sixties. We have got a chance to actually build an economic infrastructure in the inner cities and in rural America that will restore something like a normal economy to places.

There will always be - some times are pretty good; some times won't be so good. But what we want for every American is to live in a community where at least he or she has the same shot everybody else does.

Now, the first 3 1/2 days, what we spent focusing on is how to get money into isolated places. That's basically what we've been focusing on. And we talked a lot about the things we've been doing since 1993. We've had wonderful business leaders from all over America, by the way, of both parties - this is not a partisan issue anyplace but Washington, DC, and I hope it won't be there - saying, "Hey, this is good business; this is a good deal; we want to be a part of it." And we talked about this new markets legislation I have proposed which would give tax credits and Government guaranteed loans to people who would invest to give equity to people to start businesses in the inner city and in rural America.