[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

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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

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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.