    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [October 13, 1994]
    [Pages 1743-1746]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Teleconference Remarks to Broadcasters Associations
    October 13, 1994

        Thank you, Marcy. Good morning to you and to the hundreds of
    distinguished members of the broadcast journalism industry gathered
    there with you. I'm honored to help kick off the very first joint
    undertaking of the Radio Television News Directors Association and the
    National Association of Broadcasters Radio.
        You know, I've talked a lot about building new partnerships all over
    America; I must say that after the last 20 months I never expected it
    would be the journalists who would be the first to take me seriously.
    But I'm glad you're leading the way.
        I've had the chance to review the ambitious agenda you've had for
    this week--discussing issues involving programming, ethics, technology,
    marketing--in one of the most dynamic industries on Earth. I applaud you
    for accepting these challenges as well as for the decades of leadership
    in your industry. I know Reed Hunt, our Chairman of the FCC, will join
    many of you soon for an in-depth discussion of these and other issues.
        I'm delighted that you're honoring Charles Kuralt with the Paul
    White Award for lifetime achievement. I've admired him for a long time.
    ``On The Road'' was a true celebration of the unsung heroes and the
    enduring values of America. I'm told he got the idea for the show one
    night when he was on a plane looking down at the lights below. He said
    he thought the following: ``There are a lot of Americans who don't live
    in cities and don't make headlines. I was interested in finding out
    about them.'' Well, for most of my life I was one of them, and I'm proud
    that Charles Kuralt found out so much about them. He taught us about the
    steadiness and the joys of daily life that are so often masked by the
    daily headlines.
        Before I get into the body of my remarks today, I'd like to give you
    an update on the situations in the Persian Gulf and Haiti. First, let me
    say how very proud I am of the men and women of our Armed Forces who are
    serving in both areas. We've asked an awful lot of them, and they're
    delivering with great skill and professionalism. They are the power
    behind our diplomacy.
        Last week, in the face of Iraq's threatening troop movements on the
    Kuwaiti border, I ordered the deployment to the Gulf of an aircraft
    carrier battle group, cruise missile ships, Marine and Army troops, and
    several hundred attack aircraft. Our policy is clear: We will not allow
    Iraq to threaten its neighbors or to intimidate the United Nations as it
    ensures that Iraq never again possesses weapons of mass destruction.
        I'm pleased to say that Iraq heard our message. Its forces have
    begun a broad retreat from the border area. Only a few Republican Guard
    units remain in southern Iraq, and they are withdrawing, too. But the
    withdrawal is not yet complete, and it's too soon to say where all the
    troops are going. So we're watching the situation very, very carefully,
    and we'll continue to deploy our forces in the Gulf until we're
    satisfied that Iraqi troops no longer pose an immediate danger to
    Kuwait.
        At the same time, Ambassador Albright has proposed a very strong
    resolution in the United Nations to prevent Iraq from threatening its
    southern neighbors now or in the future. We're working closely at the
    Security Council to win broad international support for that resolution.
        Now let me add a few words about Haiti. Our troops went there to
    keep a solemn commitment by the United States and the international
    community to restore the nation's democratically elected government and
    to help

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    bring an end to terrible human rights problems. We're keeping that
    commitment.
        I'm pleased to say that General Cedras and his closest followers
    have arrived in Panama. On Saturday, President Aristide will return home
    to resume his rightful place. Haiti's remarkable journey from fear to
    freedom continues. And given the outstanding performance of our troops
    there and in Iraq and elsewhere, we should be confident of our ability
    to rise to the new challenges we surely will be called upon to meet.
        You know, I came to Washington 20 months ago to try to really change
    this country, to change the direction in which we were going and the
    attitude we had about our present and our future. Quite simply, I wanted
    to move the country forward and bring it together so that we could
    compete and win in the 21st century and so that every one of us could
    live up to the fullest of our God-given capacities.
        In the last 20 months, we followed a disciplined strategy to try to
    create more jobs, bring the deficit down, improve education and
    training, invest in new technologies, assist the conversion from a
    defense to a commercial economy, reach out to the rest of the world and
    have more trade and more peace and security, help the American people at
    home by having the Government work for ordinary people again.
        In short, what I offered the American people was not a set of gifts
    or promises but a real challenge and the opportunity to take
    responsibility for their own lives, if we had the courage to make the
    changes on the difficult issues that we had ignored for years and years
    and years.
        I knew we were facing a big task. We'd had, after all, 30 years of
    serious social problems relating to the breakdown of communities,
    neighborhoods, families, the rise of crime and drugs and violence and
    gangs. We've had 20 years of serious economic problems for working
    people, where most hourly wage earners have had no gain in wages, even
    though the cost of living has gone up. We had 12 years of a different
    theory of how we ought to deal with these problems, the trickle-down
    Reaganomics years in which from my point of view we were making things
    worse, not better.
        Well, after 20 months, we've made a good beginning. We passed an
    economic plan that brought the deficit down at a record rate with $255
    billion of spending cuts, a tax increase in the rates on 1.2 percent of
    our people, tax breaks for 15 million working families who work for
    modest wages and raise children and shouldn't be in poverty if they're
    working. That economic plan, along with our aggressive trade strategies
    with NAFTA, GATT, and other areas, has helped to bring our economy back,
    and we've got 4.6 million more jobs now than we did 20 months ago. We've
    had more high-wage jobs come into this economy in the last year than in
    the previous 5 years combined. We've had 9 years of manufacturing job
    growth for the first time in a decade. The annual vote of international
    economists said that America is now the most productive country in the
    world for the first time since 1985. So we're making a good beginning.
        We've taken a serious stand against crime with the passage of the
    Brady bill and the crime bill which will increase police on the street
    by 20 percent, build 100,000 prison beds for serious offenders, stiffen
    punishment, ban assault weapons, and provide prevention funds to give
    our young people another chance to avoid a life of crime.
        And we've begun to make Government work for ordinary people again,
    literally to empower them to take responsibility for their own lives.
    That's what the Family and Medical Leave Act was all about. Most people
    are workers and parents; they ought to be able to succeed as both.
    That's what expanding Head Start so 200,000 more children can be
    enrolled is all about. That's what providing immunizations for 2 million
    children so that all our kids under the age of 2 will be immunized by
    1996 is all about. It's what a national network of apprenticeships for
    young people who graduate from high school and don't go to college but
    do want good jobs is all about. It's what the college loan reform is all
    about, making 20 million young Americans eligible to refinance their
    college loans at longer repayment terms and lower interest rates. And
    it's what our reinventing Government effort, spearheaded by the Vice
    President, is all about.
        We worked very hard to reduce the size of the Federal Government, to
    slash regulations, to provide more flexibility to local government. Just
    in the last few days, I signed a banking reform bill which will reduce
    compliance with Federal regulations by a billion dollars. We signed the
    trucking deregulation bill which will save another $8 billion. When
    California had its earthquake, we changed the way we rebuilt

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    roads in ways that cut the time for rebuilding the Nation's busiest
    freeway by more than half. These are the kinds of things we're trying to
    do to literally reinvent the way Government works. Today the Small
    Business Administration can give you a loan application that's only one
    page long, and you can get an answer, yes or no, within 3 days.
        One of the most important things we've had to do is to face the
    mind-boggling difficulty of procurement reform. That's what you know
    when you think about the $500 coffee pot bought by the Pentagon or the
    $4 stapler that costs $50 in paperwork to procure. The bureaucracy that
    was supposed to shrink in the last decade instead grew like Godzilla.
    Eliminating these kinds of abuses and excesses has been in my plan since
    the day I came to Washington.
        You'll all remember the Vice President going on the David Letterman
    show to try to break the ashtray and show you how incredible the
    regulations were there. That's just one of thousands of examples of
    things we have to change to rebuild the confidence of the American
    taxpayers that we're spending their money wisely and also to empower
    Federal employees to give their taxpayers good value for the dollar.
        Well, today at the White House I've taken a series of very important
    steps toward that goal, and I want you to hear about them. First and
    foremost, I signed today a bill to completely restructure the way
    Government buys $200 billion worth of goods and services every year.
    It's called the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994.
        Let me try to put this again in larger context. Everything we're
    trying to do here has been about making Government work better for
    ordinary people, giving taxpayers the value they deserve, empowering
    people to live up to the fullest of their potential. We cannot do that
    until the Government spends taxpayer money wisely and responsibly. We
    have to do better. We don't have the time or the money now to waste on
    bad government. And the place to start making Government work better is
    to cut it to an effective size and at the same time to make it more
    efficient so that we can do more with less.
        The Vice President's done a very good job in leading this fight.
    We're cutting the Federal work force by 272,000 people. We've already
    reduced it by more than 70,000. And when we finish, the Federal work
    force will be smaller than at any time since President Kennedy served.
    We're taking the savings and we're giving it all back to our local
    communities to fight crime.
        We're also insisting that Government institute the same kind of
    management reforms that have made the private sector more productive and
    competitive in recent years. And I'm proud to say that's working.
    Financial World magazine just published an open letter to me in which
    they said, ``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 the 10
    agencies have improved under your stewardship.'' Now, like all change,
    this has not been easy, and a lot of times it occurs in smaller steps
    that are easy to overlook when they do occur.
        When I took office, this Government was literally riddled with rules
    and regulations that made absolutely no sense. Let me give you one
    example. In the midst of the Gulf war, our troops couldn't buy two-way
    Motorola radios they badly needed because Motorola didn't keep detailed
    enough books to meet the procurement regulations. No sensible company in
    the international marketplace would have done what it took to meet these
    regulations. So what happened? The Japanese had to buy them for us. It
    was pretty embarrassing. Today the historic law I signed will ensure
    that this never happens again. The chairman of Motorola wrote me a
    letter saying that we could buy his products now, and we'd be buying a
    lot more things at lower cost with better value.
        This law eliminates a great deal of the redtape in the Federal
    procurement system. For the first time, the Government will be able to
    shop off the shelf for the best values they can find, just like
    everybody else. In short, $500 coffeepots or $600 toilet seats, the $50
    ashtrays, all these things, as a matter of Government policy, are
    history.
        In addition, this reform will cut out the excessive need for
    separate industries, one for civilian products and one for defense
    products. That will help to diversify our economy. It will allow defense
    industries to compete and win in the global marketplace. The world is
    still a very dangerous place, and this procurement reform ensures that
    our fighting men and women will have the highest quality weapons and
    equipment they need, while encouraging the same companies to compete in
    commercial enterprises.

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        This morning I also signed two other measures to cut the size of
    Government and improve its operations. One bill reorganizes the
    Department of Agriculture. It closes or combines 1,200 unnecessary
    offices, reduces the number of divisions in the Agriculture Department
    by a third, and reduces employment by over 7,500. The Secretary of
    Agriculture and all those who worked on this deserve a lot of credit for
    this important step forward.
        The other bill requires the Government to publish a complete
    financial statement every single year for every executive branch agency.
    Believe it or not, complete consolidated financial statements weren't
    required before this.
        Finally, I'd like some help from you and others to get another
    change or two along this line. Congress has just passed two spending
    bills that protect several agencies from the personnel cuts that have to
    be made in order for us to meet the reinventing Government target of
    270,000 and to fund the crime bill. So today I'm asking that Congress
    get rid of these restrictions on our ability to cut back big Government.
    This is a matter of principle. No agency anywhere should be exempt from
    doing its job as efficiently as possible.
        The American people deserve a Government that works. For most
    Americans, good Government means a timely Social Security check or
    better police protection or a tax burden that doesn't suffocate them.
    Democracy means little to them if it can't meet these basic needs except
    with a Government that costs too much or is too big or too slow or too
    unresponsive. We can, we must do better, and we are doing better. It's a
    part of bringing America back, restoring economic growth, making a
    serious assault on crime, making Government work for ordinary people
    again, having a Government that does more with less.
        I'd like to close on this note. More than 30 years ago, President
    Kennedy addressed the members of the Radio TV News Directors
    Association. About that time, he said this about the press: ``Even
    though we never like it and even though we wish they didn't write it and
    even though we disapprove of it, there isn't any doubt at all that we
    could not do the job in a free society without a very, very active
    press.'' The fundamental truth is that for all the profound changes that
    have taken place in world affairs, technology, and markets, his words
    are still as accurate as they were on the day he said them.
        Every day, the national dialog that helps to sustain our freedoms is
    begun by you. Every day I have the opportunity to discuss the work we're
    doing directly with the people we're doing it for because of you. We
    share fundamental ideals for a free and open society where all can reach
    their God-given potential and pursue the American dream.
        I wish you the best of luck this week and in the months ahead. These
    are exciting and challenging times, and I think we should enjoy them
    together. Yes, there are problems, but nothing, nothing we cannot face
    if we roll up our sleeves, pull together, and look to the future.
        Now, Marcy, I'll turn it back to you with a warm thank-you to all of
    you for the opportunity to speak with you today. Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:37 p.m. by satellite from Room 459 of
    the Old Executive Office Building to the Radio Television News Directors
    Association and the National Association of Broadcasters NAB Radio Show,
    meeting in Los Angeles, CA. In his remarks, he referred to Marcy
    Burdick, chair, Radio Television News Directors Association.