    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [July 15, 1995]
    [Pages 1097-1098]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    The President's Radio Address
    July 15, 1995

        Good morning. My job here is to make America work well for all of
    you who work hard. I ran for President to restore the American dream of
    opportunity for all, the American value of responsibility from all, and
    to bring the American people together as a community, not to permit us
    to continue to be divided and weakened. To do this we need a Government
    that empowers our people to make the most of their own lives but is
    smaller and less bureaucratic and less burdensome than it has been.
        So we've got to cut regulations that impose unnecessary redtape or
    they just plain don't make sense. And we have to change the way
    regulators regulate, if that is abusive or it doesn't make sense. But as
    we cut, we have to remember that we have a responsibility to protect our
    citizens from things that threaten their safety and their health. Those
    are goals we all support, and we can accomplish them in a reasonable,
    responsible, bipartisan way.
        Our administration is taking the lead. We've already reduced
    Government positions by 150,000, cut hundreds of Government programs,
    eliminated 16,000 pages of regulations. We've cut the Small Business
    Administration regulations by 50 percent, the Department of Education
    regulations by 40 percent, the time it takes to fill out the EPA
    regulations by 25 percent. We're changing the way we enforce the
    regulations. We want less hassle. We want more compliance and less
    citations and fines. In other words, we've got to get out the worst
    problems of big Government and still keep protecting the public health
    and safety.
        Right now, Republicans in the Congress are pushing a very different
    approach to regulation. I believe it poses a real danger to the health
    and safety of our families. They call it regulatory reform, but I don't
    think it's reform at all. It will force Government agencies to jump
    through all kinds of hoops, waste time, risk lives whenever the agency
    acts to protect people's health and safety. It will slow down, tangle
    up, and seriously hinder our ability to look out for the welfare of
    American families.
        It will create just the kind of bureaucratic burdens that
    Republicans for years have said they hate. It will be more time for
    rulemaking, more opportunities for special interests to stop the public
    interest, and many, many more lawsuits. I want a Government that's
    leaner and faster, that has a real partnership between the private
    sector and the Government. They want more bureaucracy, slower
    rulemaking, and a worsening of the adversarial relationship between
    Government and business that shifts the burden and the balance of power.
        If the Republican Congress' bill had become law years ago--listen to
    this--it would have taken longer than it did to get airbags in cars;
    schoolbuses might not have ever had to install those sideview mirrors
    that help drivers see children crossing in front. The longer we waited
    to do these things, the more lives it would have cost.
        Now, let me tell you what the world would look like in the future
    under these extreme proposals. You've probably heard about the
    cryptosporidium bacteria that contaminated

    [[Page 1098]]

    drinking water in Milwaukee. It made 400,000 people sick; it killed 100
    Americans. It will be very difficult to prevent that kind of danger from
    finding its way into our water and to control it when it does if these
    rules take effect.
        If the new system Congress proposes takes effect it will take much
    longer to impose new safety standards to prevent commuter airline
    crashes, like the five that happened last year. We've proposed standards
    in that area, and they're being resisted. And it will be far less
    certain that we can use microscopes to examine meat and stop
    contaminated meat from being sold.
        You may think that's amazing, but listen to this story. If we lived
    in a world like the one Congress is suggesting, there would be more
    tragedies like what happened to Eric Mueller. In 1993, Eric was a 13-
    year-old young man in California, the president of his class, the
    captain of his soccer team, an honor student. One day, like millions of
    other kids, he ordered a hamburger at a fast food restaurant. But he
    died a few days later because he was poisoned by an invisible bacteria,
    E. coli, that contaminated the hamburger. Dozens of others also died.
    And just last week, five more people in Tennessee, including an 11-year-
    old boy, got sick again because of E. coli.
        How did this happen? Because the Federal Government has been
    inspecting meat the same old way since the turn of the century. Believe
    it or not, inspectors basically use the same methods to inspect meat
    that dogs use. They touch it and smell it to see if it's safe, instead
    of using microscopes and high technology. That's crazy, and for the last
    2 years we have been working hard to change that, to reform the meat
    inspection rules so that Americans can be confident they're protected.
        And believe it or not, while we're working to bring meat inspection
    into the 20th century, some special interests are trying to stop it, in
    spite of the fact that people have died from E. coli, and this Congress
    is willing to help them. We're trying to make our drinking water
    cleaner, but this Congress is willing to adopt a regulatory system that
    would let polluters delay and sometimes even control the rules that
    affect them.
        In the last 6 months, we've seen these so-called regulatory reform
    bills actually being written by lobbyists for the regulated industries.
    The Congress even brought the lobbyists into the hearings to explain
    what the bills did. After all, they had to; the lobbyists had written
    the bills. I don't think that's right. I know it's not in the best
    interest of the American people, and it ought to be stopped.
        No one has done more than our administration to streamline and
    reform a regulatory system. You'll never catch me defending a dumb
    regulation or an abusive Government regulator. The 16,000 pages of
    Federal regulations we have cut are enough to stretch 5 miles. We say to
    small business, if you have a problem and you fix it, you can forget the
    fine.
        I want to sign a real regulatory reform bill. And there is a good
    alternative sponsored by Senator Glenn and Senator Chafee. It provides a
    good starting point and--listen to this--it includes a 45-day waiting
    period in which Congress can review and reject any Government regulation
    that doesn't make sense. Now, isn't that a lot better than letting the
    interest groups actually delay these regulations forever, even though we
    need them for our health and safety?
        I want Democrats and Republicans in Congress to show the American
    people that we can reform without rolling back. We can cut redtape,
    reduce paperwork, make life easier for business without endangering our
    families or our workers. We do have a responsibility to cut regulation,
    but we also have a responsibility to protect our families and our
    future. We can and must do both.
        Thanks for listening.

    Note: The address was recorded at 3:24 p.m. on July 14 in the Roosevelt
    Room at the White House for broadcast at 10:06 a.m. on July 15.