[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 44 (Monday, November 7, 1994)]
[Pages 2232-2244]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]
<R04>
Interview with Ed Gordon of Black Entertainment Television and a
Question-and-Answer Session
November 2, 1994
Mr. Gordon. Hello everyone, I'm Ed Gordon. Welcome to the Roosevelt
Room in the White House. Today, a group of African-Americans from across
the country will meet face-to-face with President Bill Clinton. They
will be discussing the President's domestic policy agenda as it concerns
the black community.
Mr. President, thanks for coming in. First, I get my crack at you,
before we turn it over to these folks. Let me ask you, with less than
now a week away from the elections, you've been on the stump for the
last week and a half and will leave us today and continue--and I suspect
right down to the last days.
One of the things that we are hearing, as I travel across the
country and we get calls into Black Entertainment Television, is a
concern of African-Americans that perhaps, particularly with what's on
the line, Democrats haven't been reaching out to blacks as they hoped.
What would your thought be on that?
The President. Well, I can't speak about what the local candidates
are doing, because it may differ from State to State. But I can say for
sure that nationally we have continued to do that. The Democratic Party
has had a massive outreach program. Reverend Jackson is traveling all
around the country now, going to rallies every day, in a way that we
have coordinated between my schedule, the Vice President, and his. We're
all trying to hit the right places.
And we've got a real story to tell about what we've done here in the
last 2 years, and about what's at stake in this election. And the
Republican candidates are far--on balance, tend to be far more extreme
right-wingers than they have been in the past, tend to be people who say
that anything the Government does is evil and bad. And there's a lot on
the line in this election.
We have made--this country is in better shape than it was 21 months
ago. It's economically in better shape. We are moving here to try to
address some of the concerns that working families have that especially
impact the African-American community in America. So, I'm hoping that in
the last 7 days we will really get a lot of energy out there and the
voter turnout will go up, because I think this election--so many of
these elections are so close, they are going to be determined by which
side turns out. That's really what's going to turn it, who shows up to
vote.
In 1992 we had an astronomical turnout. Every time I would go to a
State, I look at the voting records from '92 and I see that there are
whole States or congressional districts where President Bush, for
example, in winning the election in 1988, with 54 percent of the vote,
got exactly the same vote in 1992 in that congressional district, didn't
lose any votes. But there were so many more votes--for me, for Mr.
Perot--the American people got involved.
And then for 2 years, you know, they get told every night on the
sort of mainstream media, and then by a lot of the kind of attack radio
folk, how bad things are up here, and people get their enthusiasm
dampened. But there's a lot going on here; there's a lot going on that
relates to people out in the heartland. And that's got to be our message
this last week.
[[Page 2233]]
Mr. Gordon. Let's see if I can pick up on something that you
suggested. Even Reverend Jackson has said, though, that he doesn't feel
that he's being utilized to his full potential in terms of getting
upwards to, I think it is now, 8 million unregistered black voters. And
the fact is, in '92 you did get a whole lot of votes, particularly from
the African-American community. And there is a question as to whether or
not this country--certainly, as you suggested, the Republican Party, and
even now a thought of the Democratic Party--and I know you've been
fighting this for a long time--moving to the right. And blacks are the
only group that are staying to the left and staying, if we can put the
tag on it, liberal.
The President. I basically don't agree, though, with that
formulation of it. First of all, let me say that in this year, most of
the money we raised, we gave to the candidates for the first time. Next
year, I think we'll have to go back and do a lot more voter
registration. Mayor Archer, in Detroit--I was with him yesterday. They
have registered 50,000 more people in Detroit. They have sent out 50,000
absentee ballots; they've already gotten 30,000 back. So, a lot of our
leaders at the grassroots level, the mayors especially, are working hard
on this. Next year, I think we'll have to do more.
But what I think we've got to do is, the Democrats need to stay with
our base voters. They need to stay with African-Americans; they need to
stay with Hispanics; they need to stay with the blue-collar white
voters; they need to stay with the small business people--the kind of
people that have always been for us. And we need to do it.
And we can still appeal to the undecided voters, to the people who
voted for Perot, because there is a way to invest more in our children,
in our economy, in our inner cities, and still cut the size of
Government, be tough on crime, and have a strong foreign policy. And
what we've got to do is to get that message out and then try to get
people to have enough faith in us to keep going in this direction until
it affects their lives.
One of the reasons that the sitting President's party almost always
loses seats in Congress at midterm--if you look in the whole 20th
century, there has only been one election, Franklin Roosevelt in 1934,
when the sitting President's party did not lose seats in at least one
house of Congress--only one. Why? Because people are full of hope at the
election and then at midterm, even if the President has accomplished a
great deal, they may not have felt it in their own lives.
Mr. Gordon. But you sit with the possibility of losing, at this
point, both Houses. You also--you mentioned Detroit----
The President. Let me just say this. If we had the average losses,
just since World War II--just the average losses--we would come close to
that. So, we're trying to beat the average, even though the Democrats
have a lot more seats up than the Republicans do in the Senate. That's
just bad luck of the draw. Every year a third of the seats come up, and
you have no way of knowing whether there are going to be more Democratic
or more Republican.
Mr. Gordon. Even with that math--new math, if you will--you're still
going to face an uphill battle. You mentioned Detroit and the gains that
you have and Dennis Archer bringing in new voters. But you face a big
hill in Michigan. It looks like you're not going to regain--if polls are
to believe--the Governor's seat, and there are close races all around.
When you look at that and you understand that there is not really the
zeal that you've seen from the African-American community before, what
do you put that to? What do you account that to?
The President. Well, first of all, if you look at Michigan, the
Governor is running for his second term in a good economy. So, most
Governors running for their second term in a good economy get reelected.
I think if you look at it, there has been for the last 2 years an
overwhelming----
Mr. Gordon. A good economy across the State--let me interrupt you--
--
The President. Across the Nation--it's across the Nation, but it's
also in the State.
Mr. Gordon. In the State. But Detroit is still suffering though----
The President. Absolutely.
Mr. Gordon. Though the car companies have made a comeback, Detroit
is still suffering.
The President. It is. But as Mayor Archer always tells people, we
need to keep doing
[[Page 2234]]
what's working. We've got 88,000 more jobs in Michigan than we had when
I took office, and in the previous 4 years Michigan lost 8,300. So
that's the message I've been trying to hammer home in Michigan and the
message that I hope will carry Bob Carr to the Senate seat there. And it
really is a function of how many people vote in Detroit.
But if you look at it, I mean, African-Americans watch the same news
at night that ordinary Americans do. If there is an overwhelming bias in
what they see--based on conflict, failure, process, politics, and
negativism, as opposed to just giving people the facts about what's
going on--then you can't expect people to vote on what they don't know.
The truth is, as Time magazine said last week--they put a chart up,
and they said, since World War II there have only been three times,
three 2-year periods, when the Congress has given the President more
than 80 percent of what the President asked for: President Eisenhower's
first 2 years, President Johnson's first 2 years, and this last 2 years.
In other words, no other President since World War II, except Eisenhower
and Johnson, has had more than 80 percent of the initiative approved 2
years in a row by Congress.
The voters don't know that because that's not the message they get.
A lot of people don't know about the family and medical leave law, about
tax cuts for 15 million working Americans on low incomes with children,
about immunizing all the kids in this country under the age of 2 by
1996, about the expansion in the Head Start program, about the
empowerment zones for inner cities, about a lot of this stuff. So, what
I've got to do in the last week here is get out and talk about what's
been done and try to rev people up.
Mr. Gordon. I want to do that. But one of the reasons that they
perhaps don't know--and I agree, and even your critics are suggesting
that maybe you have not been given the praise you deserve for some
things that you've brought to the table. But many of those bills and
acts don't come in immediately, and it takes time to disseminate that
money. And some of them are going to be disseminated by a totally
different House and Senate, at this point, which could indeed determine
where those monies go.
The President. But you know--all right--let's talk about that. The
President is not the only person in this world who has responsibilities.
Mr. Gordon. Oh, absolutely.
The President. Ultimate responsibility in the United States resides
with the citizens. And you know, you've got all these extreme
Republicans out there, promising the Moon, telling everybody they're
going to take them back to the eighties, of trickle-down Reaganomics and
promising tax cuts and spending increases and balanced budgets, all this
ridiculous stuff. At some point, the American people have to assume the
responsibility of the future of their country. They are ultimately
responsible for how they vote and whether they vote. And you know, if
they're not getting the straight shot from the media, they have to
figure out how else to get their information. And I have to do that.
The media comes and goes in trends. They tend to be more negative
when Congress is in session and less negative when they're not, even
when they're not trying to be, just because it's more interesting to
cover the fights, the conflicts, the processes than some success.
So somebody needs to say to the voters in this next week--that's
what I'm trying to do--look, you are the bosses, and you decide, and the
outcome is yours.
[At this point, BET took a commercial break.]
Mr. Gordon. Continuing our discussion with President Bill Clinton
about issues that concern and are germane to the African-American
community, one of the things that you said before we went to break was
the idea that the public needs to know who to vote for and what's going
to be done for them. One of the things that we continue to read, and as
I travel the country I talk to people from Los Angeles to New York, that
it really doesn't matter if a Democrat is in the White House or a
Republican is in the White House nowadays, particularly for African-
Americans, because--and I know you bristle at this--but some have joked
you've been the best Republican President for the last 20 years.
The President. Well, they're wrong. They're wrong. It matters that
we've got
[[Page 2235]]
more than twice as many African-Americans in the Cabinet and in high
Government positions than any President in history. It matters that, in
2 years, I appointed more than twice as many African-Americans to the
Federal bench, who will be making decisions in court case after court
case after court case, for decades. I appointed more than twice as many
African-Americans to the bench than Presidents Reagan, Carter, and Bush
combined. That makes a difference.
It matters whether we enforce the Voting Rights Act. It matters
whether we enforce the antidiscrimination provisions. It matters whether
we pass family and medical leave for working people so they can have
some time off without getting fired when their babies are born or their
parents are dead, or sick. And the past President vetoed it twice. I got
it through the Congress, and I signed it. These things matter.
It matters whether you've got 4.6 million new jobs or you're losing
jobs. It matters that in 1994 we've got more high-wage jobs coming into
this economy than in the previous 5 years combined. And that's what I'm
telling you.
The citizens of this country get sucker-punched over and over and
over again by people who make money peddling cynicism. And if they fall
for it, they cannot blame the President or the Congress. The people are
the bosses in this country, and it's time they stopped blaming everybody
else for what they don't know and going out there and finding out what
are the facts, what are the differences, and voting on it. They cannot
blame other people when they make statements like that which are
foolish.
Now, I think the Republicans ought to think I'm a good Republican
President. Why? Because we're taking the Federal Government to its
smallest size since Kennedy; we're reducing the deficit for 3 years in a
row for the first time since Truman; we passed a tough crime bill that
was also smart; and we've got a strong economy and a strong foreign
policy. If I were a Republican, they would be building a statue to me
and urging everybody to vote for my Members of Congress, instead of what
they're doing. But because we live in an age where if you can buy your
way onto the airwaves, you can say anything, you don't have to be held
accountable, they are making a race out of this.
Mr. Gordon. Let me try this. Because every time----
The President. But for you to say it doesn't make any difference is
just wrong.
Mr. Gordon. I didn't say this, and every time I say that and put it
on the table, I wonder if I'm going to get my invitation to the
Christmas party. [Laughter]
The President. No, but I gave you the facts.
Mr. Gordon. Let me try this. When you see this zeal, that obviously
this upsets you----
The President. Well, it's just false.
Mr. Gordon. ----a lot of African-Americans are looking at what is
coming up with the Supreme Court. We're looking at race-based solution
cases that they're finding with the construction companies. We saw the
University of Maryland was struck down for black scholarships recently
with the Federal Appeals Court and whether or not that's going to send a
signal across the Nation.
The President. We stood up for minority-based scholarships.
Mr. Gordon. But people want----
The President. It matters who's the President. Some do, some don't.
Mr. Gordon. Well, let's look at that. Did you stand up--the question
would be, did you stand up loud enough?
The President. Well, all I know is, no President in history--ever--
has had anything that approaches the record I do on empowering African-
Americans and involving them in doing things.
Mr. Gordon. Are you concerned with what you see, when you see these
things falling by the wayside?
The President. Sure. But let me ask you something. Let's look at
this, and let's go back to whether it makes a difference or not. People
have got to make up their mind--another thing they have to make up their
mind about is how much difference in what timeframe can any person make
in the White House.
The social problems that are afflicting a lot of our communities--
the breakdown of the families, the communities, the loss of jobs, the
rise of crime and violence--this
[[Page 2236]]
stuff has been developing for 30 years. The Republicans have been in
office 20 of the last 26 years, and for the last 12 years. I have been
here 21 months. We are moving in the right direction. That's my
argument. And I think it's a pretty compelling argument.
Mr. Gordon. You knew coming in, though, that you were going to have
to run a quick race and people weren't going to sit and give you the
time that perhaps you needed.
The President. No, I knew coming in that people who fight for change
in this country always wind up getting in trouble, because the people
who are against you fight you like crazy and the people that are for you
are always tentative until they feel the results. So when you're trying
to fight for change, you've got to be willing to be unpopular to be
responsible.
Mr. Gordon. Should African-Americans be concerned with what they
see? If you look at headlines, you look at the book ``The Bell Curve''
and what's being said, I mean, you look at--the USA Today today
suggested that there are all of these undertones of racial code words
being used with the elections. It seems to me that just as a moral
leadership issue, should you step up and suggest to this country, we've
got to start dealing with race and get it out on the table? We don't
like to talk about it.
The President. Well, I think we should. I think that I should all
the time. Last night I was in Cleveland, and I was standing in an
African-American church, Antioch Baptist Church, and I talked about what
the Republican House leader, Mr. Gingrich, said. He said they wanted to
make me look like the enemy of normal Americans, and the only safe place
I could speak was to a black audience in America. And I said that this
country would be a lot better off if every public official felt as
comfortable in that church as I did.
Every time I give a speech, I talk about the strength of our
diversity, that one of the best things about what we did in Haiti was
that America is the only country that could have gone to Haiti and
produced a couple of hundred Haitian-American soliders that could be
down there speaking Creole to the people of Haiti as we prepared the way
for President Aristide to come back.
I think a lot of people, a lot of white voters, have been alienated
by the problems in their own life and the inability of the Government to
make a difference in their own life. And so, extreme rightwing forces
are telling them it's all because the Government tried too hard to help
the minorities. They're wrong; the minorities are not helped very much
either.
And what I've got to tell the majority population in this country is
that our diversity is a source of strength. We're either going forward
together or we're going to fall behind together. And this whole business
that we should be divided by race is crazy. It helps the Republicans in
election years, but it's a lousy way to run the country.
Q. Address the criticism for me, as you move toward election time--
because it doesn't just speak to you as a person, it speaks to
politicians in general--that the fact that you feel comfortable in a
black church is all well and good, yet some of the rhetoric that you may
give speaks to some of the same code words that they're concerned about:
reform welfare as we know it. Many people suggest that the crime bill
was all well and good, but it wasn't remedy-based.
The President. I believe, first of all--let me answer both those
things.
Mr. Gordon. Please do.
The President. First of all, I believe almost 90 percent of the
people in the African-American community are dissatisfied with the
welfare system. I believe nearly every welfare recipient, white or
black--and there's still more white people on welfare than black people
in America--is dissatisfied.
Mr. Gordon. In sheer numbers.
The President. Yes. I think they're dissatisfied with the welfare
system. My proposal to change welfare as we know it is not punitive,
it's positive. It gives people a chance to move to independence, and it
removes all the disincentives to move to independence.
Mr. Gordon. But you understand what I'm saying by the code word----
The President. It may be----
Mr. Gordon. ----that there's a black face on welfare in this
country.
[[Page 2237]]
The President. But to me the issue is, there ought to be--I think
opportunity ought to have a black face, a brown face, a yellow face, as
well as a white face. That's the way I look at this welfare issue.
On the crime bill, if you'll remember--all the big battles on the
crime bill were on the prevention programs, on the positive programs,
where the Democrats stuck up for them and the Republicans attacked them
viciously and for pure political benefit. Some of those prevention
programs had been sponsored and put into the bill by Republican Members
of Congress. And then as soon as we got close to the election, they
turned like a dog in the night on that bill and started talking about
how it was just a pork bill and just a giveaway and how midnight
basketball was terrible. They did that. It was the Democrats that stood
for the prevention programs, for giving our kids something to say yes
to, for some remedy-based solutions, to use your phrase, in that crime
bill--again showing that it makes a big difference who is in and who is
not. That crime bill gives communities the tools to make a difference in
young people's lives, if they will use it.
[At this point, BET took a commercial break.]
Mr. Gordon. Welcome back. We're at the White House, speaking face to
face with President Bill Clinton. We are now being joined by a group of
African-Americans from across the country who are chomping at the bit to
ask the President some questions. They all have concerns, and they'd
like to address the President. I will remind them on the air that we
want to make this very quick in terms of the conciseness of your
questions so we can get as many questions in as possible. And I will
defer to age, wisdom, and the old adage of ``ladies first,'' and go to
Anna Hughes, who is a senior citizen from Miami, Florida, and a great-
grandmother, and you're up.
Q. Correct.
The President. Good for you.
Q. Mr. President, my biggest concern, of course, you know, would be
senior citizens. And I do work with senior citizens every day, and they
are--I don't know, because I haven't read it, but they have kept telling
me that Social Security is not getting a raise this year, and that
they're afraid it's going to be cut. And I want to know--like I say, I
haven't read it, so I want to know what can you tell me about that?
The President. Social Security is not going to be cut, and the cost-
of-living increase will go through. The problem is that the Republicans
say if they get control of Congress, they're going to give a big tax
increase to wealthy people, small tax increase to other working people,
increase defense spending, and balance the budget. The only way they can
do that is to cut everything else 20 percent across the board, including
Social Security. It would be a disaster--the $2,000 cut in Social
Security, $1,800 cut in Medicare, on average, for every citizen in
America. If they say they won't do that, then what they're telling us is
they're going to do right what they did in the 1980's--they're going to
explode the deficit, send our jobs overseas, and put our economy in the
ditch.
So what we've been pointing out is, you can't go to the voters and
make all these wild promises, just promise people anything, promise
we're going to cut taxes, increase spending, and balance the budget. The
only way to do that is to cut Social Security. So what I've been saying
is that it's--a good reason to vote for the Democrats in this election
is that we know that we have to keep Social Security sound, we have to
keep it healthy, but the truth is that Social Security costs, as a
percentage of our national income, are the same today as they were 20
years ago. Our problem with the Federal deficit is the exploding cost of
health care, not Social Security. And it's a mistake to take it out of
Social Security and scare a lot of the elderly people in the country,
just to make promises to other voters.
Q. Thank you.
Mr. Gordon. All right, let's go to Bill Middlebrooks, who is a
business executive from Detroit, where you just left last night.
William?
Q. Good morning, Mr. President.
The President. Good morning.
Q. You began the broadcast by saying that we're better off today
than we were 21 months ago when you came into office. Can you help
explain to me how, in 1994, Roy Roberts, who is vice president, general
manager for the General Motors Corporation and
[[Page 2238]]
the highest ranking African-American executive, was denied membership in
an exclusive country club in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, that
purportedly receives tax exempt status because it is a not-for-profit
organization, and the income generated from the club is for the benefit
and pleasure of its members?
The President. I don't approve of that. If they discriminated
against him based on his race, I don't approve of it, and I don't think
they ought to get tax exemptions. I guess they've probably got no--they
must have gotten some local tax exemptions. I don't imagine they get
Federal tax exemptions. If they do, we could certainly look into it. It
doesn't sound right to me.
Mr. Gordon. Let me piggy-back off that. That's one case across the
country. We know that there are more and more cases that are coming to
light in terms of discrimination and the problem with race in this
country. What can you do from the Federal level, from your bully pulpit
to help eradicate the problems that many Africans are starting to see
more overtly today?
The President. Well, first of all, I think we have to talk about
them more. We cannot let it become fashionable to discriminate. What I'd
like to say--and I think one of the things that African-American
business and professional people I think ought to do, is to challenge
other Americans, to tell them to their face what's on their mind, to
engage people.
You know, I think you've got a lot of people--a lot of white people
still have no black friends. It's a great loss in this country, I mean,
we live--Los Angeles County has people from 150-plus different racial
and ethnic groups--it is a travesty. When people discriminate against
other people based on the color of their skin or their religion, it's
basically because they're ignorant, afraid and under a misapprehension
of the facts. If whites and blacks talked together more often, spent
more time together, they would be surprised to find out how much they
have in common.
And I think that the President has a responsibility to constantly
speak out against this, and I try to do it; perhaps I should do it more.
But I also think that people should be confronted when they have these
attitudes. There's no place--the kind of thing that you just told me
about--it's 1994; there's no excuse for that in this country.
Mr. Gordon. Let me go to Eric Moore, who is from Los Angeles, a
police officer. Can we get you today to pledge that you will speak out
publicly more against the racial problems that are happening in this
country?
The President. Oh, absolutely. You know, keep in mind--if you look
at what Henry Cisneros did in Vidor, Texas, with that housing project,
what we did in the Denny's case where the people were discriminated
against there, the law enforcement officials at Denny's, we have taken a
strong stand. But I think a lot of it is, people need to say this. And
when I see these polls, like you mentioned this poll today where 51
percent of white citizens in America allegedly say there's too much
effort to give special consideration to black Americans--I would
challenge every single one of those people to seek out a hard-working
African-American and have a personal conversation with them about it. I
think there is still too little honest dialog in this country.
Q. Mr. President, you spoke about fear. You spoke about how fear
breeds prejudice. In our communities, the established people, the older
people are afraid of our youth. And the reason they are afraid of our
youth is because our youth is afraid. Our youth has no direction. Mr.
President, I deal with kids every day that are in trouble, and I speak
to them, I get out, I preach. And the biggest question is, ``If I don't
sell dope, what am I going to do?'' Mr. President, what is your answer
to that question? What should I tell these children every day that I
deal with consistently? What are their alternatives? Where do they fit
in America?
The President. First, I think that you have to tell them the truth,
which is that if you don't sell dope, you won't make as much money in
the short run. But if you'll stay in school, obey the law, get an
education, the chances are better than 9 in 10 that you'll get a decent
job and you'll have a chance to have a good life.
I think what happens is, so many of these kids are living in
neighborhoods where they don't see people like them who have regular
jobs, who put in 40-hour weeks, who raise
[[Page 2239]]
children, who take care of them, that they cannot imagine that if they
paid the price of time, if they stayed in school 12 years--and then they
went to college for 4 years, that they would be rewarded. But I think
you've also got to tell them the truth. If you're 16 years old, you can
make a lot more money selling dope than you can in school, but you're
going to wind up dead earlier; you're going to have a miserable life,
and it's not going to work out.
Let me just make one other comment. You know more about this than I
do because of the way you live your life. And I think that one answer is
for more people like you to be out there. See, I've been telling
everybody that this 100,000 police in the crime bill, the 20 percent
increase in police on the street, the main benefit of this will be in
preventing crime in the first place. Because if we put more people like
you in uniform out there in the neighborhoods, who understand what the
roots of this problem are, they will be better role models, and they
will reduce crime by reaching children. That's what I believe.
But yes, you know, I can't tell a kid--if you're a runner at the age
of 10 you're going to make more money than if you're in the 5th grade.
But your life is going to be better over the long run if you do the
right thing. And I think what I need to do is to try to make sure--this
is one of the reasons I, by the way, trying to bring in these
empowerment zones and community development banks in the inner cities--
is so that people in these neighborhoods, these kids, can see people
going to work every day and can image how their life could be different.
Mr. Gordon. Jeffrey Cannon, let me let you piggy-back off that.
You're a community activist from New York, and you also work with
children.
Q. I think, Mr. President, that there are a couple of things that we
are really concerned about. One is the employment piece, both in welfare
reform--we're very concerned to hear these comments about ``2 years and
out'' and what's going to happen to children if their parents are put
off welfare. The more conservative Congress, we're worried about that.
And youth employment--I think the crime bill, the preventive part of the
crime bill was wonderful. I think it failed in the area that it did not
involve opportunities for young people to find employment who
desperately need it and want to work and want to be good Americans.
Mr. Gordon. And let me just piggy-back off of that. We talked about
that before going to break, and also the suggestion that if you tell a
kid who is on the right track, who goes to college, spends 4 years--
there are plenty of kids who have college degrees who just cannot find
the right job or a job at all.
The President. That's right. But there are far fewer of them now
than there were 21 months ago. There are more jobs now than there were
then. That's an objective fact.
Let me just say this. One of the things that I have challenged the
Congress about is that you cannot cut someone off, you can't tell
somebody they've got to go to work unless there is work for them to do.
And we are trying all kinds of experiments now. I just approved, for
example, what's called a waiver and for our audience, let me--a Federal
waiver means that we let you out of certain Federal rules to see if you
can find a better way to solve a problem. I approved a waiver for Oregon
where they are able to give the welfare checks of people who wish to go
to work--they're saying, ``I want to go to work''--they can give the
welfare checks to the employers as a wage supplement to encourage
employers to expand hiring. Now, the employers can't lay anybody off.
They can't put people out of work. But if they're willing to expand
hiring, we'll supplement their wage.
And I think what Oregon will find, if they can do it fairly, is that
most people on welfare want to go to work. You know that; you live in
the community. And I don't think we can have a welfare reform program
which cut people off of welfare unless there is a job for them to go to
if they have little children, because you don't want these kids
suffering.
Mr. Gordon. Okay. Levy Frazier, who is a student and hospital
employee from Memphis, Tennessee. And Levy, we're going to let you get
your question out. I'll see where we are on time. We may have to come
back and get his answer after break, but go ahead.
Q. Mr. President, I agree with your position on the crime bill, but
it seems as though
[[Page 2240]]
we're focusing--putting the money in the wrong place. In the black
community, the church and schools have always been the basis for us. But
I see that Federal dollars are being cut when it comes to higher
education. What is your solution, from your position, on getting more
money to historically black, and predominantly, colleges and
universities?
The President. We are trying--what this administration has tried to
do is, while we've reduced overall spending, we've tried to actually
invest more money in education, starting with expanding the Head Start
program.
I was in Michigan yesterday to talk about what we've done with
college loans, and we had a lot of minority students there, talking
about--because Michigan is in the forefront of implementing our college
loan reform plan. Under our new plan, young people all across America
can borrow money to go to college at lower cost than ever before, and
now they can pay it back as a percentage of their income, so they need
never worry about their ability to pay it back. So if you decide to be a
police officer instead of a stockbroker, your repayment schedule is a
function of your income and your ability to pay. So I think you will see
the problem of minorities not going to or not staying in college--I
think you'll see that begin to turn around.
Now, in the crime bill, one of the things we did which I am proud of
is we made church groups and community groups eligible to get that
prevention money so that they can go out and do the right things.
There's not a lot of Federal rules and regulations.
We also made, in our national service program, community groups
eligible to get young people to work in national service. We pay them,
and then--we pay most of the costs--and then we pay them a college
scholarship; we give them whatever they'd get doing the GI bill. So
we're trying to do some things that specifically give more opportunity
to young people out there.
[At this point, BET took a commercial break.]
Mr. Gordon. Continuing our discussion with President Bill Clinton
here in the Roosevelt Room of the White House with a group of African-
Americans from across the country, we'll now go to Dr. Emma Chappel, who
is founder and president of the United Bank of Philadelphia in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Q. Well, thank you. And how are you, Mr. President? I was listening
to all of the things that you've talked about, and I have to commend you
on the tremendous job, in my view, that you have done in the almost 2
years you've been in office, and especially with respect to the small
businesses and to the Community Development Financial Institution Act,
of course, which directly affects United Bank of Philadelphia.
But one of the challenges I think that is before you is that we are
very much aware of your commitment, and particularly your commitment to
the African-American community. But what happens is that does not
marshal down, it does not filter down to many of the bureaucrats who
want to keep business as usual.
We had a lot of difficulty with the RTC, and there was just a study
done, an in-house study done by GSA about the inequities that happen in
the minority community. I would like to propose the idea of an equity
audit. There is a young man by the name of Bill Miller in Philadelphia,
who is a small businessman who created the idea of the concept of an
equity audit, whereby you could evaluate departments and agencies,
commissions and boards, and actually have as a part of their fiscal
documentation an audit report on how much business has been given to the
African-American community.
And so I would hope that you would be interested in considering
that, and you must tie in the budget department, to make sure that
they're in sync with one another.
The President. I will look into that. You know, in September----
Q. By the way, both Governor candidates in Pennsylvania have already
committed to doing this. They like the idea.
The President. It's an interesting idea. In September I issued
another Executive order to all my agencies on these issues, because I
was afraid that a lot of these departments were not implementing the
laws that were on the books, that have been on the books through
Republican and Democratic Presidents alike. And I think you're right. I
will
[[Page 2241]]
look into this, and I'll get back to you on it.
Q. And it takes an Executive order. Thank you very much.
Mr. Gordon. Let's go down the road here from Washington down 95 to
Sheila Scott, who is a teacher with the public school system in
Richmond.
Q. Hi, Mr. President. I was fortunate enough to be at Capitol Hill
when you campaigned in Richmond and we preached to our children that you
were the Education President. And there seems to still be a lot of
concern for the young parents and some type of programs to aid and
assist them, because we have a lot of problems with the students at
risk, so to speak. And I'd like to know some of your thoughts on the
programs that your administration will be handling for students and
parents of students at risk.
The President. First of all, I just signed a few weeks ago, a couple
of weeks ago, the elementary and secondary education act, which changed
rather dramatically the way we give Federal money to school districts.
And there are a lot of things that it did, but it did three things that
may relate to your concerns.
First, the bill now says that in seeking to serve educationally
disadvantaged kids, that the teachers and the principals at the local
school can decide how best to serve them. They don't have to be served
by Federal rules and regulations. They don't have to be separated out in
a class. You can decide what the best way is to do it.
Secondly, there is a special emphasis in this bill on the whole idea
of the involvement of parents in education and what has to be done to
help the parents do a better job with the students, which I think is
important.
The third thing it does is to encourage local schools--not the
Federal Government, local schools--to decide what basic values of
citizenship they want to teach the children, to articulate them, to
write them down, and then to teach them, instead of feeling that they
can't do that, that they can't build character in their students.
But I'd be curious to know--and maybe we don't have time on this
program--but I'd be curious to know what things you think we could do to
help the parents do a better job who would like to do a better job and
aren't sure that they, themselves, know enough to do what they ought to
be doing.
Mr. Gordon. If I can step in, perhaps we can get someone in your
education office that Sheila can speak with, and we'll do that before
you leave.
The President. I think that's a good idea.
Mr. Gordon. Is that good?
Let me go to Pastor Eugene Ward now, who is the minister of Greater
Love Missionary Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio.
Q. Good afternoon, Mr. President. I wanted to let you know that we
know of your concern in our community, and we know that you've been
doing your best to address those issues. When we see our young African-
American males being taken to jail, oftentimes it makes it more
difficult for us to even try to dissect the problem. We know that they
don't own the planes and the boats that bring the drugs into our
country, but they end up getting it. And with Lee Brown in the driver's
seat now and being the czar against drugs in America, what is being done
to get those individuals who live in the suburbs who bring drugs into
our country, that can help us to stop our young African-American males
from going to jail?
The President. We just had a very large sting operation in the last
couple of weeks that our Federal authorities pulled off and that I'm
very proud of. We are working hard now to try to stop these drugs at the
source. Lee Brown is spending a lot of his time going to countries where
these drugs--where they start, where they start growing the coca, where
they start raising the opium that becomes heroin. And we believe that we
have to place a much greater emphasis on trying to get the drugs at the
source, get the people that are bringing them into the country. And we
spent a lot of time with Louis Freeh, our FBI Director, working on
international cooperation against organized crime, working on money-
laundering, working on tracing this money.
The way to get these big guys is to follow the money, because you
never see the drugs until you see them on the street. I mean, once in a
while, you'll see we'll break in a warehouse or something but--and we
work on that, we do that. And it's good when we
[[Page 2242]]
can do it, but we're really working hard now on international
cooperation, going to the source and tracing the money. And I think that
you will be able to demonstrate to the people in your community, after
we've had time to really pursue this strategy, that we have been at
least as tough on those folks as we have on the folks in the street.
Q. [Inaudible]--share with that. The other thing is that those
people----
Mr. Gordon. Very quickly, Pastor.
Q. ----yes--usually have the money to buy the kind of lawyers that
they need to get off. And something needs to be done to stop that as
well, because the individuals who end up getting arrested, they get
court-appointed lawyers.
Mr. Gordon. Let's go to Christopher Coleman now, who is a law
student at Howard University and from Los Angeles, California.
The President. Good for you.
Q. Once again, nice to talk to you, nice to see you again, Mr.
President. I was your college campaign manager here in DC in 1992. And
I'm concerned----
Mr. Gordon. We know what kind of question is coming. [Laughter]
Q. I'm concerned about the mood of this country right now with the
election. I know this is going to be a great segue to the end of the
show, but I'm really concerned about how do we keep the people who are
in college, the young folks who do vote, still in the Democratic Party?
Because a lot of people are leaving, and they are listening to the
Republican message, and they're leaving the Democratic Party. And I want
to know what can I do, alongside with you, to help keep people in the
Democratic Party and get others involved, who are not involved in
politics, involved in politics, because that's where they can make a
stark difference.
The President. I think you have to say, first of all, that the
Republicans, give them their due, they are great talkers and they're
great at playing on people's fears and reservations and anxieties and
cynicism. They're good at it. It's how they stayed in all these years
they held the Presidency, by convincing people that Democrats were alien
to their values and their interests. But we're doers. We've begun to
make the Government work for ordinary people. We've begun to do
something to empower people through education. We've begun to make the
economy work again with more jobs, and we've begun to make the world a
safer place and a more prosperous place for Americans to work in. And
we're trying to do it in ways that keep all the American people together
across racial and regional and income, religious lines, that we
basically are working to get the 21st century to be an American century,
that all young people will have the best years this country ever had.
They are working to prey on people's fears and anxieties and to tell
them that everything their Government does is bad and wrong. And that's
just not true. I think that's what you have to say.
If you really think about--well, let me close with this: You look at
what the United States has done in Haiti, how we helped South Africa
conduct an election, how we stood up to Saddam Hussein recently in the
Persian Gulf, how we've helped to get peace in the Middle East. Other
people in the world look to us for support, from Northern Ireland to
southern Africa, because they think this is a great country.
There is no room for the sort of cynicism that we sometimes feel
about our own country. We've got a lot of serious problems; we just need
to get about the business of solving them and doing it together. And we
can best do that within a party that is committed to opportunity for
everybody and challenging everybody to be responsible instead of just
telling them what they want to hear. That's the way to get to the
future.
Mr. Gordon. Let me see if I can do this as we close, because the
words that became so famous during your run were ``It's the economy,
stupid.'' Let me see if I can move back--and I saw Mr. Panetta at the
door, so I don't know if I'm in trouble at this point or not, but let me
go on and move to it.
I've got a study here, or a poll that the University of Chicago took
most recently. And it says here, 75 percent of the blacks that they
polled feel that the American legal system, economic system, and
American society in general has not been and is not fair to them, which
may indeed speak to the problems that Republicans and Democrats
[[Page 2243]]
are getting, or having to get African Americans to the polls.
Most of it is an economic question for everyone in this country,
outside of the racial problems that minorities have. What do you say--we
talked about midnight basketball, we talked about some other
preventative measures that you'd put in. But there are a lot of people
out there who say, ``I just cannot make it on what I'm being paid.''
The President. That's something we haven't talked about yet, but I'm
convinced that one of the reasons that people are not feeling really
optimistic, even though the economy--the statistics show the economy is
booming, is that a lot of people personally haven't felt it. That is,
they may have a job, but they think they're never going to get a raise,
they could lose their job; they're afraid they're losing their health
care; they feel personally insecure because there are so many changes
going on in this country. One of the things that's going to take us a
few years to work through is how to make sure that you get investment to
areas where there isn't any investment, mostly inner cities and rural
areas, and how do you give people a sense of security--even if they
don't get to keep the same job they got, they'll get another one.
Mr. Gordon. How do you convince me that I get it when I'm still
waiting on 40 acres and a mule? Even if the panacea comes through for
you.
The President. That is a worldwide phenomenon. The global economy is
changing so fast that people are going to have to redefine their
security. That's why all these young people that are getting a good
education, they'll always have a job, but that may be a different job
than the one they used to have.
My big task is, first of all, to get as many jobs as I can back in
the country; secondly, to get more good-paying jobs, not low-paying
jobs; and thirdly, then, to get that investment into the inner cities
and the isolated rural areas where the spirit of enterprise has not
gone. And that's why you've got a lot of the problems that this police
officer faces, that there aren't people working, bringing home a
paycheck, and helping to build the kind of future that they need.
But I've been working at it for 21 months; we're better off than we
were 21 months ago. I just haven't solved all of the problems yet.
[Laughter]
Mr. Gordon. They're telling me from the booth--and I don't know how
I'm going to do this--they want to know if any of you have another
question. I know one of you do, so let me see if I can do this.
Why don't you very, very quickly--go ahead. You had your hand up
first.
Q. Thank you. Mr. President, I am really concerned about this issue
of employment and young people. And I know that you put in a stimulus
package and it was defeated when you first came into office, and I just
wonder if you're thinking about another stimulus package for this
country in terms of economics.
The President. What I think we need to do is to focus more on--what
I hope we can do in the welfare reform bill is to focus more on how we
can get jobs to young people. What I hope we can do more with the
empowerment zone legislation--we just talked about that.
We're going to have to think about what are we going to do in 1995
to get more private sector jobs into places where they don't exist now.
What difference does it make to you that the unemployment rate is 2.8
percent in Nebraska? It's important to me; I'm the President of all the
American people; I'm proud we've got it down so low in Nebraska. But if
it's 15 percent in your neighborhood, and if it's 50 percent among young
people who aren't in school and do want to be at work, then those
numbers mean nothing to you. So this country has never solved that
problem, but we are trying some new and different approaches. And I'm
convinced now that a lot of people in both parties and across racial
lines understand that we've got to put work back into our young people's
lives.
Mr. Gordon. How willing are you to go toe-to-toe with Bob Dole and
the other Republicans who inevitably are going to fight some of those
programs you're putting forth?
The President. Well, all I've been doing for 2 years is going toe-
to-toe with them. [Laughter] The real question ought to be asked of
them. They ought to be asked,
[[Page 2244]]
``Aren't you willing to stop going toe-to-toe and start working in
partnership with the President, and stop worrying about short-term
political gains and start worrying about America?''
Mr. Gordon. Are you concerned that it's going to continue the
partisan fighting that we've seen over the course of the years?
The President. The Republicans in this Congress were the most
partisan by a nonpartisan analysis--they were more partisan this year
and last year than ever before since people have been studying this,
since World War II. I hope that they'll be better next time.
Q. Mr. President, you've got a lot of successes. What can you do to
get your message out even more?
Mr. Gordon. With about 40 seconds to go, let's let him answer that.
The President. Well, one reason I do programs like this is to get
the information out. Most Americans do not know, unless they've been
personally affected by the college loan program, the family leave
program, the immunization program. We just have to work harder to get
those messages out. And next year, I'm going to devote an enormous
amount of time to doing it.
Mr. Gordon. Well, Mr. President, we're to the point where just about
rubber meets the road. We will see next week what happens.
The President. Thanks.
Mr. Gordon. We appreciate you joining us, as always.
The President. Good to see you.
Note: The interview began at 10:15 a.m. in the East Room at the White
House.