[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 91 (Thursday, July 14, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 14, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                 CYNICISM DEPENDS ON WHOSE OX IS GORED

  (Mr. LIVINGSTON asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks and include 
extraneous material.)
  Mr. LIVINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, Vice President Al Gore complains of 
cynicism.
  Why should we not be cynical?
  We have a President--elected on a moral platform, decrying the decade 
of greed;
  His first acts are to promote open abortion and homosexuality in 
America;
  He is mired in a morass of ethical litigation known as Whitewater;
  He is pursued by numerous complaints about his personal conduct--many 
related directly to his performance as a public official;
  He and his wife make the centerpiece of his presidency the health 
care issue, driving down the prices of securities in pharmaceutical and 
health insurance companies; and simultaneously engage in the selling 
short of many of those same securities;
  As Governor of Arkansas, he provided favorable treatment to such 
firms as Tysons Foods, while officials closely connected with that 
company are enabling his wife to strike it rich in an impossible shot 
with cattle futures;
  While extolling his virtuous performance as Governor on a meager 
$35,000 salary, his friends and assistants are systematically hustling 
companies who do business with Arkansas--including Tyson Foods--to help 
pay off some $400,000 in loans he wangled from a small bank under his 
indirect control;
  Korea looms as a world-class threat with potential for nuclear 
holocaust, he wants to invade Haiti.
  And Al Gore complains about cynicism?

               [From the Washington Post, July 14, 1994]

                 Gore Sees Cynicism Endangering Reform

                           (By Stephen Barr)

       Vice President Gore appealed to federal employees yesterday 
     to overcome ``a deep and pervasive cynicism'' that he 
     portrayed as a barrier to his efforts to reshape the 
     government.
       In a speech at the Federal Quality Institute awards 
     luncheon, Gore said that cynicism--``the public's willingness 
     to believe the worst''--has increased because of the nation's 
     speedy and unsettling transformation from an industrial-based 
     economy to an Information Age economy, because the news media 
     feed ``voraciously on the failures of government'' and 
     because politicians often fail to deliver on their promises.
       The public's cynicism, the vice president said, ``has 
     fallen heavily on the largest institution in America--the 
     federal government--and it has worn heavily on federal 
     employees for much of the past two decades.''
       But Gore told the Washington Hilton ballroom audience that 
     the winners of the president's quality awards this year 
     showed that ``no leader can lead as a cynic.'' The award 
     winners, he said, ``are not in some ivory tower. They are in 
     the real world, making a difference in the lives of hundreds 
     of thousands of people.''
       Saying he wanted ``our government to address head-on the 
     public's distrust of us,'' Gore reminded federal employees 
     that the administration was challenging ``agencies to provide 
     services to their customers equal to the best in business,'' 
     to cut red tape, tolerate risk and encourage innovation.
       ``As you can imagine, cynics need not apply. Leaders must 
     move from control to trust if they want organizations that 
     are the best in business,'' Gore said.
       The vice president then handed out awards to four 
     organizations--all from the Defense Department--that he said 
     had created ``learning organizations.'' Gore paid a special 
     tribute to the Naval Air Systems Command in Arlington, which 
     improved internal operations significantly while in the midst 
     of a downsizing that cut 9,000 people in four years.
       Later in the day, Gore went to the Office of Personnel 
     Management, where he praised Director James B. King and his 
     staff for a series of ``reinventing government'' 
     accomplishments, including the elimination of the 10,000-page 
     Federal Personnel Manual.
       ``What is the principal enemy of change?'' Gore asked the 
     OPM employees. ``Very simple. Cynicism--a belief on the part 
     of those who deep down would like to see change that we who 
     are in the federal government are basically not serious about 
     it and not good enough or well-motivated enough to really 
     bring it about,'' Gore said.
       The cynics think the administration's initiative ``will 
     sputter out and there will be some sound and fury signifying 
     nothing,'' Gore added.
       He urged the employees to ``find your own personal strategy 
     for resisting and defeating the temptation to surrender to 
     that kind of cynicism.''
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Post, July 14, 1994]

             Clinton Personal Loans Partly Repaid by Donors

               (By Susan Schmidt and Charles R. Babcock)

       President Clinton took out about $400,000 in personal loans 
     from one small Arkansas bank when he was governor of 
     Arkansas, the banker, a former Clinton aide, said yesterday. 
     The money was used for his political campaigns and to promote 
     a state education initiative, and at least part of the debt 
     was repaid with donations from corporations.
       W. Maurice Smith, Clinton's top gubernatorial aide until 
     1985, said in an interview yesterday that Clinton took out 
     between a half-dozen and a dozen unsecured loans between 1983 
     and 1988 from his Bank of Cherry Valley.
       He estimated that about $300,000 of the money lent to 
     Clinton went to campaigns, though Clinton's gubernatorial 
     campaign records show only one $50,000 personal loan to the 
     candidate during those years.
       It was previously known that Clinton had raised private 
     money to fund advertising for several legislative programs, 
     but not all the donors were identified publicly. It was not 
     known that some of the money was used to repay Clinton's 
     personal loans.
       The White House was unable yesterday to fully explain the 
     loans, first reported by the Associated Press.
       Betsey Wright, a former Clinton aide who oversaw the 
     raising and spending of the funds, said in an interview last 
     night from the White House that she turned over her records 
     to Robert B. Fiske, the special counsel investigating 
     Clinton's finances in the Whitewater land deal.
       Fiske is investigating whether taxpayer-insured funds from 
     Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan were diverted to pay off the 
     $50,000 campaign loan from Cherry Valley in 1984. Madison was 
     owned by James B. McDougal, the Clintons' business partner in 
     the Whitewater land venture, which itself had borrowed from 
     Smith's bank.
       Wright said her records were incomplete so she couldn't 
     elaborate on how much of the Cherry Valley loans were used to 
     promote legislative initiatives and how much were used for 
     the governor's reelection campaigns. Though Clinton borrowed 
     the money from the bank in his name personally, she said, he 
     never saw the money and ``not one penny ever went for the 
     Clintons' personal use.''
       Wright, who is a Washington lobbyist, said she will not 
     release copies of the documents showing the identity of the 
     donors who paid off the loans or how the money was spent. 
     ``They are in my custody and I will not release them until 
     Mr. Fiske has completed his task,'' she said.
       ``Clinton went out and raised money from the business 
     community to put ads on the media. It was a well-known part 
     of his efforts to move the state forward,'' said White House 
     aide John Podesta. Two lists of contributors who donated a 
     total of $120,000 to Clinton legislative initiatives in 1988 
     and 1989 were released publicly at the time.
       Smith said he knew of only one legislative initiative 
     funded by his bank. It lent Clinton $100,000 in 1983 to push 
     for education reform in a special session of the legislature. 
     Arkansas corporations, including Tyson Foods, Worthen Bank, 
     Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and TCBY made contributions to an 
     education reform fund that paid off Clinton's loan, Smith 
     said.
       ``It was my idea,'' Smith said of the first loan. ``We 
     needed the money right quick to promote this education 
     program. I knew I could get my board to okay it.''
       Smith said the money was in no way a personal or political 
     slush fund for Clinton. ``I guarantee if he'd had one I'd 
     have known about it.''
       Smith said his bank also made a series of loans for Clinton 
     campaigns, none for more than $100,000. He said all were 
     repaid.
       Smith, who also served as Clinton's finance chairman, said 
     he does not believe any of the donations that went toward 
     repaying the campaign loans exceeded the $1,500 campaign 
     limit. Some of the donations to promote Clinton's legislative 
     agenda were higher, including one for $25,000 from a TCBY 
     executive.
       Smith remains close to the Clintons. He said he traveled to 
     Washington in March and spent the night at the White House.
       The Cherry Valley bank charged market interest rates on 
     Clinton's loans, Smith said. The Clintons didn't take any 
     deductions for interest payments on loans at Smith's bank 
     during that period, their tax records show.
       Borrowing the money personally and having someone else 
     repay the loans ``raises serious questions of taxable income 
     for the Clintons unless they have proof that all the money 
     was for the good of the state and none for themselves 
     personally,'' said a former high-ranking IRS official. Wright 
     said state law covering political loans, including those for 
     promoting legislation, permitted Clinton to use donations to 
     pay them off.
       Scott Trotter, executive director of Common Cause of 
     Arkansas, said Wright's records should be made public.
       William Bowen, former head of First Commercial Bank and a 
     former Clinton chief of staff, said he remembers contributing 
     to Clinton's efforts to improve public education in Arkansas 
     but was unaware the money was paying off a loan.
       He said the ``mechanics'' of the fund did not concern him.

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