[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.