***** Reformatted. Please Distribute. CLINTON/GORE ON REBUILDING AMERICA'S CITIES While Americas great cities fall into disrepair, Washington continues to ignore their fate. Private enterprise has abandoned our cities, leaving our young people with few job prospects and declining hopes. Our nation cannot move forward until our cities become centers of expanding opportunity and engines of economic growth. Prosperous cities are the key to vital regional economies, and to safe and healthy suburbs. Bill Clinton and Al Gore believe it is time for a new partnership to rebuild Americas cities -- a partnership between people and their government to expand opportunity and solve problems, so that our cities will once again be the pride of our nation. Americas cities should be places where hard-working families can put down roots and find good jobs, affordable housing, decent schools and safe streets. Hope and opportunity -- not mean streets and drug pushers -- must prevail. To rebuild America's cities, the most important thing we can do is to implement a national economic strategy that pulls us out of the recession and gets our country moving again. We can only revitalize our cities in an expanding economy. America's cities cannot afford four more years with a federal government that neglects their needs. The Clinton/Gore Plan Turning around our cities: three principles * Opportunity: We can't rebuild our urban communities with handouts alone -- We need a massive expansion of opportunity. The federal government should create conditions conducive to economic recovery through a national economic strategy, targeted incentives and grants designed to revitalize the urban economy, and measures that empower city residents to take advantage of newly created opportunities for expanded education, job training and child care services. In return for federal assistance, the cities will adopt comprehensive strategies leading to revitalized urban centers; take advantage of opportunities created by the federal/municipal partnership to attract business and expand the urban economic base; and play a key role in the empowerment of urban residents as the primary provider of education, housing, and crime prevention. * Community: Community groups and local citizen organizations will be the backbone of our urban improvement efforts. To restore our cities, we must create a new partnership committed to excellence and community service. The federal government must get involved again, working together with state and local authorities in this endeavor. Non-profit organizations also have a role to play. * Responsibility: We must recognize that no matter how hard we work to make the federal/municipal partnership a success, we will make no progress unless individuals take responsibility for their own lives, working tirelessly to overcome challenges and solve problems in their families and communities. Investment in communities * Target funding and Community Development Block Grants to rebuild Americas urban roads, bridges, water and sewage treatment plants and low-income housing stock, stressing ready to go projects. Require companies that bid on these projects to set up a portion of their operations in low-income neighborhoods and employ local residents. * Create a nationwide network of community development banks to provide small loans to low-income entrepreneurs and homeowners in the inner cities. These banks will provide advice and assistance to entrepreneurs, invest in affordable housing, and help mobilize private lenders. * Create urban enterprise zones in stagnant inner cities, but only for companies willing to take responsibility by hiring inner city residents. Business taxes and federal regulations will be minimized to provide incentives to set up shop. In return, companies will have to make jobs for local residents a top priority. * Ease the credit crunch in our inner cities by passing a more progressive Community Reinvestment Act to prevent redlining and require financial institutions to invest in their communities. * Create a City Assistance Flexibility program to allow cities to direct the use of 15 percent of the federal assistance they receive to meet their own community priorities and fund their local revislatization strategies. Empowerment through economic opportunity * Expand and improve job training by requiring every employer to spend 1.5 percent of payroll for continuing education and training, and make them provide the training to all workers, not just executives. * To ensure that no one with a family who works full-time has to raise their children in poverty, we will increase the Earned Income Tax Credit to make up the difference between a families earnings and the poverty level. * Change the current welfare system to make welfare a second chance, not a way of life. We will empower people on welfare with the education, training, and child care they need for up to two years so they can break the cycle of dependency. After that, those who are able will be required to work, either in the private sector or through community service. * Require that any corporation receiving a multimillion dollar federal contract create a mentorship, after-school employment, or summer employment program for urban and rural disadvantaged youth. This will expand horizons and create incentives for kids to stay in school. A national crime strategy * Fight crime by putting 100,000 new police officers on the streets of America. We will create a National Police Corps and offer unemployed veterans and active military personnel a chance to become law enforcement officers here at home. * Set standards for crime emergency areas. Hard-hit communities will be eligible for federal matching funds to assist in the war on crime, if they create a comprehensive crime control plan that measures results and adopts proven anti-crime measures, such as community-based policing to put more police on the beat, and "boot camps" for first-time non-violent offenders. * Pass the Brady Bill, which creates a waiting period for handgun purchases, to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals; ban assault rifles like the so-called "Street Sweeper" which have no legitimate hunting purpose; limit access to multiple round clips like the one used in the tragic killings in Killeen, Texas. * Give public housing residents the opportunity to organize themselves to eliminate drugs and weapons from public housing projects and support efforts like Operation Clean Sweep in Chicago, which helps residents take their housing back from gangs and dealers. * Provide funds for a safe schools initiative to help violence-ridden schools hire security personnel and purchase metal detectors; help cities and states use community policing to put more police officers on the streets in high-crime areas where schools are located. Rebuilding our urban infrastructure * Target funding and Community Development Block Grants to rebuild America's urban roads, bridges, water and sewage treatment plants and low-income housing stock, stressing "ready to go" projects. Require companies that bid on these projects to set up a portion of their operations in low-income neighborhoods and employ local residents. * Allocate greater resources to "intelligent vehicle" and roadway technology to reduce traffic and make more efficient use of current transportation resources. * Increase the decision-making role of municipalities and community development groups so they can allocate a greater share of their transportation funds for mass transit systems; require cities to undertake more comprehensive planning before allocating funds to guarantee that transportation dollars are actually spent meeting the goals of their revitalization plans, and prevent money from being used for conflicting purposes. * Ensure that federal matching fund rates provide incentives for programs that repair existing facilities and increase efficiency, instead of simply building more and more roads. New hope for affordable housing * Increase the ceiling on Federal Housing Authority (FHA) mortgage insurance to 95 percent of the price of a home in an average metropolitan area, to make it easier for half a million American families to buy their first home. * Make home ownership possible for lower-income Americans through federal support of low-income, long-term housing buy-out programs like Tampas innovative "Resurrection of Affordable Housing Program" in which condemned houses are purchased, restored, and sold to low-income buyers through a package of long-term subsidized financing. * Require the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Department of Justice to aggressively enforce existing civil rights laws to open up housing currently closed by discrimination. * Maintain the mortgage revenue bond program to make affordable housing a reality. * Continue and strengthen the HOME Program, by giving more authority to local administrative officials. Congress created the HOME program in 1990 to provide additional decent rental housing for low-income Americans, but limited localities' choices in utilizing HOME funds for new construction at the Bush Administration's urging. * Permanently extend the Low Income Housing Tax Credit. This innovative provision helps attract private investment in housing for low-income renters, and develops housing that would otherwise not be built. More than 120,000 homes a year are produced with the credits help. * Preserve our nations enormous investment of billions of dollars in public housing since the second World War by ensuring that adequate funding for maintenance and upkeep is included in the HUD budget. Fighting homelessness * Transfer ten percent of HUD and other government controlled housing to community non-profit organizations and churches to house the homeless. * Use housing available at closed military bases for homeless people, with a preference for homeless veterans. * Develop targeted strategies to help different homeless populations those who need supported living environments, those who need residential alcohol and drug treatment, and those who simply can't afford to house their families. * Hold a Housing and Homelessness Summit with urban leaders and mayors to create a new consensus for poverty programs, funding levels, and federal assistance for innovative housing crisis solutions. Empowerment through education * Fully fund Head Start, to insure that our children arrive in school ready to learn, and the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, as well as other critical initiatives recommended by the National Commission on Children. These programs are proven successes that save us several dollars for every one we spend. * Expand innovative parenting programs like Arkansas' Home Instructional Program for Pre-School Youngsters, which helps disadvantaged parents work with their children to build an ethic of learning at home that benefits both. * Increase Chapter One funding to allow schools greater spending flexibility so they can reduce class sizes and make other local improvements. * Give teenagers who drop out of school a second chance through a Youth Opportunity Corps; help communities open youth centers where teenagers are matched with adults who care about them, and given the opportunity to develop self-discipline and skills. * Dramatically improve K-12 education by establishing tough national standards and a national examination system in core subjects like math and science, leveling the playing field for disadvantaged students, and reducing class sizes. * Provide every parent with the right to choose the public school his or her child attends, as they do in Arkansas; in return, demand that parents work with their children to keep them in school, off drugs, and headed toward graduation. * Expand health services and health education programs in schools to provide primary and preventive services and to fight teen pregnancy and AIDS. * Bring business, education leaders, and labor together to develop a national apprenticeship system that offers non college-bound students valuable skills training, with the promise of good jobs when they graduate. * Give every American the right to borrow money for college: Retain the Pell Grant program but scrap the existing student loan program and establishing a National Service Trust Fund. Those who borrow from the fund will be able to choose how to repay the balance -- either as a small percentage of their earnings over time, or by returning to serve their communities as teachers, law enforcement officers, health care workers, or peer counselors helping kids stay off drugs and in school. * Give every adult American a chance to learn, to read and write, and to get a high school diploma with adult literacy initiatives. Affordable, quality health care * Establish a national health care plan that controls exploding health care costs to guarantee every American, including the working poor who currently do not receive health insurance through their employers, affordable, quality health care. * Enact reforms, like controlling drug costs and establishing health networks, to decrease the strain on municipal health resources associated with the AIDS crisis, and cut the enormous health care costs of our city governments. * Improve health care access in urban areas through school- and community-based clinics to provide improved preventive care.