[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 44 (Monday, November 6, 1995)]
[Pages 1976-1980]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Project XL

November 3, 1995

    The President. Thank you very much, Scott, for your introduction and 
also for your very impressive remarks and your even more impressive 
work. Thank you, Mr. Vice President, for the work you have done on this 
project; and Administrator Carol Browner; the Chair of the Council of 
Environmental Quality Katie McGinty; to Fred Hanson, the EPA Deputy 
Administrator who is in charge of Project XL, thank you. And thank you, 
Andy Lietz. I thought you were going to start trying to sell your 
product up here. [Laughter] I must say I was even more impressed when 
you talked about how you invited us to visit in New Hampshire, New York, 
and California. I thought, there's a man with a strategically placed 
company. [Laughter]
    I want to thank every one of you for being here, and for helping us 
to move a little closer to our vision of the 21st century.
    Let me say that I sought the Presidency because I had a vision of 
what I wanted our country to look like in the 21st century. I wanted the 
American dream to be alive for all of our people, and I wanted our 
Nation to be the strongest force in the world for peace and freedom and 
prosperity. And we have a simple, straightforward but quite 
comprehensive strategy for achieving that. We believe in progrowth 
economics that rewards entrepreneurs and expands the middle class and 
shrinks the under class. We believe in commonsense Government that is 
smaller, less bureaucratic, more flexible, focusing on partnerships with 
the private sector and empowering communities and citizens. And we 
believe in rooting all this in old-fashioned mainstream values, 
rewarding opportunity but insisting on responsibility, valuing work

[[Page 1977]]

but recognizing that helping families to be strong and stay together is 
even more important, and what the Vice President referred to--we believe 
in community and common ground, not division in the United States.
    The project we announce today reflects all those strategies. That's 
what Project XL is all about. It will advance our economic agenda. It is 
an example of commonsense Government. And it is rooted in our deepest 
American values. It will help us--it will help us to make the American 
dream available to all Americans in the 21st century, and it will 
certainly help America to be the world's strongest nation in the 21st 
century.
    In March I announced the creation of this project, which gives our 
companies the freedom to meet tough pollution standards in ways that 
make sense to them, instead of following a Government rule book. Today 
we are announcing the first eight pilot projects for this cutting edge 
initiative: Anheuser-Busch, AT&T, Hadco, Intel, Merck, the Minnesota 
Pollution Control Agency, 3M, and the South Coast Air Quality Management 
District. All of them have put together projects which will help us to 
blaze the way to a new era of environmental protection. Two of them are 
represented in the Congress by my friend Senator Robb and Congressman 
Vento. I thank them for coming today and for their support of this from 
an economic and an environmental perspective.
    I want to thank all of the companies here and the other 
organizations for their dedication. And I want you to know that we are 
here to honor your pledge to reduce pollution creatively, effectively, 
and in partnership with your neighbors.
    I want to especially commend the Department of Defense, which is 
committed to undertaking a similar effort at military installations 
throughout our country. And this is very important because of all the 
base closings. And a lot of you are very familiar with our efforts to 
accelerate our ability to turn these closed bases back to communities 
and turn them into community assets. It's a huge issue. And the 
environmental difficulties and challenges have slowed that effort, and I 
thank all the representatives from the Defense Department here for their 
commitment to this endeavor because it will have a major impact on both 
the environment and our ability to spark economic opportunity in 
communities throughout the Nation.
    To industry, Project XL shows that protecting the health and safety 
of our citizens doesn't have to come at the expense of a bottom line. 
And to those in the environmental community, XL shows that strengthening 
the economy doesn't have to come at the expense of the air we breathe, 
the food we eat, the water we drink. I hope to our citizens that this 
will stand as an example of what we can do when we work together and 
when we look out for one another, when we recognize that our obligations 
to one another, when properly fulfilled, actually help us to improve our 
own lot in life.
    I guess there was a time not so long ago that if I said there was a 
Government program named XL, everybody would have thought it stood for 
extra large and was well-named. [Laughter] I want to say again, that not 
withstanding my own size, this does stand for excellence and leadership. 
[Laughter] We want to back our words up by action, and we intend to do 
so.
    Much of our effort in developing commonsense Government has been 
devoted simply to reducing the sheer size of Government. Our Government 
was organized for a much more sort of top-down, bureaucratic industrial 
age than the one in which we are living.
    Thanks to the Vice President, our reinventing Government task force, 
and the support we have received in the past from the Congress, there 
are now 163,000 fewer people working for the Federal Government than 
there were the day I was sworn in as President. With next year's already 
planned down-sizing, the Government next year will be the smallest it's 
been since Mr. Kennedy was President. And as a percentage of the 
Federal--the civilian work force of the United States, next year the 
Federal Government will be the smallest it has been since 1933. That is 
an astonishing change in a short period of time.
    And I want to say, I think we've done it in the right way. Like I 
say, that if you want to read about it, the Vice President's got a 
little book out here. [Laughter] He made me write a foreword to it. 
[Laughter]

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    The Vice President. It's available in New York, California--
[laughter].
    The President. Philip Howard, the author of the wonderful book ``The 
Death of Common Sense,'' also wrote an introduction. And the Vice 
President gets no money out of the book. That's part of reinventing 
Government--[laughter]--work harder, be poorer. [Laughter] But this book 
reflects what it is we're trying to do. The reason I bring it up is that 
most Americans don't know that the Government is 163,000 smaller, don't 
know how much smaller it is. But there are maybe some bad reasons for 
that, but I think there are two good reasons I'd like to mention.
    One reason is that the Federal employees were treated properly in 
the downsizing. They weren't just put on the street. There were generous 
early retirement packages approved by the Congress. There were generous 
separation packages. They were treated with the dignity and respect to 
which they were entitled. So we didn't just have a slash-and-burn 
policy. The other reason is that the Federal employees who stayed were 
able to dramatically increase their productivity so that people didn't 
notice it in diminished services.
    And so I think what I'd like to do is to say I'm very proud of the 
fact that we have downsized the Government more rapidly and to a greater 
extent than at, as far as I know, any time in history. But the real 
credit goes to the Federal employees who have continued to do the work 
of America with good humor and increased creativity. And I'm very proud 
of that. And so the first thing we did was to try to shrink the 
Government.
    The second thing we're doing is getting rid of 16,000 of the 86,000 
pages of Government regulations. I think the most successful talk I've 
given since I've been President was at the White House Conference on 
Small Business where all I did was simply read them the Federal 
regulation on grits. [Laughter] Some of you not from the South don't 
even know what grits are, probably. [Laughter] But all of us who do, 
found it amazing that there had to be a Federal regulation to define it 
and that it was two pages long. [Laughter] And there wasn't a dry eye in 
the place when I got done reading it. [Laughter] Most of them were 
laughing and crying; some of them were actually crying to think their 
Government had done such a thing. [Laughter] So every department has got 
a quota, a target, and we are in the process of getting rid of, just 
purely getting rid of 16,000 of the 86,000 pages of Federal regulations.
    But that is only part of the vision because commonsense Government 
recognizes that there is still a public interest in America that has to 
be advanced, that can only be advanced when the elected representatives 
of the American people use the power given to them under the 
Constitution of the United States to deal with the problems of the 
moment in a public way, and to do it in the way that is the most 
efficient, the most effective for the moment. That is what we are 
celebrating today.
    The environmental regulations that we are reforming today were 
designed for a time when the environmental problems were different, when 
there were in some places dark clouds of pollution literally blocking 
the sun, a time when the bald eagle was on the edge of extinction, a 
time when we had a river in America that actually caught fire. And for 
people who think it's been a bad thing, this environmental effort, I'll 
ask you to remember that all happened in the lifetime of everybody in 
this room.
    These laws and regulations have served us well. Though we've got a 
lot more work to do, we've made a lot of progress as a people. Our 
environment is the envy of the world compared to other industrial 
countries. But what worked yesterday is not adequate for today, and we 
now know it certainly won't work tomorrow. And going through Washington 
is plainly not the only road to ensuring a cleaner or a safer world. 
That's why we have challenged our businesses and our communities to work 
together to achieve better results where they live and work at lower 
cost.
    At the core of this whole approach are the values I mentioned 
earlier. We are saying the Government should enhance opportunity but 
should insist on responsibility. The people who are in Project XL are 
saying we want the opportunity to do this in a better, more sensible, 
less bureaucratic, more hassle-free way. But we recognize that before 
oppor- 

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tunity comes responsibility. And our commitment is to maintain high 
standards.
    To understand what we're trying to do, the Vice President used a 
see-saw analogy, which I thought was pretty good, by the way. I may 
steal it from him tomorrow. [Laughter] Think of a high-jump competition. 
In this case, the Government would set the bar in the high-jump 
competition and set it high, as high as it takes to ensure that our 
people have the essential security of knowing that the world that we 
live in will be vibrant, healthy, and clean. But we wouldn't tell the 
Government how to jump over the bar. If you've ever watched a high-jump 
competition, people jump in different ways. The way it works today is 
the Government gives you a rule book, and if you can't jump over in the 
prescribed way you just never get over the bar. What we want to say is, 
``Here is the bar. If you can figure out how to jump over it, any old 
way--the old way, the new way, a different way, forward or backward--all 
you have to do is jump over the bar. Then you make the grade.''
    Project XL is built on the simple premise that in many cases 
companies know their business a whole lot better than the Government 
does, that they understand how best to reduce their own pollution, that 
we will all benefit if private enterprise brings its energy, its 
innovation, its creativity to the task of reducing pollution; and that 
cost-effective ways that are found to clear certain specific goals by 
certain companies and certain industries will certainly be adopted by 
others, and it will help us to create whole new sectors of economic 
opportunity by promoting a whole new round of entrepreneurialism in 
environmental cleanup.
    We also recognize that if companies have the freedom to devise their 
own strategies, they will have the obligation to work with and consult 
with their neighbors.
    This project marks the end of one-size-fits-all Government 
regulations. We know what works for one community and one company simply 
doesn't necessarily work for others. This is real reform. It eases the 
burden of regulation. It helps to achieve superior environmental 
performance. It gives each company the chance to find its own way while 
always, always reaffirming the responsibilities that all companies have 
to their communities.
    You know, I look at Project XL and I have a hard time understanding 
those who are still fighting yesterday's regulatory battles today, those 
who still think we're only faced with two choices: no regulation at all 
or more regulation. Under the banner of regulatory reform, some of these 
would weaken or even abolish previous environmental safeguards. The 
Republican majority in Congress would deny citizens the right to know 
what's in the air they breathe and the water they drink. They'd rob our 
agencies of the ability to enforce environmental laws at all. They'd 
slow the cleanup of toxic waste in our communities.
    I tell you today that I do not intend to let this happen. As you 
know, I have been very clear about the 17 special interest provisions 
the congressional majority put in its EPA budget. These riders would 
seriously jeopardize the enforcement of our vital environmental laws. 
And I was very, very pleased yesterday to see what I hope is only the 
beginning of a trend that will sweep this Congress when a bipartisan 
majority in the House sit up for our basic values, for commonsense 
Government, and voted against these 17 riders. I hope there will be more 
of this in the future.
    Project XL is proof that we can find a better way. We don't have 
to--it's also about common ground. Why should we have a fight about this 
when we all will be better served if we work together to protect our 
environment and to promote our economic interests? There is clearly a 
wrong way and a right way to change the regulatory environment of 
America and to get rid of outdated regulations. The wrong way is to toss 
away our essential health and environmental concerns just because we 
don't have the patience to sit down and fix them.
    The right way is to roll up our sleeves, make regulations work, 
demand responsibility, but give opportunity. It may take a little 
longer. It may be a little harder, but it is the right way to meet the 
challenges of the next century. And I want to say again--the most 
important thing I want to say is I honor these eight projects and the 
people who are committed to doing it in this way. I honor

[[Page 1980]]

the commitment the Defense Department has made to do this in its sites.
    If we can prove that this works, we can literally change the way 
Americans look with fear either on environmental threats or on the 
Government or on some new economic enterprise. We can literally give the 
future back to the American people at the grassroots level, and have the 
Government doing what it ought to do: be in the business of defining the 
public interest, making it clear, making sure it's advanced, but not 
prescribing every little jot and tittle detail about how people pursue 
it in every business, in every community, in every enterprise all across 
the land. That is our goal.
    Project XL is designed to put the focus back where it should be, on 
progress, not process, on families and businesses, not government. We 
have a model here that I think will be good not only for protecting the 
environment, not only as an example of effective regulatory reform--I 
think it's a blueprint for the future. I think it's a way we can deal 
with a whole range of our other economic and social problems.
    A lot is riding on those of you who have agreed to participate in 
this project. I think we can really change the way people look at our 
common problems if we can prove, as I believe you will, that this works.
    I am deeply indebted to the Vice President, and to Carol Browner, 
and to Katie McGinty, to all those in our administration who have done 
this. But as I said, we really respect more than anything the companies 
and the people from the Department of Defense that are prepared to 
engage in this great endeavor. We have to make this work. This is the 
only way to take our country into the 21st century with a growing 
economy, being steadfast to our values, with a commonsense Government 
that keeps the American dream alive for all. Let's prove the cynics 
wrong.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 10:28 a.m. in Room 450 of the Old Executive 
Office Building. In his remarks, he referred to Scott Bernstein, 
president, Center for Neighborhood Technology, and Andy Lietz, chief 
executive officer, Hadco Company.