    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [October 13, 1994]
    [Pages 1737-1740]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on Signing the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994
    October 13, 1994

        Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, let me begin by thanking
    all of you for all your work on these projects and thanking the Members
    of Congress who are here. Let me also begin with a story that's not in
    my notes but I think is important to you to understand all this.
        When Vice President Gore and I showed up here 20 months ago, we had
    talked about a lot of things. There were even cartoons making fun of us
    for being policy wonks. I've got one in there in the White House with
    everybody falling asleep while I talked to them about more new ideas.
    [Laughter] But one of the things

    [[Page 1738]]

    that I learned as a Governor, even though we had kept our State and
    local tax burden when I was Governor in the bottom two or three in the
    country every year, I still found that there was massive frustration
    among taxpayers and among public employees with the way our government
    worked, which was much smaller than almost any other State government
    and obviously much smaller than the National Government. And we began
    this process of trying to reinvent our efforts there.
        I thought that something like this on the national scale was much
    more necessary if we were ever to make public employment rewarding, if
    we were ever to reduce defense and maintain our national strength and
    national security, if we were ever to regain the confidence and trust of
    the American taxpayers. And when I talked to the Vice President about
    it, he thought so, too. I said, ``You know, the problem with this sort
    of deal is, everybody is for it. It's a 100 to nothing deal, but nobody
    wants to take responsibility for it because it is a real pain to get it
    done.'' He was willing to take responsibility for getting it done, and
    the American people owe him a great debt of gratitude for the work that
    he has done on it.
        I kind of hate to sign this bill today. What will Jay Leno do? There
    will be no more $500 hammers, no more $600 toilet seats, no more $10
    ashtrays. Al Gore will never get on David Letterman again. [Laughter]
    It's sort of a sad moment--[laughter]--the passing of Government
    purchasing as the butt of all the jokes on the evening shows. But it is
    a very important moment for the American people who are out there
    working hard and need to keep as much of their money as they can, and if
    they give us any of it, they're entitled to know that we're spending it
    properly.
        This Government cannot ignore problems with our operations. We have
    tried to get those problems into the open and to deal with them and in
    the process to make it part of our ongoing effort to have the actions of
    our National Government mirror what should be happening in all of our
    society, decentralizing, empowering people, relying more on people who
    are closest to the action.
        We've done a lot of other things like that. I signed a bank reform
    bill the other day which will remove a billion dollars in regulatory
    compliance; the trucking deregulation bill, estimated to save $8 billion
    in compliance with Federal regulations. We built a new highway in
    California after the earthquake in less than half the time we were told
    it could be built because we just changed the rules and the incentive
    structure there. The SBA now can give you a 3-page form--or a one-page
    form for a loan instead of one that's 100 pages long, and you can get an
    answer in 3 days. This is all part of that. We've given 17 States--17
    States in 2 years, more than in the previous 12 years--permission to
    design their own welfare reform systems to move people from welfare to
    work.
        So this procurement reform legislation we are signing today is a way
    to build the confidence of the American people in Government but also
    empower the people who work for the Government to make the most of their
    jobs and make the most of taxpayers' dollars.
        This is the kind of thing I'm convinced that we'll be called upon to
    do more and more, not to do things for people but to empower people to
    do things for themselves, both within and beyond the Government. If you
    think about it, that's what the family leave law is all about. You've
    got to be a parent; you've got to be a worker; you might as well be good
    at both. That's what the family leave law is about.
        That's what the college loan law is about, where the Secretary of
    Education and Deputy Secretary of Education and others designed a way
    that actually costs the taxpayers less to figure out how to give people
    college loans at lower interest rates and longer repayment terms; 20
    million Americans already eligible to refinance their loans. We're not
    giving anybody an education; we're just making it possible for them to
    get it and make a contribution to our country.
        And that's really what this whole reinventing Government effort is
    all about. It's a big challenge. One of the reasons it's a big challenge
    is that we've committed to reduce the size of this Government by
    272,000, to its smallest size since the Kennedy administration, within a
    6-year period. That means that we have to reform all of our other
    systems. If we don't reform the procurement system, we'll have too many
    people working in procurement to ever make that reduction. If we don't
    redefine the functions of the Government, we'll never get there.
        That's why I'm so proud--and I want to say a little more in a
    minute--but I am so proud of the work that Secretary Espy has done at
    the Agriculture Department, where they have--in this Agriculture
    Department reform legisla-

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    tion that I just signed, they've reduced the number of their agencies by
    a third within the Agriculture Department; they've reduced their
    employment by 7,500; they've done a whole lot of other things that are
    profoundly important. All of this will enable us not only to downsize
    the Government, to do it without reducing the services we're giving to
    the American people.
        One of the things that I found kind of nice is--you know, it's hard
    for a fellow like me to ever find anything in print I want to hold up
    anymore--[laughter]--but the Financial World, which is not the house
    organ of this administration, has written a letter to me in their
    present issue. And it says, with regard to running the Government, ``We
    think you're making real progress. We've taken a close look at 10 of
    your major executive branch Departments and agencies to see how well
    they're managed. And we can report that most of them have improved under
    your leadership.'' Well, I appreciate that, but you guys get the credit,
    and I thank you for doing it.
        I know that a lot of Americans have heard all these stories, but in
    addition to the ones that the Vice President told on the Letterman show,
    I think it's important to realize that there were real consequences to
    some of these problems that went beyond money.
        A lot of you remember the story that Lt. Col. Brad Orton told us
    from Operation Desert Storm, when the Air Force tried to buy 6,000 of
    these high-tech, two-way radios from Motorola that were on the
    commercial market. They couldn't do it, and we were embarrassed. We had
    to go to the Japanese and ask them to buy the radios because we didn't
    have time to go through our procurement processes when we were out there
    trying to fight a war and stop a tyrant. You know, it's not as funny as
    the stories you hear, but it is terribly important.
        Well, a highly competitive company like Motorola, frankly, didn't
    have time to spend all the money and effort it would take to comply with
    the inane regulations that kept Government employees from buying these.
    One of the things that I'm really pleased about is that, Senator Glenn,
    we now have, and Congressman Conyers, a letter in our file to me from
    the president of Motorola saying that you guys did a good job on this
    procurement reform, and we can now buy all of these that we need.
    [Laughter]
        You know, one other thing I would like to say is that very often
    little things have big consequences. I was pleased to see that the Vice
    President introduced Michelle Cradduck, and you see she got a good
    little article in the local paper here today. We would like to have your
    advice about how to get this kind of press on a more regular basis. Now,
    that would be a real reinvention of Government. [Laughter]
        But you think about this. This law cuts redtape for purchases under
    $100,000, but it lets, maybe most important of all, front-line managers
    decide on purchases of less than $2,500. They can shop for the best deal
    without being bogged down in any bureaucracy. This will save--this is
    amazing--this will save, we estimate, $50 on every single purchase of
    items under $2,500. That's how much money we have been paying to comply
    with our own rules and regulations. Fifty dollars, you think about it;
    you add that up. That's a lot of children in Head Start. That's a lot of
    high school graduates going into apprenticeship programs. That's a lot
    of middle class kids getting college loans. That's a lot of money that's
    just been flushed away because we didn't change with the times. Gone are
    the days when a $4 stapler will require $50 worth of paperwork--never
    again, thanks to people like Michelle Cradduck. We thank you very much.
        Today I am signing an Executive order that will go a little beyond
    the law. It will actually give people who use these products the
    authority to make small purchases, so the managers don't have to do it
    either.
        These reforms, as I said, by illustrating this, will also strengthen
    our national security. Under the old system, defense contractors were
    virtually forced to develop practices and products unique to the
    military. The procurement process itself defied the development of
    modern technology in requiring the American industry to divide into
    defense and nondefense sectors. It meant our military paid higher
    prices, often couldn't get state-of-the-art technologies, and it meant
    also that we were dividing American industry at a time when emerging
    technologies were unifying processes across the lines of defense and
    nondefense economic sectors.
        With these reforms and the ones that Secretary Perry announced last
    June, our men and women in uniform will have the best equipment in the
    world. They will be able to operate in this post-cold-war world which,
    as we all know, is still a dangerous place. The private sectors will be
    able to provide the equipment they need, and they will be able to do it
    in a way that

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    strengthens the commercial sector as well as the defense sector instead
    of dividing them both and weakening them both. This will help us to
    compete and win in the global marketplace as we build our national
    security, not forcing company after company after company to choose
    between one or the other path. It is a very important but little noticed
    consequence of this reform.
        Let me also say that this law also builds on our commitment to small
    businesses. It allows small businesses to learn more about and bid on
    Government contracts through electronic information that works, they can
    reach through their own computers. It continues to increase purchases
    for minority-owned businesses. It sets a goal that at least 5 percent of
    the purchases will come from businesses owned by women.
        As I said earlier in reference to the Agriculture Department bill,
    there are a lot of other things which should reinforce what we're doing
    today. I signed a bill which helps HUD to improve the management of
    apartment buildings and helps the Department of Energy's laboratories to
    develop peacetime technologies. The Agriculture Department bill, as I
    said earlier, closes 1,200 unneeded offices, fights fraud and abuse in
    the crop insurance program, cuts the number of divisions in the
    Department by a third, reduces employees by 7,500. Pretty soon, we'll be
    able to move the rest of the Federal Government over to the Agriculture
    Department. [Laughter]
        I also signed before I came out here the Government Management
    Reform Act. Again, a little noticed bill, but it will be very important
    to all of you as we seek to keep this process going. It will help to
    eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse by developing reliable financial
    statements on cost and performance. Within 4 years, for the first time
    ever, believe it or not, the Government will publish, just like any good
    company would, an annual consolidated financial statement covering every
    executive branch agency. We are going to do that as well.
        There's one more step I want to take today, and this may be somewhat
    controversial, but it's important. You know, these signing ceremonies
    are fun. Everybody forgets there are a lot of hard work and tough
    tradeoffs and difficult decisions that leads to these things.
        Congress recently passed two spending bills that prevent several
    Government agencies from making the personnel cuts that must be made to
    continue reinventing Government and to finance the crime bill. Today,
    I'm asking Congress to get rid of those restrictions on our ability to
    cut back big government and to do more with less. This is a matter of
    principle as well as practice. No agency anywhere should be exempt from
    doing its job as efficiently as possible. The Federal employees don't
    want it that way. It's not fair to some and not others, and it won't
    permit our system to work as it should.
        Finally, let me say this. Most of you here care a lot about all
    this. But a lot of people don't get very excited about it, and far too
    many can't imagine that Government could ever change itself. But bit by
    bit, the things we are doing, like the thing we are doing today, we'll
    be able to prove by actions, not words, that we can use taxpayers money
    wisely and with respect, in an appropriate way. After all, the American
    people own this place. They are our employers as well as our customers.
    They deserve the same honesty and efficiency from their Government they
    demand from the private sector. They should settle for nothing less.
    With this historic law, we are taking another big step in meeting their
    expectations and in doing our duty.
        To all of you who have made this day possible, I say a profound
    thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:30 a.m. in the Rose Garden at the White
    House. In his remarks, he referred to Michelle Cradduck, contract
    specialist in the Public Health Service's Division of Acquisition
    Management. S. 1587, approved October 13, was assigned Public Law No.
    103-355. The Executive order and related memorandum on Federal
    procurement are listed in Appendix D at the end of this volume.