Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - Clinton poverty tour visits Appalacia

Marketplace \| Services \| Contact Us \| Community \| Arts & Entertainment \| Local Guides

Tuesday, July 6, 1999

Clinton poverty tour visits Appalacia
Businesses plan to announce help of private sector
Associated Press

   TYNER, Ky. - Ray Pennington sat in the shade of a walnut tree outside his tumbledown wooden house, a portable oxygen tank helping him breathe, as President Clinton cut a swath through Pennington's extended family to stand before the older man.
   "I'm glad to see you," Clinton said, and extended his hand. "Well, I am too," Pennington said as he accepted it. A look of joy spread across the older man's craggy face when Clinton sat down.
   People like Pennington - who spent his life slaughtering hogs and now is struggling with emphysema - were the focus Monday as Clinton began a four-day, cross-country tour to promote a plan for drawing jobs and investment to areas that have not shared in the prosperity of the 1990s.
   "Even though this is a blessed time for America, not all Americans have been blessed by it," the president said during a rally on Main Street in Hazard, Ky. "So I came here to show America who you are."
   With a handful of business executives, Cabinet secretaries and politicians in tow, Clinton flew by helicopter to Tyner and drove into the Whispering Pines community, a cluster of small trailer homes.
   Most of the homes had broken windows, some covered with cardboard or wood.Clinton wants to extend the country's good economic times to places like this, from Appalachia to the Watts area of Los Angeles. "We have to provide incentives for people to go there," he said.
   The administration is characterizing these areas as an $80 billion untapped market. Along the way, the business leaders planned to announce various investments and assistance to the communities they visit.
   After leaving Tyner, Clinton visited Mid-South Electronics, which expanded from 40 employees 10 years ago to 850 today, and just completed a $6 million expansion aided by a federal empowerment zone tax credit.
   Republicans are pushing their own anti-poverty program that emphasizes tax breaks and other economic incentives, and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., sent a letter to Clinton on Sunday seeking his endorsement.
   The president was headed next to the Mississippi Delta; East St. Louis, Ill.; South Phoenix, Ariz.; the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, and Los Angeles. The final event is an Anaheim, Calif., conference focusing on getting at-risk youths into the workforce.