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Vice President Gore Calls for New Partnership with
America’s Cities By Dave
Gatton Vice President Al Gore told the
nation’s mayors at their 68th Annual Conference in Seattle June 9th that
he will create a new partnership with cities and U.S. metro areas to
ensure that the most robust economy in U.S. history continues into the
next decade. The Vice President said that
America’s biggest challenge was "to make sure that no one is left behind"
in an economy that has already created over 21 million jobs and cut
minority unemployment rates in half, to historic lows. He said that U.S.
metro areas accounted for almost 90 percent of the economic growth since
1993. Gore told the mayors that he
would work to give funds directly to local governments in a Gore
presidency to bring more efficiency and improvement to governmental
services. He pledged to continue and expand current crime fighting
initiatives, calling for an additional 50,000 police officers for cities.
To help prevent juvenile crime
and improve academic performance, the Vice President pledged to make
after-school programs for the nation’s school children a national
priority. He said we must bring revolutionary change to the educational
system by dramatically reducing class size in public schools. On the issue of gun safety, the
Vce President took the National Rifle Association directly on by calling
for "common sense restrictions to get guns out of the hands of those who
should not have them." Gore implied that there is collusion between the
NRA and his presidential opponent, George W. Bush, when he apologetically
quipped, "the last time Moses listened to a bush, the people wandered in
the desert for 40 years." Gore cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate’s
gun safety bill last year, only to have it stalled in the House of
Representatives due to strong NRA lobbying. Saying that the next Thomas
Edison may live in a poor family in a poor neighborhood, he told the
mayors that the future of democracy requires that the talents of all
people be represented and made manifest. "The destiny of our nation is to
help all our people to reach their dreams," he said. The vice-president said that
family wealth told an interesting story in America. The wealth of minority
families, on average, is only 11 percent of that for majority families.
"When a member of a majority family wants to start a business, he calls a
relative," Gore said, clearly implying that the federal government must
help minority entrepreneurs enter the business world. Gore also called on the creation
of tax credits for the development of brownfields. During the Clinton
administration, Gore led the effort to enact tax code changes that allow
companies to "expense", or deduct in one year, costs for clean-up of a
brownfield site. His call for tax credits for redevelopment purposes is a
significant expansion of the brownfields program that he pioneered during
his vice-presidency. He told the mayors that under a
Gore presidency he would provide high quality health care to every child
in America within four years as a first toward universal health care for
the entire nation. In his speech the vice-president
indicated that he would launch a new Prosperity and Progress tour within
his campaign that would highlight the greatest economy in the history of
the nation. To preserve that prosperity, he called for taking the Medicare
trust fund out of the general budget and putting it into a "lock box" to
preserve its revenues for future health care use. He said that how we use
the federal surplus was just as important as managing deficits was during
the last two decades. The tough decisions on managing the surplus, such as
safeguarding the Medicare program, would be made easier if we "keep our
confidence by keeping the economy going," he told the mayors. After his Seattle speech, Gore
announced that Secretary of Commerce William Daley, would replace Tony
Coelho as campaign chairman. The announcement came as the Vice President
sought to reinvigorate his campaign with major political advertising
focusing on the economy and his plan to sustain it. Secretary Daley is the
brother of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley.
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