[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.