Remarks to the Community in West Memphis, Arkansas

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Dec 20, 1999

And what I want to say to you is, if we, with this economy, in the absence of foreign threat or domestic crisis, can't bring free enterprise and opportunity to the people and places who have been left behind now, when will we ever get around to doing it?

We are determined to try to convince everybody in America that places like the Delta are the new markets for the 21st century. We sit around in Washington all the time, and Mr. Greenspan sits over at the Federal Reserve all the time, and we have the same debate now. We say, we've already got the--in February we're going to have the longest economic expansion in history, and we didn't even have a war. How did it happen? Can we keep it going? How can we keep it going? How can we keep it going without inflation, because if we have inflation, then, to protect everybody else, they'll have to raise interest rates a lot, and that will kill the recovery.

And I'll tell you one way to keep it going is to get money invested and jobs created and consumers created in the places that have been left behind. That's an inflation-free way to continue to grow the economy. So it is in the interest of every single American--in places like Nebraska where the unemployment rate is 2.4 percent statewide--it's in their interest for us to do what is necessary to bring opportunity to the people in places who have been left behind. And if we don't do it now, we'll never get around to doing it.

So I want to look at this. Now, let's look at Crittenden County. In Crittenden County, unemployment has dropped from over 7 per cent in '93 to 5 percent today, but it's much higher in the rest of eastern Arkansas than the Nation as a whole. Wages are up in the Delta, but wages are still way below the national average. Infant mortality rates are better than they were, but they're still much, much higher than the national average.

Now, I want to thank all of you for stepping up to the challenge of trying to change all that. Before I came over here, I was over at the community college meeting with Dr. Fenter and a group of CEO's from some of America's largest transportation companies. They're working together to design a curriculum and to build a facility to train young people for good jobs in the transportation industry.

Now, these jobs pay good money, and there is a shortage today, I learned at our meeting, of 80,000 jobs for entry-level truck drivers and other transportation jobs that would pay an average of $35,000 to $40,000 a year--entry-level jobs.

So what we want to do is train everybody in the Delta who wants one of these jobs here so that they can continue to live in the Delta. You have to travel 3 or 4 or 5 days a week, but you don't have to move away from here to get a job. I mean, you all know you can move away from here and get a job, but you don't want to leave.

So this is the kind of thing that we should be doing. This is one of the most important transportation hubs in the country, and education and training is the key to providing these opportunities.