    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [February 3, 1993]
    [Pages 37-40]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to Office of Management and Budget Employees
    February 3, 1993

        Thank you very much, Mr. Vice President. Mr. Panetta, Ms. Rivlin,
    ladies and gentlemen. I'm really sorry to know that the Vice President
    has a lavish office in this building. If it gets any hotter over at the
    White House he may want to occupy it. [Laughter]
        I want to tell you how very proud I am to be here today, how
    grateful I am for the enormous amount of work I know all of you have
    been doing because of the tight timetables we have set on ourselves
    leading up to the February 17th address to Congress. Nobody in this
    country is working any harder than you are to give the promises I made
    to the American people a chance to take life. And I just wanted to come
    by here today and say a simple thank you.
        For years politicians have run for President and Governor and other
    offices by running against the Government. And to be sure, there is a
    lot to run against; there is a lot which needs to be changed. There are
    people here in this room today that know more specifically about what
    needs to be changed than those of us who give speeches about it. But I
    think it is terribly important, in the midst of all that rhetoric, not
    to forget that behind that Government that needs to be changed there are
    people who have decided to give their lives to the interest of the
    United States and its citizens. And they deserve to be honored. And I do
    appreciate that.
        I wanted to tell you today a little bit about why I think I got
    elected to this job and what I hope, together, we can do, and most
    importantly, what's behind the enormous and increasingly complex
    challenges facing this country.
        Let me begin by relating a simple experience I had a few months ago
    which affected me deeply, involving a man named Benjamin Edwards, a 52-
    year-old man who lived in Philadelphia. The night of the first
    Presidential debate, he had a viewing party at his house, but it was a
    highly unusual viewing party. He was out of work, and his electricity
    had been turned off because he couldn't pay the bills. So his neighbors
    brought over television sets and lamps and ran extension cords from a
    nearby apartment because that's the only way they could watch it. About
    100 of them did. And the next day Benjamin Edwards took a bus 15 miles
    to attend one of our campaign rallies. As I came down the line, he
    grabbed my hand and told me to win the election because he had to have a
    job. I told him that if I won the election I'd try to get him a job.
    Well, he's got a job now because he became somewhat famous as a result
    of this incident. [Laughter]
        But there are millions and millions of other Americans who still
    don't. I read an article yesterday in the paper about another unemployed
    person who had voted for me who had only gotten a form response from the
    White House. And I told somebody today to pick up the phone and call him
    and talk to him and try to make him feel connected to his Government
    again.
        I say this to reiterate something that I think most of you already
    know, but it's easy to forget here working in the splendid isolation of
    the Capital City. Budgets are not about numbers; they're about people.
    They mean jobs and health care, education or training. We can't ever
    afford

    [[Page 38]]

    to let our people get lost in a blizzard of statistics.
        Since the election we've learned even more about the difficulty of
    the budgets and the difficulty of putting together an economic program
    that puts people to work in the short run and deals with the long-term
    problems of this economy.
        Just today we got the news about the economic indicators for the
    month of December being the best in 10 years and yet the disturbing
    prospect that a lot of new jobs are not being created. How could this be
    so? Well, partly because there's been no inflation in the economy and
    interest rates have been down for some while; people are now beginning
    to refinance their home, debts, or buy and sell new homes, so that
    generates a lot of economic activity. And partly because we have an
    inordinate number of companies in our free enterprise system who have
    gotten more and more productive and therefore earning more money. The
    problem is that a lot of them are doing what we need to do, which is to
    gradually downsize. A lot of them are not hiring new people, even though
    their incomes are going way up.
        Now, during the eighties that happened to the Fortune 500 companies,
    which reduced employment by over a couple hundred thousand a year all
    during the eighties. But all those jobs were made up for in the eighties
    by small businesses hiring new people. And yet, now small business
    hiring is dropping, too, as small businesses are loathe to hire new
    people because they can't afford to pay for health care or because they
    can't get credit from their local banks.
        So we have this anomalous situation where the economy seems to be
    growing but employment is not, and where more and more middle-income
    workers are working harder and harder every year but their wages aren't
    keeping up with inflation, and the costs of health care and education
    are outstripping inflation.
        So we have this perplexing dilemma. How can we build on what the
    free enterprise system is doing that is good, get small business growth
    going again, and increase investment so that we generate more high-wage
    jobs, so that the economy can grow, not just in the overall statistics
    but in the real lives of real people? That's important to you, not only
    because of your mission at OMB but because how you do is a reflection of
    how the taxpayers do, since they pay your bill.
        So you have an immediate as well as a long-range interest in the
    success of what is our economic commitment: to do something which the
    American people have never before had to do, to increase investment and
    bring down the deficit at the same time. That is our challenge.
        And on February 17 we're going to start anew in an effort to meet
    that challenge. We've got to turn this country around to build a long-
    term stable growth of jobs and income. We cannot go 10 more years with
    insufficient jobs and insufficient income growth for people who are
    working hard, playing by the rules, willing to become educated and
    trained in ever-new skills, meeting ever-new challenges.
        That is our challenge. And we are doing our best to meet it. Since
    no one has ever tried to do both these things at once, to get the job
    base going, which we want to do with a modest stimulus program in the
    beginning, increase permanently investment in people and jobs and
    growth, and reduce the deficit, it is not always clear exactly what
    specific decisions we must make. But the general path we have to follow
    is clear, because if we don't do something about investment, we won't
    have the kind of high-wage jobs that will shape a good future for
    ourselves and our children. If we don't do something about the deficit,
    it will eventually overwhelm our ability to borrow money at affordable
    rates and to have any money left in the public purse to take care of
    people in need and to invest in our future.
        So we have no choice but to embark on this course, but it is an
    uncharted course. No one has ever tried to do both things at the same
    time before. President Roosevelt elected to pursue investments in
    putting the American people back to work; deflation was so bad he didn't
    have to worry about the deficit. And before he had to deal with it, we
    were in a world war with full production and a massive deficit that then
    dropped dramatically as a percentage of our income for the next 35 years
    for the simple reason that we were growing so fast we didn't have to
    worry about it. Now we need a new commitment to investment, but we
    cannot ignore our debt.
        We have to remember a few basic things, I think, in putting this
    program together. The first is that while every American is willing to
    make a contribution, the contribution we ask of every American must be
    viewed against what

    [[Page 39]]

    happened to them in the 1980's. In the 1980's, the middle class paid the
    bill while the wealthiest Americans enjoyed the fruits of their labors.
    Taxes went up on middle class Americans while their real incomes went
    down. Taxes went down on upper income Americans while their real incomes
    went up.
        The expansion of Government services, the expansion of all the
    public programs was basically done on the backs of the people who
    weren't having any income growth. That means before we ask them to do
    more, we have to demand that Government do everything it can to do with
    less. Before I ask working Americans to work harder and pay more, I will
    ask the economic elite, who made more money and paid less in taxes, to
    pay their fair share. We have to literally be about the business, as
    Vice President Gore said first, of reinventing Government.
        I have been very careful, I will say again, to honor the
    contribution of public employees. I know that to a major degree, I
    cannot succeed as President unless you and the people who work in all
    these other departments believe in our common mission.
        I know that for every subject I could bring up that I want do do
    something about, there are 10 employees in this city of the Federal
    Government who know more about the details of what ought to be done than
    I do. I need your ideas and your energy. When I say we're going to
    reinvent Government, we're going to downsize some things; we're going to
    stop doing other things. We're going to do it in a way that lifts up the
    influence, the energy, and values the ideas of our best employees, not
    that grinds them down or uses them as political footballs. I have no
    interest in doing that to you or to anybody else. I think the American
    people know you want a change, too.
        But let me just give you two or three examples. When I took office,
    the Labor Department had a nice executive dining room for its Secretary
    but not enough money to train unemployed workers. I'm going to propose a
    stimulus package that has some more money to train unemployed workers,
    and the Secretary of Labor is now eating in the dining room with the
    employees.
        When I took office, the White House had a telephone system that had
    been there since President Carter and a switchboard that has been there
    since the 1960's. They talk about jamming the White House switchboards--
    you can do it tomorrow if you want to; it's not hard. I could not have a
    conference call in my office on my telephone, except an unwanted one.
    Anybody in the central office could punch a lighted button and listen to
    what I had to say. [Laughter] The American people, I think, would be
    pretty surprised and disappointed that after a dozen years of people who
    promised to run the Government like a business--they meant a business in
    the 1950's, not for the 21st century. [Laughter]
        So we are committed to making the kinds of structural changes that
    every major organization in this country has had to make in order to
    survive. It is not right for us to spend taxpayers' money on antiquated
    communications systems, on unjustifiable perks, and on a system that
    cannot be, cannot be justified to the American people, given the times
    that they're having and the sacrifices we're going to ask of them.
        In the next several days, I will be finalizing and announcing plans
    which will demonstrate a substantial reduction in spending at the White
    House, reversing many years of growth in services and personnel provided
    to the President. We're going to rely more on help from people in the
    departments to run the Government and on a new partnership to move the
    country forward. And we're going to set an example by saving money for
    the taxpayers, which will then have to be followed by everybody else in
    the executive branch and I hope in the legislative branch as well.
        Second, I'm going to ask, as I said, those who made more money in
    the eighties and paid fewer taxes to pay their fair share before I ask
    anyone in the working middle class to pay more. But we have to recognize
    that together we have to find a way to change the mix of Government
    spending away from so much consumption toward more investment and, at
    the same time, to reduce the deficit so we can bring interest rates down
    and bring up long-term living standards. We have no right, frankly, to
    continue to finance a Government budget that is 20 percent debt-
    financed, and will be more debt-financed in the years ahead, and leave
    it to our children to figure out how to live with lower incomes than
    they otherwise would have. And believe me, it isn't just our children.
    We're going to be living with the consequences in the very near future.
        And I might add something that all of you who work on budgets know,
    which is that one

    [[Page 40]]

    of the huge dilemmas we face--and that can't be resolved today in this
    speech, but I just want to lay it out there--is one that all of you
    know. And that is we are spending 14 percent of our income on health
    care. No other country except Canada spends more than 9, and they're
    just a little above 9.
        And every day we read in the paper another expert, just like there's
    one today, saying, well, you certainly can't save any money on health
    care costs in this country. God forbid that you should put any of that
    in there; you can't do that. If we can't do that, we can't fix the
    deficit; we can't fix the economy; we can't turn America around. And if
    we could lower the rate of health care spending increase, we would save
    more than twice as much money in the private sector and in the public
    sector, unleashing more money for investment than anything we can do in
    terms of tax cuts, spending increases, or anything else to turn this
    economy around. So there's plenty for us to do.
        What I want you to know is that I do not believe our problems are
    insoluble. And one of my major goals is to leave the next President with
    a new set of things to worry about. [Laughter] I'm getting bored reading
    the same problems in the paper, decade after decade. I want people to
    have to deal with new problems.
        I am asking you today to do two things: First of all, to personally
    invest yourself in this great mission. It is our job in this generation
    to deal with these problems so that the American dream can endure.
    Ultimately, that is why everybody should come to work for the Federal
    Government and why everyone's job counts. And I am asking you to
    remember how terribly difficult life is for many people who pay our
    bills and pay your salary and mine.
        I got an incredibly moving call the other day from a friend of mine,
    shortly before I took office, in which he said he had just talked to a
    person who worked in his office who said that--in bad grammar but
    compelling truth--he said, ``This woman came up to me and said, `You
    know, it's scary to be a little people.' '' And it really is.
        I want to send a signal to this country that I may not do everything
    right, and I can't do everything that's just popular in the short run,
    but every day in every way we're trying to set an example for the people
    that sent us here. We don't want the people to sacrifice their income
    before the Government sacrifices everything it can. We don't want the
    people who bore the burden in the eighties to make any contributions
    before people who reaped the benefits of the eighties do their fair
    share, and that together we really believe we can make a difference. If
    you help me and we work together, I'm confident that we can.
        Thank you, and bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:02 a.m. in the New Executive Office
    Building.