Bill Clinton: “I'm just glad to hear you say a lot of people want to get out. My own belief is that we do need more jobs and that we do…”

“I'm just glad to hear you say a lot of people want to get out. My own belief is that we do need more jobs and that we do need jobs tied to continuing education and training. And if possible, we need jobs like a lot of the work done by the Los Angeles Conservation Corps, just to mention one example, where people, particularly people who are street-smart, who have been in gangs, can work in community projects with others so that they become accepted by their community, and they become a part of a different kind of gang, if you will. You know, all of us want to be in gangs. We just need to be in positive gangs, good gangs. We want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. One of the things that I asked for in this emergency jobs package, which was stopped by the minority in the Senate, was enough money for another 900,000 summer jobs, tied for the first time ever, tied to real training programs so that there would be education along with the jobs and tied to an effort to get the private sector into the program so they could match the jobs one for one so that when the summer was over, all the young people in the gangs, let's say, who had summer jobs would have relationships with people in the private sector who could help to continue to work with them. I still think these are the best things to do. And I'm going to come back and try to get some more funds for summer jobs, coupled with education. And then we're going to keep working with people all across the country to try to figure out how to create more jobs. I have presented to the Congress a program which doesn't spend a lot of Government money, but which gives real, meaningful incentives to people like the businessman, who was the first person who spoke, and others, whether big or small, to invest in areas to create jobs and then hire people like you and your colleagues. We'll give them big jobs tax credits for hiring you. We'll give them other tax incentives for trying to create economic opportunity. A lot of these places would not have as many gangs if there were more people who could get up every day and go make a living. And this is a great resource. There are a lot of people out there who have money in these distressed communities, but people wonder whether the streets are safe enough or whether you can really make a return on your investment. So this empowerment zone concept is designed to make sure that there's enough tax incentive in there to give people at least the nudge they need to try to get a return on their investment. And we'll keep working on it. I also think, frankly, it's not popular to say, but every country in the world now with an advanced economy, except Japan, which is more closed than we are--but if you look at Germany, if you look at Great Britain, if you look at France, you look at all the wealthy countries, they all have high unemployment rates. They're all higher than America's except for West Germany. And we have so many young people that we're going to have to use a Government-private partnership to put people back to work. You just think about it. I mean, I'm glad you came here. If everybody in this State who wanted a job had one, you'd have about half the problems you have, wouldn't you? But I do think it's important not that you just be given jobs when you're young, but also that we do an honest assessment of everyone's skill level and give them the education and training they need, because the average young person's going to have to change jobs seven or eight times in a lifetime. So it's not just important that you have work but that you be able to get other work. We're going to have to retrain a lot of these defense workers. A lot of them are 50, 55 years old. So that's important, too. It's not just work, but it's education and training.”