    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book II)]
    [September 8, 1993]
    [Pages 1452-1454]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1452]]

    Remarks to General Services Administration Employees in Franconia,
    Virginia
    September 8, 1993

        Thank you very much. Mr. Vice President, Roger, Senator Robb and
    Congressman Moran, Congresswoman Byrne, and, most important, to all of
    you who have worked so hard here at this center to give the American
    people the Government they deserve. I want to begin by once again
    thanking the Vice President for the incredible amount of work that was
    done by the Vice President, by his staff, by hundreds and hundreds of
    volunteers, and by people like you who gave us the ideas that went into
    the National Performance Review report.
        I also want to say to all of you something that you all know,
    because you are both public employees and private citizens. If we can
    reform these procurement practices, we can probably do more there than
    in any other area of our national life in the short run to restore the
    confidence of the American people in their Government. Every taxpaying
    citizen who goes out in the summertime has bought insect repellant, and
    no rational person could possible believe that Federal employees need
    specially designed insect repellant. Everybody's bought aspirin.
    Everybody's filled out a form they wished they hadn't filled out.
    Everybody's bought things like folders and computer tapes. And at a time
    when we are now 20 years, 20 years into a period in our history where
    most American wage earners are working longer work weeks for stagnant
    wages, it is outrageous for the Government to have rules and regulations
    which take those people's money from them and spend it on things that
    cannot be justified.
        You heard the Vice President say some of these things. But our
    Government employs 142,000 people in the procurement system alone. We
    know we have 900 detailed procurement laws, and we're going to ask the
    Congress to change a lot of that. I've asked myself many times, as I've
    heard these stories from coast to coast, how this occurred. And I think
    there are many reasons.
        I was out the other day in a particularly wrenching encounter in
    Alameda, California, at the naval station there, which is one of the
    military facilities that's going to be closed in the base closings. And
    I talked to this man who had been an enlisted person in the Navy for 19
    years, raised a family as a Navy enlisted person. He said, ``Look, I
    hope I can stay. But,'' he said, ``I'll tell you one thing. I just tried
    to buy a personal computer for our operations.'' And he said, ``Thank
    the Lord we had some sort of waiver, because,'' he said, ``under the
    rules and regulations, I was going to have to spend $4,500 on a computer
    that had half of the capacity that I got for $2,200 at the local store
    where people buy their computers.'' And he said, ``You know, if you're
    going to ask people like me to leave the armed services because we have
    to cut back the defense budget, people who are willing to serve and
    willing to put their lives on the line, it is wrong to do that and keep
    spending twice as much for computers with half the capacity.'' The
    American people know this.
        I think there are a lot of reasons why this happens over time.
    Number one, Government rule writers never made a distinction between a
    very specialized product that was made only for the Government, like a
    bomber, for example, and insect repellant. You have to have rules for
    both. Number two, the distribution system in America has changed
    dramatically so that ordinary Americans can now access economies of
    scale because of discount distribution centers for items small- and
    medium-sized. That was not true 10 years ago. Number three, there's no
    way rulemaking can keep up with technology cycles. The Vice President
    mentioned that as it relates to computers.
        And finally--and this is the most important thing of all, I think,
    because this pervades everything we're trying to do--we spend too much
    time in Government, in my judgment, trying to keep bad things from
    happening with rules and regulations that eventually prohibit sensible
    public employees from making good things happen. If you spend all your
    time trying to keep something bad from happening--[applause]--now, I
    want to make it clear what we're talking about here. I'm not talking
    about a system with no accountability. I'm not talking about what
    happens when we change all the financial rules affecting S&L's and then
    had no accountability,

    [[Page 1453]]

    so we got what was predictable. There was a middle ground. We didn't
    have to overregulate them to death. We don't want to overlearn the
    lessons of that. We're not talking about what happened in the scandals
    in the Housing and Urban Development Department where there was no
    oversight and accountability of what was actually being done, but that
    is different from trying to micromanage and superregulate every decision
    that you and every other public employee makes before he or she makes
    it.
        And one of the things that I hope very much that the Vice President
    and I will be able to communicate through the national media to the
    American people is that we're going to have to give our public employees
    some more elbow room to make sensible decisions to save people money and
    yet hold them accountable so that if errors are made, they're pointed
    out; if somebody does something dishonest, it's found out. But we are
    now paying far more for the system of protecting ourselves from things
    than we ever would by the occasional mistake that will be made by an
    honest, creative public employee.
        There are all kinds of accountability systems that can be built in
    out there that still don't strangle people when they go to work every
    day. That is what we are committed to. I think it will make it more fun
    to work for the Federal Government. I think it will be more exciting for
    people to get up and go to work every day knowing that they have the
    capacity to treat the dollars within their control, given to them by
    hardworking taxpayers, the same way the taxpayers would their own money
    in their own purchases in their own homes and businesses. That is our
    objective, and we are determined to achieve it.
        The other thing I want to say to you is that this rulemaking problem
    is not just a problem in procurement. For example, you know that
    diabetics can have trouble with circulation and sometimes that can
    result in an amputation of the limb. It's shocking, but a veteran with
    diabetes in some cases can't qualify for a special shoe that would help
    the circulation and maybe even save his foot from an amputation, but he
    would qualify for an artificial limb and, by the way, the cost of the
    surgery. Now, which costs more? What makes more sense? Nobody ever did
    this on purpose. But the failure to analyze this, the fact that our
    Government has basically been unexamined for so long, has led to
    thousands and thousands of examples which cannot be defended. We just
    want to make sense out of this. We want to modernize this system so that
    you can take advantage of the best products, the best technology, the
    best pricing. We want you to be able to decide to buy Off so you won't
    go buggy when you need insect repellant. [Laughter]
        I also want to say that I'm very grateful to those of you who helped
    us get this far, and I'd like to ask you to help us one more step. In
    the appropriate way, Mr. Johnson will be testifying before committees of
    Congress. But I think, as citizens, anything any of you can do, just
    write and say, ``Look, this is our life. We know how this works. And we
    want to change it. And we can be trusted to make a lot of these
    decisions. And there are also easily establishable accountability
    systems so that if we make a mistake it can be corrected.''
        When I was in the campaign last year, I often quoted a line my wife
    read to me from a psychology book, which is that insanity was doing the
    same thing over and over and over again and expecting a different
    result. [Laughter] Well, we're trying to stop doing the same thing over
    and over again. We believe we can do better by our people. We believe we
    can do better by our public employees. Our responsibility, I know, is to
    take the knowledge that you have given to the Vice President and to the
    National Performance Review and change the way Government works. In the
    process, change the way we spend the taxpayers' money and change the way
    we impact on people.
        I will end where I began. The central tenet of every democracy in
    the end is trust. It's trust. When people elect Members of Congress and
    Presidents and empower them to establish institutions like the GSA, what
    they are basically saying is, ``There is no way in the world I can do
    all this for myself, and I certainly can't make all these decisions. So
    just for the privilege of having a check at election time, I trust you
    to make these decisions in the meanwhile.''
        That's what this is all about. And I've said more and more, we have
    all kinds of deficits in our country. We've got a budget deficit; we've
    got an investment deficit; we have a performance deficit, and that has
    led to a trust deficit. The profound sense of alienation so many people
    feel in our country has got to be healed, because we've got to do a lot
    of things to get America into the 21st century, to restore a sense of
    opportunity, to be able to create jobs, and

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    to be able to support incomes again that justify the hard work people
    do. And that no society will be able to do it unless there is a real
    partnership between Government and people in their private lives. And a
    partnership, whether it's a marriage, a business, or a Government-
    private partnership, requires trust.
        So in the end, this is about more than dollars, it's about more than
    the pain of filling out those forms. It's even about more than making
    you happier and more productive on the job. It is about whether together
    we can restore the trust of the American people in their Government so
    that we can move on to these large tasks that we have to embrace to make
    the changes that are going on in the world friendly rather than
    dangerous for the American people.
        I do not think you can underestimate the importance of the work that
    you and I are engaged in. Because if we can reestablish that trust, we
    can regenerate opportunity, we can restore a sense of community in this
    country, we can make other people willing to take responsibility for
    their own actions because we are doing it, and we are setting an
    example. This is a big, big thing. We must do it together. And I thank
    you for your contribution to this important effort.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at approximately 9:30 a.m. at the GSA
    Franconia Distribution Center. In his remarks, he referred to Roger W.
    Johnson, Administrator, General Services Administration.