Remarks to the western New York community in Buffalo

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Jan 25, 1999

And I want to emphasize just one of the suggestions I made last night, that we ought to have an American private investment company or a series of them, that would provide guarantees from the National Government to get private capital into urban and rural areas where there has been underinvestment - $15 billion of it.

You know we have today - we have an Overseas Private Investment Corporation. Why shouldn't we have an "American Private Investment Corporation," when our most important markets are here at home?

I want to say just this one thing about Senator Schumer. The Vice President mentioned him, but before I came here he reminded me. He said, "When you go to Buffalo, you have got to tell the people that I pledged to them I would bring more jobs and more opportunity to western New York. And you tell them I'm going to be your very best partner." So I have kept my word to Senator Schumer.

Now, let me give you some other examples, though. There are people in our midst who have not fully participated, even in areas which are doing well. And I'll just give you a couple of examples; one of them has been mentioned already. We have millions of Americans in the work force that do not read very well. Many of them are first-generation immigrants, and their first language is not English.

I know Mrs. LaFalce has been very involved in the adult literacy program. I asked last night for a huge increase in Federal support to have a national campaign for adult literacy, to make sure all of our workers can read well enough to keep the jobs they've got, get better jobs, and if they lose their jobs, get new jobs. And I think that's very, very important.

Now, your other Senator, Senator Moynihan, is the cosponsor of a bill that is very important to me because I have worked hard, since I was a young Governor, to try to give people with disabilities the ability to live up to the maximum amount of independence and self-fulfillment that was possible. And one of the problems we have today is that people with disabilities that have high medical bills cannot afford to go to work, even if they are capable of working, because under the present law you lose the Government support for your medical insurance if you take a job. So Senator Moynihan is one of the cosponsors of a bill that says, if a disabled person is able to go to work, we will let them keep their health insurance so they can be healthy and at work. And that's good for us. So that's the first thing we need to do.

The second thing we need to do is to deal with the large long-term challenges of America. The previous members of our team have talked about the long-term environmental challenges, the long-term health care challenges, the long-term education challenges, the long-term community development challenges. I want to talk about the aging of America. And I was pleased when I read a lot of the stories today about my speech last night. I thought they were very good stories, but the implication was that I was speaking to the seniors. That's not true. The aging of America affects everybody.