[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book II)]
[September 7, 1993]
[Pages 1444-1447]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks Announcing the Report of the National Performance Review and an 
Exchange With Reporters
September 7, 1993

    The President. Mr. Vice President and members of the Cabinet, 
distinguished guests, Mrs. Gore, Senator Gore, thank you for coming. To 
all of you from the Federal Government and from the private sector who 
worked on this report and all of you who care about seeing it 
implemented, I think we all owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the 
Vice President for the difficult and thorough work which has been done 
and for the outstanding product which has been produced. My gratitude is 
great also to the staff of the National Performance Review and to the 
employees of the Federal Government and the people in the private sector 
who helped us to do this and to the Cabinet members who have supported 
it.
    I will say I had the opportunity to read this report in draft over 
the weekend. I read it very carefully. I read some sections of it more 
than once. And if the report is any indication of where we're going, 
then the future looks bright indeed, because this is an oxymoron; this 
is a Government report that's fun to read. [Laughter] It's well written. 
It's interesting. It's compelling, and it is hopeful.
    I ran for President because I wanted to get America on the move and 
I wanted to pull our country together. And it became quickly apparent to 
me in the campaign that the feelings I had developed not only as a 
citizen but as a Governor over the previous 12 years were widely shared 
by others. It's hard for the National Government to take a leadership 
role, even a partnership role, in bringing America together and putting 
America on the move when people have no confidence in the operations of 
the Government, when they don't believe they get good value for the 
dollars they give to the Government in taxes, when they don't believe 
that they're being treated like customers, when they don't really feel 
that they are the bosses in this great democratic enterprise.
    And so, 6 months ago, I asked the Vice President to embark on a 
risky adventure, to see if we could make the Government work better and 
cost less, to serve our people better, and to, as important as anything 
else, rebuild the confidence of the American people in this great public 
enterprise.
    Our Founders clearly understood that every generation would have to 
reinvent the Government, and they knew that long before the Government 
was nearly as big or cumbersome or bureaucratic or far-reaching as it is 
today. Thomas Jefferson said, laws and institutions must go hand in hand 
with the progress of human mind as that becomes more developed, more 
enlightened, as new discoveries are made and new truths discovered and 
manners and opinions change. With the change of circumstances, 
institutions must advance also to keep pace with the time.
    That is what the Vice President and this group tried to do, to 
listen and to learn from people who best understand how to make 
Government work better. This report reflects the practical experiences 
of Federal employees whose best efforts have too often been smothered in 
redtape, business people who have streamlined their own companies, State 
and local officials who are reinventing government at the grassroots, 
and concerned citizens who deserve and demand more value for their tax 
dollars.

[[Page 1445]]

    To meet the challenges of the global economy and to better use new 
technology, our most successful companies have been through this 
process, many of them starting more than a decade ago: eliminating 
unnecessary layers of management, empowering frontline workers, becoming 
more responsive to their customers, and seeking constantly to improve 
the products they make, the services they provide, and the people they 
employ.
    Meanwhile, I have seen too little of this happen nationally. I do 
want to say that there are many reasons for this. Government, as we all 
know, has too often a monopoly on the money of the American people and 
on those who have to be its customers. Government also does not have the 
pressure from time to time to change that the private sector does, so 
that what we have today, as the Vice President said, is a lot of good 
people trapped in bad systems. We still have a Government that's largely 
organized on a top-down, bureaucratic, industrial model when we're in an 
information age. And very often, it is just easier to keep on doing what 
you have been doing.
    I want to say, though, that we not only have the models that the 
Vice President mentioned--the terrific work done in Texas by Governor 
Richards and the comptroller, John Sharp, who's here with us today; the 
work that I started when I was Governor of my State, and we had the 
first comprehensive statewide quality management program in the 
country--but also we have something else to be even more hopeful for and 
that is that in spite of all the obstacles, there are stunning examples 
of Federal employees succeeding in this environment. The thing I want to 
encourage all of you to do is to actually read this report. It's not 
very long. It is fun to read, and it will reassure you that there are 
people out here who are making productivity improvements, who are giving 
you value for dollar, who are trying to save money, and who are proving, 
most important of all, that we can do this on a sweeping basis all 
across the Government.
    Make no mistake about this: This is one report that will not gather 
dust in a warehouse. I will challenge every concerned American to read 
it. I will discuss it in great detail with the Members of the Congress. 
I will ask people to help us to pass those programs which have to be 
passed through Congress and to implement those things which must be done 
by the executive branch. This program makes sense. It's going to work. 
We're going to do it.
    There are a lot of places in this report where it says ``the 
President should,'' ``the President should,'' ``the President should.'' 
Well, let me tell you something, I've read it, and where it says ``the 
President should,'' the President will.
    You know, everybody knows that we've got a big budget deficit. Most 
of us know we, ironically, also have got an investment deficit. The two 
are not unrelated. We don't have enough money to invest in the growth of 
the economy and the development of our people because we've spent too 
much money on other things and because we have refused to change. The 
key to remedying both the budget deficit and the investment deficit is 
to overcome the performance deficit in the Federal Government. And we 
intend to make a beginning on that.
    There's no reason that we can't have a post office where you always 
get served within 5 minutes of the time you walk up to the counter; why 
you can't have an IRS that always gives you the right answer and takes 
your phone call; why you can't have a Government that pays no more for a 
hammer or a pair of pliers, or more importantly, for a personal computer 
than you'd pay at a local commercial outlet.
    The Vice President and I are going to work with the Cabinet to find 
ways to make the Government more responsive and to implement this 
report. We're going to rely on the innovations of our leaders in the 
Cabinet. For example, under Secretary Cisneros' leadership, the 
Department of Housing and Urban Development is finding new ways to 
empower citizens not to expand bureaucracy. The Department is determined 
to eliminate 75 different rules and statutes that make it more difficult 
to build housing and to redevelop communities and determined to do more 
to help people who live in public housing have control over their own 
destinies instead of being controlled by mindless rules and regulations 
and decisions made by people an awful long way from where they live.
    We have other community initiatives that we are supporting for 
States and cities and towns: community policing, citizens patrols, and 
other special programs to keep young people out of trouble. All those 
things have to spring up from the local level, and there shouldn't be 
Federal rules and regulations getting in the way. States and cities and 
towns applying for funds for community development and assistance to the 
home-


[[Page 1446]]

less will be required now to submit only one application and one report, 
not the seven that have been required.
    Under the Attorney General's leadership, the Justice Department is 
finding new ways to collect more than $14 billion that delinquent 
debtors owe the Government. Those who are able to pay, should. About 20 
percent of the money owed the Federal Government today is delinquent. 
It's time we collected on the bills.
    Under Secretary Bob Reich's leadership, the Labor Department will 
offer one-stop career service centers to help their customers make 
better use of the presently bewildering array of 150 different 
employment and training programs. There is a gripping story in this 
report of someone who lost their job in a company because of global 
competition, then got hired again by the same company and lost this job 
a second time because of cutbacks in the defense budget. If the person 
had quit the first time, they could have gotten job training under the 
Trade Adjustment Assistance Act, but because they quit and went back to 
work, which was the right thing to do, and lost their jobs a second time 
before there was a defense conversion plan in place to train people who 
lost their jobs--the second time, the same guy couldn't get any job 
training.
    I could give you lots of examples of that. We are going to fix that. 
We're going to put these programs together and recognize that all 
Americans need job training. The Labor Department ought to provide it. 
Instead of providing people to push papers around to figure out how to 
keep people out of 150 different programs, there ought to be one that 
all Americans can participate in.
    Under Secretary Mike Espy's leadership, the Agriculture Department 
is concentrating on six key functions: commodity programs, rural 
development, nutrition, conservation, food quality, and research. This 
will allow the Agriculture Department to consolidate from 42 to 30 
Agencies and cut administrative costs by more than $200 million a year.
    This just isn't about changing our Government; it's about changing 
our country. We reinvent the Government. We're doing something that is 
essential to reviving our economy, restoring our confidence in 
Government, and therefore, permitting us once again to be one American 
community.
    Last month, we passed an important milepost when Congress passed the 
economic plan that will begin to pay down an enormous deficit we 
inherited, cut wasteful spending, and make investments we need in our 
people, our jobs, our educational and technological future.
    In the weeks ahead, we have other challenges to face from reforming 
our health care system to provide security for every family, to opening 
new markets for our products and services abroad so that we can start 
creating jobs again. But to accomplish any of these goals, we have to 
revolutionize the Government itself so that the American people trust 
the decisions that are made and trust us to do the work that Government 
has to do. The entire agenda of change depends upon our ability to 
change the way we do our own business with the people's money. That is 
the only way we can restore the faith of our citizens. An effective 
Government can offer people opportunities they need to take greater 
responsibilities for their own lives and to rebuild their families, 
their communities, and our beloved country.
    We ask the support of Americans from every walk of life, from every 
party, from every region. The Government is broken, and we intend to fix 
it. But we can't do it unless we all understand that this isn't a 
Democratic goal or a Republican goal. This is an American imperative, 
and we all need to be a part of it.
    I look forward to the day when every American can cite some example 
that he or she has personally experienced in this revolution in the way 
Government works, a program that is paid for not by stopping something 
worthy or raising new money or increasing the deficit but by stopping 
something that didn't need to be done anymore. I look forward to a day 
when you call the IRS and ask a question, and they give you an answer, 
and you know it's the right one; when you ask your children what they 
think about the Government and they can all cite something the 
Government has done to make their lives better and done in a good and 
efficient way.
    If that happens, we'll all be in debt for a long time to the Vice 
President and his staff and to all the others who participated in this 
report. I think they did a great job. Now it's time for the rest of us 
to do a great job and implement the recommendations so that we can 
change the way the American people feel about their Government and 
change the role that the Government plays in our lives for the better.

[[Page 1447]]

    Thank you very much. God bless you.
    Q. Mr. President, why do you think this is going to be any more 
successful than other attempts that have been made in the past and 
failed?
    The President. I think there are two or three reasons. First of all, 
frankly, this is a better report. It's not just a report in which one 
group of Americans tells another group of Americans, ``Here are big 
things we don't need to do anymore. Let's just stop doing.'' This is a 
report which says, ``The whole way the Government operates is 
incompatible with the world in which we're living, and we can change 
it.''
    I think if you read it, this is qualitatively different from past 
reports. This is a real generational change in the attitude about what 
should be done in Government and how it should work. So I think that 
will make a big difference.
    Secondly, I think there is more public support for this than there 
has been in the past that runs across all partisan lines, Republicans, 
Democrats, independents.
    And thirdly, there is a President here who will do more than talk 
about it. I intend to do what I can to implement it. I've asked the Vice 
President to give me a set of recommendations, starting immediately 
about which things we can change by Executive order, which things we 
need to go to Congress with, and how we're going to go to Congress with 
these recommendations and push them through. So it's a very different 
thing.
    Finally, I think there's a lot more support in the Congress than 
there has been in the past. I think a lot of people in the Congress now 
realize that if we're going to close the investment deficit, if we're 
going to close the budget deficit, we've got to close the performance 
deficit in Government, that it just doesn't work. And the harder they 
work--and let me just say this: The Congress, for example, has spent 
about 40 percent more time on the job this year than they did last year. 
But you can work hard and hard and hard, and if the American people 
don't have confidence in the ultimate enterprise, it's still hard for 
the Members of Congress to get credit for the work they're doing because 
the ultimate product is not going to function very well. So I think 
those are the reasons that this won't be like past reports.
    Q. Do Members of Congress know about this yet, Mr. President, and 
what are they telling you back when you tell them about this proposal?
    The Vice President. Let me respond to that. We're getting a lot of 
tremendous support from the Congress. Let me point out that some of the 
pioneers in this effort have been in the Congress. The chairmen and 
ranking members of the two principal committees on how the Government 
operates are all very supportive.
    There will be some opposition. You know that, and we couldn't change 
what needs to be changed without running into opposition. But the ground 
has shifted. The world has changed. The American people are demanding 
that we change the way the Federal Government operates. It doesn't work 
well now. It costs too much money; it performs very poorly. We want to 
make it work better and cost less by implementing the recommendations of 
this report. We fully intend to do that.
    Q. What about--get Congress to go along with the biennial budget? 
Will you be able to get Congress to go along with the biennial budget?
    The President. I hope so. Well, in times past, over a majority of 
the Congress has supported a biennial budget. It can't be very 
satisfying for them to have to spend all their time doing that when they 
can spend more time evaluating how these programs work.
    Q. What about the unions, Mr. President?
    The Vice President. They've been very supportive. They've been very 
supportive. All three of the principal ones have endorsed it.

Note: The President spoke at approximately 10:20 a.m. on the South Lawn 
at the White House. The exchange portion of this item could not be 
verified because the tape was incomplete.