Remarks on the reinventing government initiative

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 19, 1994

September 14, 1994

Thank you. You know, when the Vice President opened this occasion by saying that he would have to wear his full body suit for 2 years and that the Speaker of the House had been restored to full powers after his surgery came out all right, I couldn't help thinking, it took reinventing Government to get him on David Letterman--[laughter]--and now this terrible accident--but he's actually become the funniest person in the administration as a result of these two projects.

There is no effort that he has spared to promote this project. You remember he even went on the Letterman show to smash an ashtray. And he has now been invited, as part of our followup to show we're making progress, to go on the show again, where he will read a top five list--[laughter]--showing that we can do more with less, he will make each one of them twice as funny as any top 10 list that was there. [Laughter]

I want to thank Dr. Mendoza, Mr. Torno, Ms. Holstein for traveling here to tell your stories. For all the facts and figures and charts about the success of reinventing Government, the thing that really counts is that the benefits are being felt the way they ought to be by the American people, in a very personal and immediate way. And of course, we hope as a result of this occasion today and the followup report, that the rest of the American people will see that we are changing the way the Federal Government works.

I want to thank the successful teams who made these particular stories possible: Erskine Bowles and the "Low Doc" team from the Small Business Administration who cut a 100-page application down to one page; Customs Commissioner George Weise, the Assistant Commissioner Samuel Banks, and Lynn Gordon for their team in the Miami office, who realized that becoming partners with airlines and shippers is a win-win situation; my old friend James Lee Witt and Bea Gonzales and the team that completely reorganized FEMA so that all its resources are available to respond to any emergency.

When I took office, the National Academy of Public Administration said this about FEMA: "FEMA is like a patient in triage. The President and the Congress must decide whether to treat it or let it die." There was even a bill pending in Congress to abolish FEMA. And in 1992, as I traveled the country, I never went a place that somebody didn't say something disparaging about it. Well, the bill is gone, and it may be the most popular agency in the entire Federal Government.

There's nothing that makes an ordinary taxpayer madder than to feel that those of us who work for the Government don't value their hard-earned dollars. One single, simple example of the waste of taxpayers' money can erase in the public mind thousands and thousands and thousands of examples of devoted service to the same taxpayers. That's especially true in these perplexing times when people have such conflicting feelings. We're going through a period of profound change. And by large margins, Americans say they want Government to address our great national problems. But by equally large margins, they say they don't trust our ability to do it right, or as we say down home, most of our folks think that the Government would mess up a two-car parade. [Laughter]

Now, this reinventing Government effort grew out of several sources: first, out of my experience as a Governor, where we tried to begin this effort; second, out of the encounters that the Vice President and I had with each other and with citizens all during the campaign, with the literature we read and the things we learned that were going on in the private sector; thirdly, with the enormous energy and desire we got out of Federal employees themselves; next, with the leadership that was already coming out of the Congress--Senator Glenn and Congressman Conyers have already been acknowledged, and there were others who really thought that we ought to do it.

But finally we did it because it was necessary, because without it we could not fulfill the mission of the administration. The mission of this administration from day one has been to increase economic opportunity and maintain national security; to empower the individuals of this country to assume personal responsibility for their own futures; to strengthen the sense of community in America, to make our diversity a cause of celebration and unity, not division; and to change the way Government works for ordinary citizens.

Unless we can do the last thing, we cannot achieve the other three. Why is that? Well, one of the reasons we have so much economic opportunity today is that we reduced the budget deficit. You couldn't reduce the budget deficit and not hurt the public interest unless you're reinventing Government.

We want to empower individuals. One of the things that we did with our empowerment program is, through the Department of Education, to completely reform the college loan program so that 20 million Americans now with outstanding loans are eligible to refinance them with longer repayment schedules at lower interest rates. And starting this year, large numbers of new students will be able to do the same thing. We couldn't afford to do that except we actually save money by doing it, by converting the old expensive, cumbersome student loan program into, at least largely, a direct loan program and increasing our ability to recover delinquent loans, which is dramatically increasing.