WASHINGTON -- President Clinton is challenging Wall Street to invest in the underserved markets of America and ensure that the nation's downtowns share the good economic times with impoverished inner-city and rural communities.
"Help make sure no family is left behind," the president said Thursday in taped greetings from the White House to Wall Street executives meeting in New York.Highlighting a section of his fiscal 2000 budget proposal, Clinton planned to unveil a bundle of tax incentives and loan guarantees designed to attract venture capital to distressed areas from the barrios of Los Angeles to the hamlets of Appalachia.
"As leaders of the companies of on the 'Big Board,' as the men and women who have helped transform American into the world's economic superpower, you must help build the bridge between those who work in our gleaming office towers and those who live in their shadows," Clinton said.
With the Senate impeachment trial against him proceeding, Clinton addressed a morning conference of world leaders studying government reforms.
He said his administration's theory on the relationship of government to private sectors is "to do less regulation and instead create incentives and frameworks to solve problems and meet national goals."
From that forum at the State Department, he headed to New York, where he planned to unveil the new initiative at an economic conference organized by Jesse Jackson's Wall Street Project, a coalition of executives from top Wall Street firms and some of the biggest U.S. companies dedicated to expanding business opportunities for minorities and women.
Clinton's plans to travel Thursday night and attend the project's gala dinner were stymied by ice and snow on the East Coast. He was expected back in Washington Friday night to attend a Democratic fund-raiser.