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Obama Announces Economic "Promise Zones"

Aired January 09, 2014 - 14:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Now, it's one thing to say we should help more Americans get ahead, but talk is cheap. We've got to actually make sure that we do it. And I will work with anybody who's willing to lay out some concrete ideas to create jobs and help more middle class families find security in today's economy and offer new ladders of opportunity for folks to climb into the middle class. And personally I hope we start by listening to the majority of the American people and restoring the unemployment insurance for Americans who need a little help supporting their families while they look for new job.

I'm glad that Republicans and Democrats in the Senate are working together to extend that lifeline. I hope their colleagues in the House will join them to set this right. Today, I want to talk about something very particular. A specific example of how we can make a difference.

We are here with leaders who are determined to change the odds in their communities the way these kids and their parents and dedicated citizens have changed the odds in Harlem. It's now been 50 years since President Johnson declared an unconditional war on poverty in America, made new avenues of opportunity for generations of Americans that strengthen the safety net for working families and seniors.

Americans with disabilities and the poor so that when we fall, you never know what life brings you, we can bounce back faster and it made us a better and stronger country. The speech 50 years ago, President Johnson talked about communities on the on out skirts of hope where opportunity was hard to come by.

Today's economic challenges are different, but they still resulted in communities where in recent decades wrenching economic change has made opportunity harder and harder to come by. There are communities where for too many young people it feels like the future only extends to the next street corner or the outskirts of town.

Too many communities where no matter how hard you work, your destinies feels like it has already been determined before you took that first step. I'm not just talking about pockets of poverty in our inner cities. Now that's the stereotype. I am talking about suburban neighborhoods that have been hammered by the housing crisis.

I'm talking about manufacturing towns that still haven't recovered after the local plants shut down and jobs dried up. There are islands of rural America where jobs are scarce. They were scarce even before the recession hit. Young people feel like if they want to actually succeed they have to leave town. Leave their communities.

I have seen this personally even before I got into politics. This is what drove me into politics. I was two years out of college when I first moved to the south side of Chicago. I was hired by a group of churches to help organize a community that had been devastated when the local steel plants closed their doors.

I walked through neighborhoods and walked through boarded up houses and boarded up schools and single patients and dads who had nothing to do with their kids and kids who were hanging out on the street without any hope or prospects for the future. These churches came together and started working with the local non-profits. The government and local and state and federal participated.

We started doing things that gave people hope and that experience taught the government does not have all the answers. No amount of money can take the place of a loving parent in a child's life. I did learn that when communities and governments and businesses and non for profits work together, we can make a difference.

Kiara is proof. All these young people are proof. We can make a difference. For the last 17 years, the Harlem Children's Zone, the brain child of Jeffrey Cannon who was here today. It has proven we can make a difference and operated on a basic premise that each child will do better if all the children around them are doing better.

So in Harlem, staff members go door-to-door and recruit soon to be parents for Baby College preparing them for those crucial first few months of life. Making sure that they understand how to talk to the child and read to their child and sometimes teaching the parents how to read so they can read to their child. Give them the healthy start they need.

Then early childhood education to get kids learning at 4 years old and then a charter school that helps children succeed through high school. Medical care and healthy foods that are available close to home and exercise. I was pleased to hear that -- Michelle was pleased to hear that they have a strong physical ed program.

And then students getting help finding internships and applying to college, and an outstanding dedicated staff that tries to make sure that nobody slips through the cracks or falls behind, and this is an incredible achievement. The results have been tremendous.

Today preschool students in the Harlem Children Zone are better prepared for kindergarten. Last year, a study found that students who win a spot in one of the charter schools score higher on standardized tests than those who don't in a neighborhood where higher education was once just something that other people did.

You have hundreds of kids who have gone to college and Harlem is not the only community that found success taking on these challenges together. In Cincinnati, a focus on education has helped to make sure more kids are ready for kindergarten and they redesigned high schools and boosted graduation rates by almost 20 percent over the past 12 years. In Milwaukee, they cut teen pregnancy in half. Every community is different. The different needs and different approaches, but communities making the most progress have things in common. They don't look for a single silver bullet. Instead they bring together local government and non-profits and businesses and teachers and parents around a shared goal. That's what Jeffrey did when he started the Harlem Children's Zone.

Government was involved. So don't be confused. It has an important to play. There are government resources going into these communities, but it's important that our faith institutions and our businesses and the parents in the communities themselves are involved in designing and thinking through how we move forward.

The second thing is they are holding themselves accountable by delivering measurable results. We don't start projects just for the sake of starting. They have to work. If they don't work, we should try something else. They care deeply about how they will subject these programs to that test. Do they work?

In my "State of the Union" address last year, I announced our commitment to identify more communities like these, urban, rural and tribal where dedicated citizens are determined to make a difference and turn things around and we challenge them. We said if you can demonstrate the ability and the will to launch an all-encompassing, all hands on deck approach to reducing poverty and expanding opportunity, we'll help you get the resources to do it.

We will take resources from some of the programs that we are already doing and concentrate them. We'll make sure that our agencies are working together more effectively. We will put in talent to help you plan. We are also going to hold you accountable and measure your progress. If you are doing real stuff that is making a difference in the lives of young people then we are going to be there.

Your country will help you remake your community on behalf of your kids, family by family and block by block. We call these communities promise zones. They are neighborhoods where we will help local efforts to meet one national goal that a child's course in life should be determined not by the zip code she is born in, but by the strength of her work ethic and the scope of her dreams.

So we are here today to announce the first five promise zones in America. I could not be prouder to be joined by Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles and Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia. Councilwoman Ivy Taylor from San Antonio, Chief Gregory Pile, one of our tribal leaders and Gerry Rickett from the Kentucky Highlands Investment Corporation, some of the leaders from these neighborhoods who are helping to make it happen.

In the east side neighborhood of San Antonio, nearly four in ten adults don't have a high school diploma. The violent crime rate is 50 percent higher than the rest of the city. So schools and community members are focused on getting more kids into Pre-K, boosting math and science in high school and they are putting more cops on foot patrol to make neighborhoods safer. It's a project worth investing in. In a section of L.A. that stretches from Pico Union to Hollywood. The population decreased by 13,000 people in just 10 years. So developers are working to build more affordable housing, technical schools and community colleges are helping more people get the training they need to get jobs. It's a project worth investing in.

In Philly, nearly four out of every ten kids lives below the poverty line and a lot of them are on the west side of the city so local universities helping connect middle and high school students with mentors to get them ready for college. You have a super market that will create jobs and provide healthy food where there is too little of both. We are going to invest in that.

Senator Mitch McConnell's home state of Kentucky, they are communities that have been struggling for decades with shutdowns and layoffs. So they are taking steps locally initiated to track new businesses and create new jobs in new industries. You have a local college that is stepping up to expand technical training and help more kids get a higher education.

Then the tactile nation of Oklahoma where up to half of the residents in some areas live in poverty. Community leaders are determined to change things. They are making financing available to help women start businesses. They are investing in new water and sewer systems that will make the area more attractive for companies looking to locate there and they are helping farmers and ranchers create more jobs and more families thereby get access to healthy foods.

So these are America's first five promise zones. Over the next three years, we are going to help launch 20 in all. Each of these communities is designing from the bottom up, not the top down. What it is they think they need and we are working with them to make that happen. Each of these communities prepared to do what it takes to change the odds for their kids. We will help them succeed.

Not with a hand out, but as partners with them every step of the way and we are going to make sure it works. We are going hold them accountable to make sure it is making a difference in the lives of kids. As a nation, we have plenty of reasons to hope. And I just want to end with one story to give you a sense of what we are talking about here.

Roger Brown came here today from Harlem. Where is Roger? There he is. I used to have a haircut like that and maybe after I am done with the presidency -- I'm going back to that. Growing up, I want to you listen to Roger's story. It's unique and special, but also representative. Growing up, Roger spent some time in the foster care system before going to live with his mom who was working two jobs to make ends meet.

When Roger was in 6th grade, his mom entered his name in the Promise Academy Charter School lottery and prayed. Roger won a spot. Now, the way I hear it, Roger, you were still having problems sometimes. He was the class clown and acting out and almost got himself expelled. But the teachers and the staff did not give up on him. They saw something in him and kept pushing him. One summer when Roger was home visiting his foster family, he looked around the room and realized nobody in that room had gone to college. Nobody in that room had a job. At that moment something click and Roger decided he wanted something better for himself and for his mom and for his two sisters who looked up to him.

So Roger buckled down. He went from failing his classes to passing his classes. He became a member of the first graduating class at the Promise Academy and today Roger is a sophomore at Hunter College in New York, one of the best colleges in the country and the first person in his family to get that far.

Now he wants to go to medical school and become a neurologist. If you want to know why I care about this stuff so much, it's because I'm not that different from Roger. There was a period of time in my life where I was goofing off. I was raised by a single mom. I didn't know my dad. The only difference between me and Roger was my environment was more forgiving than his. That's the only difference.

If I screwed up, the consequences weren't quite as great. So if Roger can make it and if I can make it, if Kiara can make it, every kid in this country can make it, but we have to believe in that. We can't just give lip service to them. It can't just get caught up in a bunch of political arguments. There are legitimate questions about how the best way to do this is. How we can make progress.

There are legitimate debates on how big of a role is government in that process and how big of a role is the private sector and there is no disagreement that there has to be individual initiative. It has to start inside. Roger had to have a change of attitude and I did and Kiara probably didn't need a change of attitude. She was focused the whole time.

We don't dispute that, but we do know that sometimes we talk about this stuff as if we care and don't deliver. We don't follow-through and make the effort. It's not sustained. We lose interest. Then we say to ourselves, maybe nothing can be done. We put up with it and as a consequence, a lot of our kids get lot of. We can't allow that to happen. That's what the promise zone represents.

I want more kids to have the chance that Roger got. I want more kids to have the chance this country gave me. We should all want every one of our kids and their families to have a shot at success. If you are willing to dream big and work hard, you should grow up with the same opportunities in as any other child in any other place.

That's what we are fighting for. That's what America is about. So let's act. Let's make it happen this year. All right, thank you. God bless you. God bless America.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: The president of the United States with a bunch of kids in the east room of the White House. This is the first time President Obama has officially come forward and designated these first five that he calls promise zones. We will have a bigger discussion. This is L.A., San Antonio, Philadelphia, South Eastern Kentucky and Oklahoma. This is explain to you is what he is talking about. With a little help from the government to help better these troubled neighborhoods and these parts of the country for at least the children, better access to education and housing and public safety so that kids are not held back as the president said as zip codes, but can forward themselves from hard work.

Let me bring in our chief political analyst, Gloria Borger, our senior White House correspondent, Brianna Keilar and our chief congressional correspondent, Dana Bash, who is standing by for breaking news out of Washington. So Dana, we'll get to you.

But Gloria to you first because my question is on timing because we know when the president alluded to this, it was just about a year ago in his "State of the Union" where he had promised, you know, partnering with 20 different cities across the country. Why talk about this now in the lead up to the next "State of the Union?"

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, because I think he is going to talk about it again. I think he sees a right political moment here. Republicans have been through an election in which poll after poll showed they did not care about the middle class, that they didn't understand the problems of everyday people. And they know that they've got some issues here, which is why you see potential Republican presidential contenders like Rand Paul as the president mentioned, who has his own version of this, called the economic freedom zones.

Marco Rubio has come out with his own kind of anti-poverty program to stream line federal poverty programs. This is something they can talk about with the president and in fact probably pass a legislation to deal with the poverty issues. It only will help the American public believe they care about the people on the lower rungs of the ladder to try to bring them up to the middle class.

BALDWIN: Brianna Keilar, you mentioned before we heard from the president we know Rand Paul is there. The top Republican in the Senate from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell is there at the White House. But to the broader point, which is this notion and theme we have been hearing from the president recently of income and equality.

A couple of days, he was talking about jobless benefits of all these, you know, millions of Americans who are searching for work. This is really been an important point for the president lately.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That's right. It's a big message umbrella that a lot of things fit into. For instance, the unemployment benefits fight that is going on right now. We are expecting there to be a fight on increasing the minimum wage, which the White House and Senate Democrats and congressional Democrats in general support.

So this is something that sort of falls under that umbrella and trying to in some cases you are talking about just increasing economic productivity in places that have been really hard hit and loan assistance for small businesses and trying to give job training so that for those people whose industries have gone away, they can pivot to do something else.

This is a push that President Obama coordinated with congressional Democrats as trying to move forward in this mid-term election year. It's something that worked for him in his re-election. He talked about trying to give the middle class a fair shot and trying to be the champion of the middle class. This is a take on that. In this year, he wants the Democrats to remain in control of the Senate -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: Brianna, thank you very much. Let's head down the road to your colleague and mine, Dana Bash, who is standing by for us. On Capitol Hill, you have some breaking news. Budget negotiators and unemployment deal, where does it stand?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: According to a source close to these negotiations, they are very, very close to getting a deal to extend those long-term unemployment benefits, the ones that you have been discussing and the ones that Democrats have really started this year off as a part of the president's discussion on income inequality.

You know the first hurdle was crossed earlier this week because six Republicans joined on, but then those Republicans were demanding that any extension be paid for and offset in other cuts. These negotiators apparently have come up with some of those paid-fors or offsets.

What we are talking about is extending the long term emergency unemployment benefits until November of this year and it would cost about $18 billion. They would pay for that in various ways by extending part of the spending cuts or the sequester in a certain area and also by doing away with what's known as double dipping in unemployment benefits and some Social Security benefits.

This is something that one of those Republicans, Rob Portman of Ohio, has been very, very focused on. Now these negotiations, Brooke, have been between the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his colleague, Republican counterpart from Nevada, Dean Heller. They have included senators from Rhode Island.

So the question at this point is whether or not they can get on board first and foremost the other five Republican senators who agreed to at least start debate, move to start to debate on this. Many of them, we have talked to in the hallway. They have said that they haven't seen the details of this.

But it certainly sounds from sources who are close to this that they are getting very, very close to having a deal that could be a breakthrough in the Senate. I should also tell you that this information comes from our intrepid senior congressional producer, Ted Barrett.

BALDWIN: Ted Barrett with a credit. It's so good like that. Dana Bash, thank you very much. Gloria, finally to you as we are talking on the Senate side, I feel like you and I have spoken about this, right, with regards to the House and specifically how Speaker John Boehner. How much of a roadblock will that be? BORGER: Well, we don't know at this point. It depends on how you are going to pay for all of this. I think there are going to be lots of Democrats by the way who don't want to extend some of these mandatory cuts that will have to be extended to pay for this. There are going to be Republicans who say we have to find another way.

So we -- you know, Ted is I think as he usually is ahead of a lot of senators who haven't seen the details here. But to go back to our previous conversation about why this is in the interest of both parties to get it done, A, it's a roadblock on the way to getting other things done.

And B, if you are a Republican and you understand where the public is, the public overwhelmingly approves extending unemployment benefits. They believe that Republicans don't care about their problems. This is one way for to you get this out of the way and to move on to other issues.

BALDWIN: Gloria Borger and Dana Bash, thank you both very much in Washington. The big story today out of Trenton, New Jersey hearing from Governor Chris Christie for 108 minutes what is probably considered the most important news conference of his political career thus far. We are live in Fort Lee, New Jersey coming up next.

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BALDWIN: Just about the top of the hour, you are watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. It has been a busy, busy news day. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie hopes to personally apologize. We are talking face-to-face to the mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey for this whole George Washington Bridge scandal.

The back stories, the traffic was snarled, it was just nightmarish for a lot of people for four days back in September when lanes entering the bridge that connects Manhattan to Fort Lee, New Jersey was closed. When you look at the e-mails and text messages, they show a senior Christie aide was involved.

Today in Trenton, New Jersey, we saw Chris Christie announcing he fired that aide. She is Deputy Chief Of Staff Bridget Kelly. He also put a stop to the climate of his former campaign manager. Governor Christie spent more than an hour and a half apologizing very publicly.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GOVERNOR CHRIS CHRISTIE (R), NEW JERSEY: I am embarrassed and humiliated by the conduct of some of the people on my team. There is no doubt in my mind that the conduct that they exhibited is completely unacceptable and showed the lack of respect for their appropriate role of government and for the people that were trusted to serve.

I believe I have an understanding of the true nature of the problem. I have taken the following action as a result. This morning I terminated the employment of Bridget Kelly effective immediately. I terminated her employment because she lied to me. I am heartbroken that someone who I permitted to be in that circle of trust for the last five years betrayed my trust.

I would never have come out here four or five weeks ago and made a joke about these lane closures if I had ever had an inkling that anyone on my staff would have been so stupid, but to be involved and then so deceitful as to not disclose the information of their involvement to me when directly asked by their superior.