    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [January 22, 1993]
    [Page 6]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Cabinet Meeting
    January 22, 1993

        I'd like to open our first meeting with a brief prayer.
        Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the unique opportunity which
    has been given to us to serve our country to thy ends. Please be with us
    and guide us. Keep us humble and eager. And help us to proceed with
    wisdom. Amen.
        Well, good morning. I want to say again how very proud I am of all
    of you and how pleased I am to be off to what I think is quite a good
    start. And I think we have an enormous reservoir of good will out in the
    country and a fair amount of elbow room to face the issues that are
    before us. In the next several days we will have to make a lot of tough
    economic decisions that some of you have been more involved in than
    others--that everybody will be involved in.
        This should be a fairly good meeting today. I just wanted to make a
    few remarks and then introduce Mack McLarty and let him talk a little
    bit. First of all, we're going to have this Cabinet retreat, as you
    know, in a few days. And some of the issues that we might ordinarily
    hash out here over an hour or two I think would be better put off until
    that retreat. If I might begin with sort of a major substantive
    decision. I basically very much believe in teamwork. And I think that
    over time you make better decisions if you get good input from a
    reasonable number of people who have different perspectives. Therefore,
    for example, when I was Governor, I didn't have a lot of Cabinet
    meetings, but I had a fair number in which people had the opportunity to
    comment on matters of public interest that were sometimes outside the
    narrow confines of what they were doing.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:08 a.m. in the Cabinet Room at the White
    House. A tape was not available for verification of the content of these
    remarks.