[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 41 (Monday, October 17, 1994)]
[Pages 2000-2003]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on Signing the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994

October 13, 1994

    Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, let me begin by thanking 
all of you for all your work on these projects and thanking the Members 
of Congress who are here. Let me also begin with a story that's not in 
my notes but I think is important to you to understand all this.
    When Vice President Gore and I showed up here 20 months ago, we had 
talked about a lot of things. There were even cartoons making fun of us 
for being policy wonks. I've got one in there in the White House with 
everybody falling asleep while I talked to them about more new ideas. 
[Laughter] But one of the things that I learned as a Governor, even 
though we had kept our State and local tax burden when I was Governor in 
the bottom two or three in the country every year, I still found that 
there was massive frustration among taxpayers and among public employees 
with the way our government worked, which was much smaller than almost 
any other State government and, obviously, much smaller than the 
National Government. And we began this process of trying to reinvent our 
efforts there.
    I thought that something like this on the national scale was much 
more necessary if we were ever to make public employment rewarding, if 
we were ever to reduce defense and maintain our national strength and 
national security, if we were ever to regain the confidence and trust of 
the American taxpayers. And when I talked to the Vice President about 
it, he thought so, too. I said, ``You know, the problem with this sort 
of deal is, everybody is for it. It's a 100 to nothing deal, but nobody 
wants to take responsibility for it because it is a real pain to get it 
done.'' He was willing to take responsibility for getting it done, and 
the American people owe him a great debt of gratitude for the work that 
he has done on it.
    I kind of hate to sign this bill today. What will Jay Leno do? There 
will be no more $500 hammers, no more $600 toilet seats, no more $10 
ashtrays. Al Gore will never get on David Letterman again. [Laughter] 
It's sort of a sad moment--[laughter]--the passing of Government 
purchasing as the butt of all the jokes on the evening shows. But it is 
a very important moment for the American people who are out there 
working hard and need to keep as much of their money as they can, and if 
they give us any of it, they're entitled to know that we're spending it 
properly.
    This Government cannot ignore problems with our operations. We have 
tried to get those problems into the open and to deal with them and in 
the process to make it part of our ongoing effort to have the actions of 
our National Government mirror what should be happening in all of our 
society, decentralizing, empowering people, relying more on people who 
are closest to the action.
    We've done a lot of other things like that. I signed a bank reform 
bill the other day which will remove a billion dollars in regulatory 
compliance; the trucking deregulation bill, estimated to save $8 billion 
in compliance with Federal regulations. We built a new highway in 
California after the earthquake in less than half the time we were told 
it could be built because we just changed the rules and the incentive 
structure there.
    The SBA now can give you a three-page form--or a one-page form for a 
loan instead of one that's 100 pages long, and you can get an answer in 
3 days. This is all part of that. We've given 17 States--17 States in 2 
years, more than in the previous 12 years--permission to design their 
own welfare reform systems to move people from welfare to work.
    So this procurement reform legislation we are signing today is a way 
to build the confidence of the American people in Government but also 
empower the people who work for the Government to make the most of their 
jobs and make the most of taxpayers' dollars.
    This is the kind of thing I'm convinced that we'll be called upon to 
do more and more,

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not to do things for people but to empower people to do things for 
themselves, both within and beyond the Government. If you think about 
it, that's what the family leave law is all about. You've got to be a 
parent; you've got to be a worker; you might as well be good at both. 
That's what the family leave law is about.
    That's what the college loan law is about, where the Secretary of 
Education and Deputy Secretary of Education and others designed a way 
that actually costs the taxpayers less to figure out how to give people 
college loans at lower interest rates and longer repayment terms; 20 
million Americans already eligible to refinance their loans. We're not 
giving anybody an education; we're just making it possible for them to 
get it and make a contribution to our country.
    And that's really what this whole reinventing Government effort is 
all about. It's a big challenge. One of the reasons it's a big challenge 
is that we've committed to reduce the size of this Government by 
272,000, to its smallest size since the Kennedy administration, within a 
6-year period. That means that we have to reform all of our other 
systems. If we don't reform the procurement system, we'll have too many 
people working in procurement to ever make that reduction. If we don't 
redefine the functions of the Government, we'll never get there.
    That's why I'm so proud--and I want to say a little more in a 
minute--but I am so proud of the work that Secretary Espy has done at 
the Agriculture Department, where they have--in this Agriculture 
Department reform legislation that I just signed they've reduced the 
number of their agencies by a third within the Agriculture Department; 
they've reduced their employment by 7,500; they've done a whole lot of 
other things that are profoundly important. All of this will enable us 
not only to downsize the Government, to do it without reducing the 
services we're giving to the American people.
    One of the things that I found kind of nice is--you know, it's hard 
for a fellow like me to ever find anything in print I want to hold up 
anymore--[laughter]--but the Financial World, which is not the house 
organ of this administration, has written a letter to me in their 
present issue. And it says, with regard to running the Government, ``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 them have improved under 
your leadership.'' Well, I appreciate that, but you guys get the credit, 
and I thank you for doing it.
    I know that a lot of Americans have heard all these stories, but in 
addition to the ones that the Vice President told on the Letterman show, 
I think it's important to realize that there were real consequences to 
some of these problems that went beyond money.
    A lot of you remember the story that Lt. Col. Brad Orton told us 
from Operation Desert Storm, when the Air Force tried to buy 6,000 of 
these high-tech, two-way radios from Motorola that were on the 
commercial market. They couldn't do it, and we were embarrassed. We had 
to go to the Japanese and ask them to buy the radios because we didn't 
have time to go through our procurement processes when we were out there 
trying to fight a war and stop a tyrant. You know, it's not as funny as 
the stories you hear, but it is terribly important.
    Well, a highly competitive company like Motorola, frankly, didn't 
have time to spend all the money and effort it would take to comply with 
the inane regulations that kept Government employees from buying these. 
One of the things that I'm really pleased about is that, Senator Glenn, 
we now have, and Congressman Conyers, a letter in our file to me from 
the president of Motorola saying that you guys did a good job on this 
procurement reform, and we can now buy all of these that we need. 
[Laughter]
    You know, one other thing I would like to say is that very often 
little things have big consequences. I was pleased to see that the Vice 
President introduced Michelle Cradduck, and you see she got a good 
little article in the local paper here today. We would like to have your 
advice about how to get this kind of press on a more regular basis. Now, 
that would be a real reinvention of Government. [Laughter]

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    But you think about this. This law cuts redtape for purchases under 
$100,000, but it lets, maybe most important of all, front-line managers 
decide on purchases of less than $2,500. They can shop for the best deal 
without being bogged down in any bureaucracy. This will save--this is 
amazing--this will save, we estimate, $50 on every single purchase of 
items under $2,500. That's how much money we have been paying to comply 
with our own rules and regulations. Fifty dollars, you think about it; 
you add that up. That's a lot of children in Head Start. That's a lot of 
high school graduates going into apprenticeship programs. That's a lot 
of middle class kids getting college loans. That's a lot of money that's 
just been flushed away because we didn't change with the times. Gone are 
the days when a $4 stapler will require $50 worth of paperwork--never 
again, thanks to people like Michelle Cradduck. We thank you very much.
    Today I am signing an Executive order that will go a little beyond 
the law. It will actually give people who use these products the 
authority to make small purchases, so the managers don't have to do it 
either.
    These reforms, as I said, by illustrating this, will also strengthen 
our national security. Under the old system, defense contractors were 
virtually forced to develop practices and products unique to the 
military. The procurement process itself defied the development of 
modern technology in requiring the American industry to divide into 
defense and nondefense sectors. It meant our military paid higher 
prices, often couldn't get state-of-the-art technologies, and it meant 
also that we were dividing American industry at a time when emerging 
technologies were unifying processes across the lines of defense and 
nondefense economic sectors.
    With these reforms and the ones that Secretary Perry announced last 
June, our men and women in uniform will have the best equipment in the 
world. They will be able to operate in this post-cold-war world which, 
as we all know, is still a dangerous place. The private sectors will be 
able to provide the equipment they need, and they will be able to do it 
in a way that strengthens the commercial sector as well as the defense 
sector instead of dividing them both and weakening them both. This will 
help us to compete and win in the global marketplace as we build our 
national security, not forcing company after company after company to 
choose between one or the other path. It is a very important but little 
noticed consequence of this reform.
    Let me also say that this law also builds on our commitment to small 
businesses. It allows small businesses to learn more about and bid on 
Government contracts through electronic information that works, they can 
reach through their own computers. It continues to increase purchases 
for minority-owned businesses. It sets a goal that at least 5 percent of 
the purchases will come from businesses owned by women.
    As I said earlier in reference to the Agriculture Department bill, 
there are a lot of other things which should reinforce what we're doing 
today. I signed a bill which helps HUD to improve the management of 
apartment buildings and helps the Department of Energy's laboratories to 
develop peacetime technologies. The Agriculture Department bill, as I 
said earlier, closes 1,200 unneeded offices, fights fraud and abuse in 
the crop insurance program, cuts the number of divisions in the 
Department by a third, reduces employees by 7,500. Pretty soon, we'll be 
able to move the rest of the Federal Government over to the Agriculture 
Department. [Laughter]
    I also signed before I came out here the Government Management 
Reform Act. Again, a little noticed bill, but it will be very important 
to all of you as we seek to keep this process going. It will help to 
eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse by developing reliable financial 
statements on cost and performance. Within 4 years, for the first time 
ever, believe it or not, the Government will publish, just like any good 
company would, an annual consolidated financial statement covering every 
executive branch agency. We are going to do that as well.
    There's one more step I want to take today, and this may be somewhat 
controversial, but it's important. You know, these signing ceremonies 
are fun. Everybody forgets there are a lot of hard work and tough 
tradeoffs and difficult decisions that leads to these things.

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    Congress recently passed two spending bills that prevent several 
Government agencies from making the personnel cuts that must be made to 
continue reinventing Government and to finance the crime bill. Today, 
I'm asking Congress to get rid of those restrictions on our ability to 
cut back big government and to do more with less. This is a matter of 
principle as well as practice. No agency anywhere should be exempt from 
doing its job as efficiently as possible. The Federal employees don't 
want it that way. It's not fair to some and not others, and it won't 
permit our system to work as it should.
    Finally, let me say this. Most of you here care a lot about all 
this. But a lot of people don't get very excited about it. And far too 
many can't imagine that Government could ever change itself. But bit by 
bit, the things we are doing, like the thing we are doing today, we'll 
be able to prove, by actions not words, that we can use taxpayers money 
wisely and with respect, in an appropriate way. After all, the American 
people own this place. They are our employers as well as our customers. 
They deserve the same honesty and efficiency from their Government they 
demand from the private sector. They should settle for nothing less. 
With this historic law, we are taking another big step in meeting their 
expectations and in doing our duty.
    To all of you who have made this day possible, I say a profound 
thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 11:30 a.m. in the Rose Garden at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to Michelle Cradduck, Contract 
Specialist, Public Health Service, Division of Acquisition Management. 
S. 1587, approved October 13, was assigned Public Law No. 103-355.