[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.

[[Page 1746]]

    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.