    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [March 27, 1995]
    [Pages 400-402]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on the National Performance Review
    March 27, 1995

        Thank you very much. Mr. Vice President, Chairman Hundt, Secretary
    Babbitt, to Phil Lader and Dan Goldin and James Lee Witt, ladies and
    gentlemen: I'm glad to be here. I'd go nearly anywhere to get a check
    that size. [Laughter]
        And I have now--and with all of you as my witnesses--the Vice
    President publicly thanking me for asking him to take over this
    reinventing Government effort. [Laughter] That is enough to wipe away
    all the private reservations that we have had to go through over the
    last year and a half. I want to thank him and Elaine Kamarck and all the
    staff of the reinventing Government effort because they have worked so
    very hard to give our country the Government that it deserves, the
    Government for the future, one that costs less and works better and
    reflects the real values of our people.
        You know, in Washington, we're engaged today in a great debate over
    what the role of the Government here ought to be. Just about everybody
    has rejected the past view that there is a big one-size-fits-all
    Government that can solve all the big problems of America. Now the rage
    in Washington is to argue that the Government is the source of all of
    our problems and if just there simply weren't one, we'd have no
    problems. Sooner or later, the American people will come to agree, and I
    think they are quickly coming to agree, that the old one-size-fits-all
    view was wrong but the new rage of no Government is wrong as well, that
    we need a Government that can be a partner to our people, to help them
    to compete and prosper in a global economy which is changing very
    rapidly and which presents great opportunity but also real challenges as
    well.
        I believe we need a Government that shrinks bureaucracy and
    increases opportunity, one that empowers people to make the most of
    their own lives instead of pretending that they can solve people's
    problems for them, and a Government that enhances security around the
    world, but here on our streets as well. The key to our future is to,
    therefore, create more opportunity but also to have all of us, each in
    our own ways, assume more responsibility. That's what I have called the
    New Covenant. It's basically an old-fashioned social compact about
    citizenship, citizenship for the 21st century, that requires us to get
    rid of yesterday's Government and replace it with a new Government.
        A lot of the things that we have to do don't have a necessary
    partisan tinge to them, and I hope that we can keep this reinventing
    Government effort a broad-based bipartisan one. In that regard, I thank
    Congressman Boehlert for

    [[Page 401]]

    coming today, in spite of the results of the NCAA basketball tournament.
    I thank you, sir. We had a bet on the Syracuse-Arkansas game, and he
    paid his 5 dollars. And I told him that since God determined the
    outcome, he should give it to a church instead. [Laughter] But I thank
    you, sir.
        Since we have been here, we have worked very, very hard to try to
    show discipline and order and direction. We've got the deficit down by
    $600 billion. We've reduced the size of the Government. It's on its way
    to being fewer than 2 million, for the first time since President
    Kennedy was here.
        But we know we have to go beyond cutting, and even beyond
    restructuring, to literally reevaluate what we're doing. Are we doing it
    well? Should we be doing it at all? Should somebody else be doing it?
    Are we being as innovative and flexible as the most creative private
    organizations in this country? We should never, we should never be less
    creative or less entrepreneurial simply because we have a public, as
    opposed to a private, mission.
        Today we see again the good that can come when we discard the old
    ways. The FCC didn't used to have auctions. In the past, a company that
    wanted the right to broadcast on certain frequencies filled out a stack
    of Government forms, then hired lawyers and lobbyists to shepherd the
    case through the process year after year. When all was said and done,
    the company had in fact paid a lot for the privilege of broadcasting,
    but only the lawyers and the lobbyists had collected, and the Government
    simply gave away the goods. More recently, the FCC did auction off the
    broadcast rights, but they did it for free. And the winners held
    auctions and profited--pocketed the profits.
        When I say we want Government that works like the best private
    business, the first rule is, taxpayers don't want the Government to give
    any of their property away for free when it ought to be paid for. And
    last year the reinvented FCC started holding auctions of its own. We had
    hoped they'd be a success, but frankly, this $7.7 billion check for the
    American taxpayers by selling off parts of the wireless spectrum exceeds
    every expectation which was put out there, including our optimistic
    projections.
        When we said this is what we're going to do, and this is how we're
    going to help get the deficit down, a lot of my colleagues on Capitol
    Hill sort of rolled their eyes and said, ``Yeah, sure.'' Well, they were
    wrong. We didn't raise just a few billion dollars. We raised a few
    billion dollars and then a few billion dollars more from this. And I
    want to compliment all those who had anything to do with organizing and
    carrying out these auctions. I'd also like to thank those who won the
    bids--[laughter]--and those who bid them up. This money goes straight to
    reducing the deficit, and there will be more such auctions in the
    future. So Chairman Hundt, on behalf of the American taxpayers, I thank
    you for that $7.7 billion. The dividend will go a good ways toward
    paying down our Government's deficit.
        We have other things that we're working on as well. And again, I
    would say it's important not just to cut, not just to generate income
    for the American people but to do it in the right way. Yes, the United
    States Department of Agriculture must be shrunk. We think the right way
    to do it is to close agricultural field offices and to reduce subsidies
    after worldwide negotiations, not to cut school lunches. We don't need
    to take summer jobs away from young people who will be idle in some of
    the most difficult areas of our country if we take more full-time jobs
    away from Federal employees which we don't need anymore. We don't have
    to shut down national service or stop training our teachers if we trim
    the Government's overhead. We don't have to give up on making our
    children's schools safe and drug-free if we simply stop giving away
    commercial treasures, like these broadcast bands.
        We have to do a lot more. We have to do a lot more. We still have to
    continue to get the deficit down and to free up the money we need to
    invest in our people and their future. So today we're announcing further
    changes in four agencies that are here with me today that will save over
    $13 billion and enable us to reduce the number of Federal bureaucrats by
    over 5,000 more.
        At NASA, we have streamlined operations to take account of what the
    needs of today's space program are. It used to be that 42 senior
    managers supervised the space station program; NASA has reduced that
    number to 4. Now, we're going to build on this momentum by making the
    management of our most forward-looking agency our most modern as well.
        At the Small Business Administration they're closing offices all
    around the country, even as

    [[Page 402]]

    they open partnerships with banks and retired business people to work to
    help small businesses. Once, when the SBA made a loan, a public employee
    did all the paperwork. Now they're working with 7,000 banks so that they
    bear the overhead cost of making the loans. That's more money for
    private investment and fewer taxpayer costs.
        At the Department of the Interior, they're reducing the work force
    by 2,000 people and making this far-flung department work more like a
    business. We're allowing companies who have, for example, offshore oil
    leases to prepay the taxpayers. Believe it or not, a lot of them really
    want to do it. That brings in billions of dollars and means we don't
    need battalions of auditors to make sure we're getting our money's
    worth.
        As I said on many occasions, under the leadership of James Lee Witt,
    we have transformed FEMA from being a disaster into being a model
    disaster relief agency. Now we're going to build new partnerships with
    our States to reduce the Federal micromanagement and help them prepare
    for emergencies at the local level.
        All of these changes, indeed, the entire reinvention effort, has one
    overall goal: a Government that does only what it needs to do, but
    everything it must do, it does it well, efficiently, and at the lowest
    possible cost to the taxpayers.
        Just consider this fact. Today we talked about the SBA; the entire
    budget of the SBA is less than the taxes paid last year by three
    companies that got their starts with SBA loans. Listen to the three:
    Apple, Intel, and Federal Express. I think an SBA that stays in business
    and helps more people get started is in the interest of the United
    States of America.
        I should also say, as Chairman Hundt never tires of telling us, that
    there's a chart in the other room which documents the fact that these
    auctions generated more than 3 times the total budget of the Federal
    Communications Commission from its inception during the Great Depression
    to last year, which I also think is a pretty good bargain for the
    American taxpayers.
        What this should remind us of is that you can reinvent Government,
    cut costs to the taxpayers without a mean spirit or a meat ax. We can do
    this in a way that brings the American people together instead of
    divides them. We can do this in a way that lifts the incomes and the job
    prospects of the American people instead of diminishes them. We can do
    it in a way that is humane and decent to our Federal employees, too. And
    I thank the Vice President and the REGO team for their work on the
    buyout package because it was the right and fair and decent thing to do.
        We can do this, but it takes hard work. It takes a good, open mind.
    It takes consistent determination. And I hope we will continue to have
    broad, bipartisan support for the kind of thing we're celebrating today.
    If we do we're going to get rid of the deficit and build America for the
    21st century.
        Thank you very much, and bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:40 p.m. at the Old Post Office. In his
    remarks, he referred to Reed E. Hundt, Chairman, Federal Communications
    Commission, and Elaine C. Kamarck, Senior Policy Adviser to the Vice
    President.