    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [September 14, 1994]
    [Pages 1543-1546]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on the Reinventing Government Initiative
    September 14, 1994

        Thank you. You know, when the Vice President opened this occasion by
    saying that he would have to wear his full body suit for 2 years and
    that the Speaker of the House had been restored to full powers after his
    surgery came out all right, I couldn't help thinking, it took
    reinventing Government to get him on David Letterman--[laughter]--and
    now this terrible accident--but he's actually become the funniest person
    in the administration as a result of these two projects.
        There is no effort that he has spared to promote this project. You
    remember he even went on the Letterman show to smash an ashtray. And he
    has now been invited, as part of our followup to show we're making
    progress, to go on the show again, where he will read a top five list;
    showing that we can do more with less, he will make each one of them
    twice as funny as any top 10 list that was there. [Laughter]
        I want to thank Dr. Mendoza, Mr. Torno, Ms. Holstein for traveling
    here to tell your stories. For all the facts and figures and charts
    about the success of reinventing Government, the thing that really
    counts is that the benefits are being felt the way they ought to be by
    the American people, in a very personal and immediate way. And of
    course, we hope as a result of this occasion today and the followup
    report, that the rest of the American people will see that we are
    changing the way the Federal Government works.
        I want to thank the successful teams who made these particular
    stories possible: Erskine Bowles and the ``Low Doc'' team from the Small
    Business Administration who cut a 100-page application down to one page;
    Customs Commissioner George Weise, the Assistant Commissioner Samuel
    Banks, and Lynn Gordon for their team in the Miami office, who realized
    that becoming partners with airlines and shippers is a win-win
    situation; my old friend James Lee

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    Witt and Bea Gonzales and the team that completely reorganized FEMA so
    that all its resources are available to respond to any emergency.
        When I took office, the National Academy of Public Administration
    said this about FEMA: ``FEMA is like a patient in triage. The President
    and the Congress must decide whether to treat it or let it die.'' There
    was even a bill pending in Congress to abolish FEMA. And in 1992, as I
    traveled the country, I never went a place that somebody didn't say
    something disparaging about it. Well, the bill is gone, and it may be
    the most popular agency in the entire Federal Government.
        There's nothing that makes an ordinary taxpayer madder than to feel
    that those of us who work for the Government don't value their hard-
    earned dollars. One single, simple example of the waste of taxpayers'
    money can erase in the public mind thousands and thousands and thousands
    of examples of devoted service to the same taxpayers. That's especially
    true in these perplexing times when people have such conflicting
    feelings. We're going through a period of profound change. And by large
    margins, Americans say they want Government to address our great
    national problems. But by equally large margins, they say they don't
    trust our ability to do it right, or as we say down home, most of our
    folks think that the Government would mess up a two-car parade.
    [Laughter]
        Now, this reinventing Government effort grew out of several sources:
    first, out of my experience as a Governor, where we tried to begin this
    effort; second, out of the encounters that the Vice President and I had
    with each other and with citizens all during the campaign, with the
    literature we read and the things we learned that were going on in the
    private sector; thirdly, with the enormous energy and desire we got out
    of Federal employees themselves; next, with the leadership that was
    already coming out of the Congress--Senator Glenn and Congressman
    Conyers have already been acknowledged, and there were others who really
    thought that we ought to do it.
        But finally we did it because it was necessary, because without it
    we could not fulfill the mission of the administration. The mission of
    this administration from day one has been to increase economic
    opportunity and maintain national security; to empower the individuals
    of this country to assume personal responsibility for their own futures;
    to strengthen the sense of community in America, to make our diversity a
    cause of celebration and unity, not division; and to change the way
    Government works for ordinary citizens.
        Unless we can do the last thing, we cannot achieve the other three.
    Why is that? Well, one of the reasons we have so much economic
    opportunity today is that we reduced the budget deficit. You couldn't
    reduce the budget deficit and not hurt the public interest unless you're
    reinventing Government.
        We want to empower individuals. One of the things that we did with
    our empowerment program is, through the Department of Education, to
    completely reform the college loan program so that 20 million Americans
    now with outstanding loans are eligible to refinance them with longer
    repayment schedules at lower interest rates. And starting this year,
    large numbers of new students will be able to do the same thing. We
    couldn't afford to do that except we actually save money by doing it, by
    converting the old expensive, cumbersome student loan program into, at
    least largely, a direct loan program and increasing our ability to
    recover delinquent loans, which is dramatically increasing.
        If you want to strengthen the American community, people have to
    feel like we care about each other. If every place there is a disaster
    people think that FEMA has failed them, it's hard to say they're part of
    an American community. But from the people in California who suffered
    from the earthquakes and the fires, the people all up and down the
    Mississippi River that were flooded out last summer, to the people in
    the Southeast that suffered drought last year and floods this year, I
    think they will tell you that FEMA is on the job.
        Yesterday the Vice President mentioned national service. It is not a
    Government bureaucracy; it is a movement that the Government has made
    possible. None of this would have happened if we hadn't had a serious
    approach to reinventing Government. And none of that would have happened
    if we hadn't reinvented the relationship between the President and the
    Vice President.
        Some people take it as a sign of weakness that I try to get the most
    out of everybody that lives around here or works around here--
    [laughter]--and that I try to find people who do things better than I
    do. I thought that was my job. The Vice President--whether it is lead-

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    ing our efforts in the environment to develop a clean car or performing
    with such superb leadership to get a compromise at the very important
    Cairo conference, dealing with reinventing Government or difficult
    foreign policy issues--is plainly the most active, productive,
    constructive Vice President in the history of this Republic. And that is
    a very important thing.
        Historically, this argument about Government that politicians had
    was something designed to play into that feeling I just gave you when
    you all chuckled, when I said most folks think Government would mess up
    a one-car parade. For example, when we had meetings on our health care
    reform initiative, people would come in opposition, and they would say,
    ``I don't want Government getting into this. I'm afraid Government will
    mess up my Medicare.'' [Laughter] We actually had people say this sort
    of visceral thing. So any politician worth a flip can figure out how to
    develop four or five one-liners that will make 90 percent of the voters
    shout hallelujah.
        The problem is that this debate has normally stopped at the
    rhetorical level. Politicians garner the votes; Government grows in a
    sort of piecemeal fashion; Government employees and the citizens get
    more frustrated every year, and real problems aren't solved. We had an
    idea that we could make Government smaller, but also different: that we
    could do more and cost less, that we could have more responsibility with
    less bureaucracy if we empowered the people who work for this Government
    and paid attention to the people who pay for it. We didn't see
    Government as the savior of America, but we knew our Government couldn't
    sit on the sidelines in a period of such profound change. So we tried to
    develop a partnership that makes sense.
        This vision is at the heart of everything we're trying to do. It's
    at the heart of the national service program. It's at the heart of the
    crime bill that we signed yesterday where we made a pretty good swap: We
    would take all the savings from reducing the size of the Federal
    Government and just give it to the American people to make themselves
    safer on their streets, in their homes, in their schools.
        This has been a very important endeavor. A lot of people were very
    skeptical when we began. But if you just look at what's happened in the
    time we've been in office, as evidenced by those charts over there,
    since I became President, the size of the Federal work force has been
    reduced by 71,000 positions. In 3 years we'll have the smallest Federal
    work force since President Kennedy was here, to go with 3 years of
    deficit reduction in a row for the first time since President Truman was
    here.
        The savings already enacted by Congress or undertaken by the
    executive branch will amount to $47 billion in this budget cycle, and
    we're on the way to saving $108 billion. Most of these savings will pay
    for the crime bill and help to put 100,000 more police officers on the
    street, 100,000 serious criminals behind bars. There were those who said
    that these things would never pass through the Congress. But Congress
    has already enacted more than 20 bills that will save money and improve
    services by reinventing Government, and 50 percent of the items needing
    congressional action are already pending in Congress, many with real
    bipartisan support.
        I'm proud to announce some more good news today. At the General
    Services Administration, Administrator Johnson saved $1.2 billion by
    carefully reviewing construction projects that had been approved and not
    yet built, in other words, buildings we really didn't need. And just
    today, the GSA is announcing it saved $23 million simply by managing the
    Government's motor pools more efficiently.
        Today the Secretary of Defense set a goal to cut in half the time it
    takes to complete internal business processes, from hiring workers to
    building new weapons systems. This is very important. Senator Glenn has
    worked for years on procurement reform. If we are going to maintain the
    national security at a time when we have to impose budget discipline, we
    must find ways to make these dollars go further. We can't simply abandon
    our technological lead, our readiness, our preparedness, all the things
    that have been so carefully built up over the last 16 or 17 years.
        At the Office of Management and Budget, Director-designate Rivlin
    tells me the Federal Government will offer buyouts to another 40,000
    employees at the beginning of the new fiscal year next month. And next
    Tuesday the Vice President and I will release a report on the first-ever
    consumer service standards for the Federal Government. Over 100 agencies
    have prepared more than 1,700 specific pledges to the taxpayers of this
    country to improve the services that they provide.

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        I am more convinced now than ever that we have to keep doing this,
    that we have to make this reinventing Government a permanent process,
    and that there are serious structural issues which still have to be
    addressed. Washington needs to work for ordinary middle class Americans.
    And in order to do that, we have got to find a way to open this process
    up so that the public interest can always overwhelm particular interest
    in matters of great importance.
        That's why Congress must also finish the job it has begun, passing a
    tough campaign finance reform bill, a lobbying reform bill, and the bill
    that requires Congress to live under the laws it imposes on the rest of
    Americans, before the end of this session. All three of these actions
    have broad bipartisan support in both Houses. Two of the bills have
    passed both Houses and await conference resolution. The House of
    Representatives has overwhelmingly passed the third one. We need to move
    forward. These are actions that Americans deserve and demand, and they
    will help them to believe that the rest of these things are also
    occurring, as well.
        Meanwhile, I assure you that we will be unrelenting in our efforts
    to continue reinventing Government, to give you a Government that costs
    less, does more, empowers employees, and listens to the people who pay
    for it. We will measure our progress not only in terms of bills passed
    and money saved but in terms of people better served. You met some of
    those satisfied citizens today. We're committed to making a lot more
    satisfied citizens in the months and years to come.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at approximately 10:45 a.m. on the South Lawn
    at the White House. In his remarks, he referred to Emilio Mendoza,
    president/CEO, Galactic Technologies, Inc., San Antonio, TX; Art Torno,
    managing director, American Airlines, Miami, FL; Alameda Holstein,
    disaster victim, East Northridge, CA; and Beatrice Gonzales, FEMA
    disaster assistance employee praised by Ms. Holstein for her help.