Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
I hope very much that as we debate these specific and exciting matters, we
can go beyond the sterile discussion between the illusion that there is
somehow a program for every problem, on the one hand, and the other
illusion that the Government is the source of every problem that we have.
Our job is to get rid of yesterday's Government so that our own people can
meet today's and tomorrow's needs.
And we ought to do it together.
You know, for years before I became President, I heard others say they
would cut Government and how bad it was. But not much happened.
We actually did it. We cut over a quarter of a trillion dollars in
spending, more than 300 domestic programs, more than 100,000 positions from
the Federal bureaucracy in the last two years alone.
Based on decisions already made, we will have cut a total of more than a
quarter of a million positions from the Federal Government, making it the
smallest it has been since John Kennedy was president, by the time I come
here again next year.
Under the leadership of Vice President Gore, our initiatives have already
saved taxpayers $ 63 billion. The age of the $ 500 hammer and the ashtray
you can break on David Letterman is gone. Deadwood programs like mohair
subsidies are gone. We've streamlined the Agriculture Department by
reducing it by more than 1,200 offices. We've slashed the small-business
loan form from an inch thick to a single page. We've thrown away the
Government's 10,000-page personnel manual.
And the Government is working better in important ways. FEMA, the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, has gone from being a disaster to helping
people in disaster.
You can ask the farmers in the Middle West who fought the flood there or
the people in California who've dealt with floods and earthquakes and fires
and they'll tell you that.
Government workers, working hand-in-hand with private business, rebuilt
Southern California's fractured freeways in record time and under budget.
And because the Federal Government moved fast, all but one of the 5,600
schools damaged in the earthquake are back in business.
Now, there are a lot of other things that I could talk about. I want to
just mention one because it'll be discussed here in the next few weeks.
University administrators all over the country have told me that they are
saving weeks and weeks of bureaucratic time now because of our direct
college loan program, which makes college loans cheaper and more affordable
with better repayment terms for students, costs the Government less and
cuts out paperwork and bureaucracy for the Government and for the
universities.
We shouldn't cap that program, we should give every college in America the
opportunity to be a part of it.
Previous Government programs gather dust; the reinventing Government report
is getting results. And we're not through--there's going to be a second
round of reinventing Government.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account