Bill Clinton: “Let me tell you what I want to do. Keep in mind, there are people like you all over America who may be doing different…”

“Let me tell you what I want to do. Keep in mind, there are people like you all over America who may be doing different things. And the needs of every economy are different. I want to try to do two things. First of all, I think we need more funds for job training given to States, so that the States can direct those funds in the way that they're best needed. So in the case of California, most of the unemployed people are in the south, although the whole State has problems, but most of the unemployment is in southern California. And the people at the local level are best able to judge what programs are working. So you've got a wildly successful program; if your State had more job training funds, they could direct them to you. And that's part of what we're trying to get done in this whole reemployment system that I just described to you. And we'll be going up to Congress soon with a bill that tries to do that, to get more funds, with fewer strings attached, given to local communities for the programs that work. The second thing that we need to do is to vigorously attempt to get more private investment into distressed inner-city areas. If you think about it, it is not rational for there not to be more locally owned businesses and more people working in these distressed inner-city areas, because most of the people who live there have jobs, make money, have checks, could spend it there, but there's no investment going into those areas. So we passed a bill earlier this year, which we're in the process of implementing, that will give big incentives for people to invest private dollars to create more jobs so that your training programs will be able to find work for people after they're trained. Those are the two things we're trying to do. But when you see this training bill come up before the Congress in the next several weeks, I think you'll like it because it will not only provide more money but it will be with fewer strings attached, so the communities can direct it to people like you who are making things happen. It's real impressive, 400 jobs, isn't it? It's good. Mr. Atkinson. We're back to San Diego again. Violence and Drugs [Mr. Levine introduced a church-based community organizer who asked about administration plans to combat violence and crime.]”