Interview With Neil Cavuto of Fox News in Newark

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Nov 8, 1999

November 4, 1999

Mr. Cavuto. Welcome, Mr. President. It's a real honor to have you.

The President. Thank you.

New Markets Initiative

The President. Well, I find that a lot of them want to do it. I think there is a real awareness in America to that, that we're going through the best economy we've ever had, and yet, for whatever reason, there are people and places that are left behind.

Mr. Cavuto. This is an interesting initiative because, on the one hand, you're compelling companies to do something good, but you also haveto get them to respond to that message. How do you do that?

I argue, number one, that it's our obligation to try to help, those of us that have done better; and number two, that it actually makes good economic sense, because one of the big questions on every business person's, every economist's mind, everybody that plays the market is, "Well, how long can this economic expansion go on? How much more growth do we have? How many more jobs can we create before either it runs out of steam or inflation takes over, and it has to be broken?" And my argument is that the best opportunity we have to continue this expansion without inflation is to invest in new markets. And the closest new markets are those here at home and the people and places that have been left behind.

Mr. Cavuto. Can you guilt them into doing that, though?

The President. No, I don't think that it's a matter of guilt. I have a positive approach that I think we do have an obligation to do it, but I think we'll feel better if we do. But I also believe it is in the economic self-interest of those who are doing well now.

I think there are real opportunities here, and I think that's what people like Lew Katz and Ray Chambers think. These guys, they're doing this, dedicating a big percentage of their profits to reinvestment in downtown Newark partly because they feel a sense of obligation. They think it's the morally right thing to do. They think it's important for our country's long-term strength and coherence. But they also know there are real opportunities here. I mean, we can create a lot of jobs here, create a lot of businesses here. I just think it's a real opportunity.

Now, I'm also attempting to work out a bipartisan agreement with the Congress to pass a series of tax credits and loan guarantees which would, in effect, give investors the same incentives to invest in the poor areas in America we give them to invest in the poor areas in South America or Africa or Asia. And I think that will help a lot, too.

Independent Candidate Pat Buchanan

Mr. Cavuto. You know, when you mentioned that in your remarks earlier today, you almost sounded like Pat Buchanan, because that's his pitch.

The President. But the difference between me and Pat Buchanan is I think we ought to invest abroad, too. That is, I'm not an "America only," but I don't want to leave behind the people who are hurt in America.

Mr. Cavuto. But isn't his point that we have left behind some of the unfortunate in America?

The President. But he's right about that. He's right about that. But I don't think that the way to stop leaving them behind is to put up a lot of trade barriers because we've gotten 30 percent of our growth, until the Asian financial crisis, came from the expansion of American markets abroad. We only have 4 percent of the world's people; we have 22 percent of the world's wealth. We obviously have got to sell something to the other 96 percent of the folks out there.

So while I don't agree with him that we should put up barriers and, in effect, shrink the volume of world trade, I do agree that we have to do more to reinvest in our own country, in our own people, and create markets here. And if we can't do this now, when the economy is perhaps the strongest it has ever been, when will we ever get around to doing it?

Mr. Cavuto. [Inaudible]--could read into that, sir, that, you know, here your Vice President is in the fight of his life. There are many, for example, in the labor movement who, while ostensibly supporting him, fear that this administration, with support of international treaties, has somehow abandoned them, rightly or not. And I wonder whether your remarks today and these initiatives over the last few months are an effort to help Mr. Gore?

So this is something that we have done all along. And I have tried to--I've increased the number of empowerment zones. Now it's twice as many. We fought for funding for them in this budget cycle. Actually, what led to this proposal is that I was asking myself two questions. One is, how can I get beyond the empowerment zone? They help the areas where they are, but we can't put them everywhere; we don't have enough money to invest everywhere in the empowerment zones, everywhere there is a need.

And then the second question I was asking myself is, how do we keep the economic growth going without inflation? You know, I'm not all that surprised that we've been as fortunate as we have been because I believed always that if we could get a good economic policy--that is, if we could get rid of the deficit, get interest rates down, keep expanding trade, and make the right kind of long-term investments--that technology and open markets would give us higher growth with less inflation than most economists had estimated. I made this argument in December of '92 when we started all this.