Remarks announcing the initiative to streamline government - Bill Clinton's speech, March 3, 1993 - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, March 8, 1993

Ladies and gentlemen, I think you all know we are here to announce a terribly important initiative in this administration to bring about greater efficiency and lower cost of Government.

I want to begin by saying that we intend for this to be a bipartisan and a citizen Government effort. And I'm delighted by the concerned Members of Congress who are here today with the Vice President and me, people who have already worked on this issue. I'd like to begin just by acknowledging the presence here of Senators Glenn and Levin, Senator Cohen, Senator Dorgan, Senator Lieberman, Senator Roth, and Senator Krueger; and in the House, Congressman Conyers, Congressman Clinger, Congressman Gordon, Congressman Laughlin, and Congresswoman Pryce and Congresswoman Slaughter. All of them have manifested an interest in the issues we are here to discuss today.

I also want to especially thank the distinguished comptroller of the State of Texas, John Sharp, who's to my right here, for the work that he did with us to put this project together and for coming all the way from Texas to be with us and with his Senator.

Today I am taking what I hope and believe will be a historic step in reforming the Federal Government by announcing the formation of a national performance review. Our goal is to make the entire Federal Government both less expensive and more efficient, and to change the culture of our national bureaucracy away from complacency and entitlement toward initiative and empowerment. We intend to redesign, to reinvent, to reinvigorate the entire National Government.

Working under the direction of the Vice President for the next 6 months, we'll conduct an intensive national review of every single Government agency and service. We'll enlist citizens and Government workers and leaders from the private sector in a search not only for ways to cut wasteful spending but also for ways to improve services to our citizens and to make our Government work better.

I'll ask every member of our Cabinet to assign their best people to this project, managers, auditors, and frontline workers as well. And to put the "M" back in the OMB, I've asked Phil Lader, who is to my far left, the new Deputy Director for Management at OMB and a person who has spent his life solving difficult and challenging management and people problems, to take the lead in making our Government work better, not only during this 6-month period but permanently for as long as I am President.

We will turn first to Federal employees for help. They know better than anyone else how to do their jobs if someone will simply ask them and reward them for wanting to do it better. We'll ask the public to help us improve services and cut waste by calling an 800 number or by writing to the Vice President, because no one deserves a bigger say in the services Government provides than Government's customers, the American people. We'll look for ways to streamline our own organizations to reduce unnecessary layers and to improve services to the better uses of technology by giving managers more flexibility and by giving frontline workers more decisionmaking power. Just as we're trying to do that in the White House, we will try to do that throughout the National Government.

When I was the Governor of Arkansas, our State became the first in the Nation to institute a governmentwide total quality management program. And I can tell you, it works. It isn't easy. It isn't quick. It can make a huge difference, not only to the people but also to the people who work for the Government as well.

We'll look at the good work that has already been done, including many thoughtful reforms proposed by Members of the Congress, including the work last year by the House Task Force on Government Waste, chaired by then Congressman and now Senator Byron Dorgan. They discovered, among other things, that the Pentagon had stockpiled 1.2 million bottles of nasal spray. Even with my allergies, I only need half that many. |Laughter~ As we locate such waste and wipe it out, it will be a breath of fresh air to the American taxpayers.

Cutting spending will be a priority. But so is making the system work better for the people who work in Government and the people who pay the bills and are served by it. The truth is we can't achieve the savings we want simply by cutting funds. We must also use the remaining funds in a much wiser way. We'll challenge the basic assumptions of every program, asking does it work; does it provide quality service; does it encourage innovation and reward hard work? If the answer is no or if there's a better way to do it or if there's something that the Federal Government is doing it should simply stop doing, we'll try to make the changes needed.

Many good programs began for a good reason: to serve a national purpose or to give the States time to develop an institutional capacity to administer them. But times change, and in many cases State and local governments are now better suited to handle these programs. The Federal Government simply can't do everything, and there are many things the States or the private sector could do better.