T H E W H I T E H O U S E

Office of Domestic Policy

A REVOLUTION IN GOVERNMENT

             "The people demand and deserve an active 
       government on their side.  But they don't want a 
       government that wastes money, a government that 
       costs more and does less.  They voted for change.  
       They wanted a literal revolution in the way 
       government operates, and now, you and I must 
       deliver."
                                       President Bill 
  Clinton
                                       Remarks to the 
  Cabinet
                                       February 10, 1993 

Today, the President has asked Vice-President Gore to lead a revolution in Washington that will change the way government does business. The American people deserve a government that treats them like customers and puts them in charge -- by providing more choices, better services, less bureaucracy, and a good return on their investment.

Four principles will guide this revolution in government:

1. Before we ask ordinary Americans to do more, government must learn to make do with less. It is time to demonstrate that government can be as frugal as any household in America.
2. Our goal is to improve services and expand opportunity, not bureaucracy. Over the past decade, America's most successful companies restructured themselves to meet the global competition by eliminating unnecessary layers of management, putting more power in the hands of front-line workers, and finding out what their customers want -- and then delivering it. The federal government must finally undertake the same searing re-examination of its mission that companies go through every year just to survive.

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3. Government will only succeed if it listens to its customers, the American people. We need to make government customer-friendly -- by giving people more choices, better services, and a bigger say in how their government works.
4. This revolution in government must come from within. No one is more frustrated by the bureaucracy than the workers who deal with it every day and know better than anyone how to fix it. Employees at the front lines know how to make government work if someone will listen.

THE NATIONAL PERFORMANCE REVIEW

It is not enough just to cut government -- we need to rethink the way government works. We need to reexamine every dollar of the taxpayers' money that government spends, and every minute of time the government puts in on business. The hardworking people who pay the bill for government year in and year out have a right to know they're getting their money's worth.

For the next six months, under the Vice President's direction, experts from every Cabinet department will carry out a nationwide review of every government program and service. The National Performance Review will enlist front-line federal workers and the general public in a nationwide search for ways not only to cut wasteful spending, but to improve services and make government work better.

The National Performance Review is designed to instill a new spirit of responsibility and innovation into every department. It will challenge the basic assumptions of every federal program, by asking the hard questions that government has dodged for too long:

• Does the program work?
• Does it waste taxpayer dollars?
• Does it provide quality customer service?
• Does it encourage government innovation and reward hard work?
• Finally, if the answer to these questions is no, can the program be fixed -- or is it no longer needed?

The National Performance Review will put more than 100 managers, auditors, and front-line employees from across the government to work on specific recommendations for improving services and cutting waste. They will:

• evaluate the efficiency of every federal program and service;
• identify specific spending cuts in federal programs and services that don't work anymore, or no longer advance the mission they were intended to serve;
• recommend ways to streamline the bureaucracy by eliminating unnecessary layers of management and reducing duplication of effort;
• ask federal workers and the American people to send the Vice President specific suggestions on how to improve services and cut bureaucratic waste; and
• find ways to improve services by making better use of new information technology, and by making government programs more responsive to the customers they serve.

This Review will not produce another report -- Washington has had too many reports and not enough action. The National Performance Review will present the President with a list of specific recommendations for action -- program by program and agency by agency.

The Texas Model

The National Performance Review is patterned after an innovative and highly successful program pioneered by Texas Governor Ann Richards and Comptroller John Sharp. Two years ago, facing a $4.6 billion budget shortfall, the Legislature asked Sharp to conduct a sweeping review of every aspect of Texas state government. A team of 100 auditors from 16 state agencies worked around the clock for five months -- conducting hundreds of interviews with front-line workers and fielding thousands of calls from taxpayers.

The Texas Performance Review presented recommendations for savings of $4.2 billion. The Legislature adopted more than 60% of the Review's recommendations, saving a total of $2.4 billion. A second review this past year proposed recommendations on how to save $4.5 billion more.

THE CLINTON RECORD ON STREAMLINING GOVERNMENT

            "It is time for government to 
       demonstrate in the condition we're in 
       that we can be as frugal as any household 
       in America."
       
                           President Bill Clinton
                           Address to Joint Session 
  of Congress
                           February 17, 1993

Change Starts at the Top

• As he had promised, President Clinton reorganized the White House and cut staff by 25% below the level at which he found it -- a reduction of 350 positions -- and cut senior staff pay by 6- 10%. Together, these reductions will save $10 million a year and make the White House more efficient.
• Shortly after he took office, the President took executive action to:
• Reduce the federal bureaucracy by at least 100,000 positions;
• Require agencies to itemize administrative costs, and reduce them by 14% over four years;
• Eliminate at least one-third of the more than 700 non-statutory federal advisory commissions;
• Cut the Executive Vehicle Fleet by 50%, close executive dining rooms that don't recover costs, and tighten controls on the use of executive aircraft and home-to-office limousine service.
• Under the Administration's economic plan, there will be no national pay increase for federal employees in 1994, and increases will be one percent less than current law for each of the three years after that.
• Taken together, the measures to streamline the federal bureaucracy, cut administrative costs, and reduce federal pay increases will save more than $23 billion over four years.

A Detailed Economic Plan of Investment and Serious Deficit Reduction

• President Clinton's 145-page, detailed Vision of Change for America offers a new way of governing. The President's plan includes serious and credible deficit reduction and a long-term plan to get our

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economy back on track without the "smoke and mirrors" of the past 12 years.

• The package calls for 150 specific domestic savings, as well as a long-term plan to invest in America and an immediate stimulus package to jumpstart the economy and create jobs to get America working again.

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