County Issue / Clinton’s Program

Ventura County’s unemployment rate for September was 9.1%, among the highest levels since the 1982-83 recession. And housing starts, which soared to more than

5,000 in 1986, dropped to 1,047 last year. With a financial rebound apparently slow in coming, what can President-elect Bill Clinton do to spur the economy?

Karrol Maughmer, Former Perot campaign coordinator, Ventura County

He needs to hire Mr. Perot. Mr. Perot has a clear understanding (of) what it’s going to take to get the deficit reduced and get a balanced budget. A woman came by the Perot office before the election on her bicycle and said she would like to vote for Mr. Perot but she thought he would reduce welfare and her welfare had already been reduced. We have to curb free-wheeling spending in welfare and other programs. Without sitting down and studying the issue, I think someone needs to let up on the building industry. I think if Clinton loosened up the federal guidelines on loans for the building industry, that that would be extremely helpful. We have very low interest rates right now, and it’s difficult to get your hands on the money. From what Mr. Perot has said, he would favor making loans available immediately to the small businesses to get started.

Stacy A. Roscoe, President, Ventura County Economic Development Assn.

There should be a closer interaction between government and people. One way to do that is to deal with the impact of special-interest money so that the government will get back in touch with and responsive to the real interest of people. In the California economy, there are a lot of issues not being heeded because they’re not the ones receiving monetary support. Workers compensation is clearly one. Everyone understands that there’s a serious problem here, but we can’t seem to get anything done. Clinton should encourage businesses to help in the conversion from a defense economy to a peacetime economy. In California, years of prosperity have been linked to defense spending. California’s defense industry has a lot of highly technical skills that are readily usable and needed to solve transportation and environmental problems. One thing that I haven’t heard Clinton emphasize is that it’s clearly a priority for states to streamline their regulatory process.

William E. McAleer, Chairman and CEO, Ventura County National Bank

There are four things that Mr. Clinton has to address immediately. He must promote increased business investment by using a direct tax deduction for new equipment. Secondly, Clinton needs to upgrade the national infrastructure by releasing the $10-billion surplus in the highway and airport funds that was previously set aside by President Bush. Thirdly, Clinton needs to allow banks to engage in interstate banking, securities transactions, give them insurance powers and streamline the very restrictive bank regulatory framework. Fourthly, he needs to fix Congress quickly. He must eliminate the special-interest influence by going to a system of public election financing and giving the president line-item veto power. (Congressional) bills are squirrelly--you’ll see a bill about welfare and it will have in it money for a statue to be built in Boise, Ida. But regardless of what Clinton does, Ventura County does not have to wait for the federal government or state government before they help themselves and pull themselves out of this depression.

Jack Shine, Vice-president, National Assn. of Homebuilders; treasurer , California Building Industry Assn.

The first thing that the government can do is give people confidence that they understand the problem and that they understand what needs to be done. To do this, you need to surround yourselves with top quality people and push ahead with programs to create jobs. Clinton wants to tap the transportation funds and do infrastructure work building roads, which will put paychecks into people’s hands immediately. There’s no way to get this country going faster than to build something and giving people a paycheck. That creates a flow of money and starts the acceleration of the economy. I would hope that Clinton recognizes that California and specifically Southern California has a particular problem and is lagging the rest of the country for a number of reasons. At the very least, I would hope that we get our fair share or more of the funds he’s going to spend on infrastructure.

Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Simi Valley, 23rd Congressional District

There’s a lot of talk that with a Democratic Congress and president, more will get done. But Isubmit that if Clinton pursues some of the growth-inducing issues that he has advocated during his campaign such as investment tax credits and capital gains reductions, he will have more problems with the Democratic side of Congress than the Republican side. One of the things that I’ll continue to work on that I have in the past is my jobs bill, which I introduced in the last session. It provides incentives to companies that have a hiring program that puts those displaced in the defense industry back to work. It would be a tax credit that would provide $2,400 per employee to the employer who hired those displaced by the defense industry. We in Ventura County have been directly affected by the defense cuts. I see a greater need for my bill in the future. With President-elect Bill Clinton, we’re going to see even more drastic cuts in the defense industry.