U.S. Office of Personnel Management
Speech by Janice R. Lachance, Acting Director

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers

September 19, 1997

The Presidents Agenda

Good morning. Its a great honor to be with you this morning, and particularly to appear on your program along with Vice President Gore.

For four years now, we at the Office of Personnel Management have worked closely with the Vice President on the reinvention of government, and we are so very grateful for his leadership, his vision and his hard work.

In large part because of his efforts, the administration has met its goal of a government that works better and costs less. Although our federal workforce today is 13 percent smaller than it was when President Clinton took office, it is providing better service than ever to its customers, the taxpayers of America.

We are able to do this because of the increased use of modern technology, emphasis on union-management partnership, procurement reform, a reduction in unnecessary regulation and paperwork -- and unnecessary layers of management -- and above all because of the all-out, top-level support we've had from the President and Vice President.

As Acting Director of OPM, I'm serving as chair of the National Partnership Council, which has changed the way management and labor work together in the federal government. The President knew that reinvention could never work unless we could change the hostility that had emerged during the previous twelve years. So the NPC has supported hundreds of workplace partnership councils, all across government, and the result has often been new communication, old disputes resolved, litigation reduced and jobs and money saved.

Partnership cant solve all problems. We still have collective bargaining. But it has gone a long way toward creating a new climate in government and a new role for labor.

As a result of all these reforms, the polls tell us that our federal government is winning back the support and approval of the American people, after many years when that support was in decline.

In addition to our own efforts, however, I think it is clear that public opinion has been influenced by two external events that no one could have predicted.

First, the two partial shutdowns of the federal government.

For years, some people had joked about it -- Well shut down the government and no one will notice! they said.

Well, they shut it down, and people did notice, and the joke was on them, because Americans suddenly remembered just how much we all depend on our government for essential services, every day of our lives.

The other event that changed national perceptions was the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. That tragedy, and the trial which followed, were a dramatic reminder that civil servants are not the faceless bureaucrats of political mythology, but are real people, with real faces, real families, real work to do, and, in this case, real blood to shed.

As someone whose background is in the labor movement, I'm proud of the Clinton Administration's reinvention of government, just as I'm proud of its record on jobs and the economy.

In North Africa, they have a saying, The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on. There are a lot of dogs barking in Washington these days -- perhaps you've noticed -- a lot of charges being made, a lot of mud being thrown, but the great caravan of the Clinton Administration moves on with its exceptional record of success, particularly with regard to the economy.

The President set a bold new economic course, and it has had real, tangible benefits for virtually every American.

We learned recently that the economy grew at a 3.6 percent annual rate in the most recent quarter of this year, even as inflation remained low. Business investment has grown by 11 percent per year since President Clinton took office -- the fastest for any President since John Kennedy was President. Our economy continues to combine record growth, strong investment, and low inflation.

Lets look at the figures in more detail.

The August unemployment rate was at 4.9 percent, its 36th consecutive month below 6 percent and as low as it has been since 1973.

The combined rate of unemployment and inflation is 8.7 percent, the lowest since Lyndon Johnson was president, thirty years ago.

Inflation is at 2.8 percent a year, the lowest since the Kennedy Administration. During the Clinton Administration, the economy has added 12.9 million new jobs, including 2.5 million in the past year. And 92 percent of those new jobs have been in the private sector, the highest percentage since the Truman Administration.

Since the President took office, 1.1 million new construction jobs have been added, and that comes after losing 667,000 jobs in construction in the previous four years. Real construction output has grown 5.7 percent per year -- the fastest rate since the Kennedy Administration.

When the President took office, everyone agreed that the record-breaking deficits of the Reagan years were strangling the economy. Now the deficit is down by 87 percent, from $290 billion in 1992 to an estimated $37 billion in 1997. The Presidents leadership has given us the first balanced budget since 1969.

Under the Clinton Administration, homeownership has risen from 63.7 percent to 65.7 percent of American households, the largest increase on record. The Presidents policies have led to lower interest rates that have saved between one and two thousand dollars a year for ten million families who have refinanced their home mortgages.

Median family income is up $1,600 between 1993 and 1995, the fastest growth since the Johnson years, and real net worth per household grew 3.2 percent per year after falling during the previous four years.

Finally, lets not forget that this President supported the 90-cent-an-hour minimum wage increase that has increased earnings for full-time minimum wage earners by $1800 a year. If he had not done so, the minimum wage would have fallen to its lowest real level in forty years.

These are some of the remarkable economic gains we have seen under the Clinton Administration.

I know there are those in the other party who still give credit for the boom to Ronald Reagan. I don't think so.

Others may think this economic miracle just happened -- that's the tooth fairy theory of economics. Hey, look what I found under my pillow!

I think our economy is so strong today because this President had the courage to make hard decisions, to balance the budget, to make cuts that were not easy to make, but always to put the interests of working people first. And because of his courage, millions of Americans, and particularly working Americans, are better off than they have ever been before.

The President's economic plan, with the balanced budget at its center, is the foundation on which we are building Americas future. We are forging an entirely new economy.

Today, a larger proportion of Americans work in the computer industry than worked in the auto industry at its peak in the 1950s. America leads the world in the cutting edge industries of the future, such as computers, biotech, and aerospace. But America also leads the world again, for the first time since the 1970s, in automobile production and sales.

There will be economic ups and downs in the future, but our economy has fundamentally changed. Once our wealth came mainly from the abundance of our farmlands or the power of our industry. In the future it will come from the skills of our people and the richness of our imaginations.

As the President pointed out in a speech at American University, just ten days ago, equal opportunity is our nations central value, but the very meaning of that term has changed. In the 19th century, opportunity might mean access to a land grant. But in the 21st century, it will mean access to a Pell Grant to a community college, a trade school or a university.

That is why the President has fought so hard on behalf of American education. The recent budget agreement contains the biggest increase in aid to education since 1965, and the biggest increase in aid to people who want to go to college since the GI bill passed sixty years ago.

It includes the largest Pell Grant increase in our history. There are new opportunities to use IRA accounts for college. It includes a $500 per child tax credit for children under age 17.

It includes a $1500 Hope Scholarship to make the first two years of college available to everyone, and a 20-percent tuition tax credit for college juniors, seniors, graduate students and working Americans pursuing their educations. For a student attending the average four-year-college, these education tax incentives will save up to $5000.

But Congress must still authorize the money for these and other programs.

One of the Presidents proposals is for voluntary reading tests for fourth graders and math tests for eighth graders, to let their teachers and parents know how they are doing, how well their schools are doing, and when help is needed. The federal government would not develop or administer these national tests, only help pay for them.

You might think that a voluntary plan to create uniform standards for teaching reading and math would be nonpolitical, but if so you haven't been living in Washington in the 1990s. The testing program has been denounced by the usual nay-sayers as some kind of federal takeover of education.

A week ago, the voluntary testing plan passed by an overwhelming vote in the Senate.

Then, earlier this week, it was defeated in the House. Now were waiting to see if it can be revived in a House-Senate conference, or if partisan politics will triumph over better education.

Isn't it amazing how often seemingly intelligent people misread public opinion?

Whether its closing the government, opposing flood relief, opposing the minimum wage, or opposing better education for our children, they seem to live in a sealed-off world of their own.

Look at the UPS strike. Management seemed not to understand how much Americans like their delivery men and women -- those nice, friendly people in brown uniforms who come around every day or two with a smile and a package. They didn't understand or appreciate their own employees.

Incidentally, I think the President, and the Secretary of Labor, behaved just as they should have behaved during the UPS strike, and their roles contributed to its successful outcome.

In his American University speech, the President outlined his agenda for the coming months. In addition to education and the economy, it includes environmental issues, such as global warming, campaign finance reform, the expansion of NATO, and a new partnership with Russia.

His agenda includes the pursuit of peace in the Middle East, Northern Ireland, and other trouble spots, and a continuing fight against terrorists around the world.

Finally, the Presidents agenda includes his pursuit of unity, community and understanding in a nation that is increasingly diverse, but still carries the burden of racial inequality and racial prejudice.

The President asks us to remember that America is changing, that within a decade our largest state, California, will have no majority race, and within a few more decades our entire country will have no majority race.

On Monday of this week I spoke at the Horizonte School, an alternative school in Salt Lake City, that has a large Hispanic enrollment, has a large enrollment of adult immigrants from many nations, and in all has representatives of sixty-seven nations among its ten thousand students.

It was truly inspiring to meet those students, to see their hope and determination, and to realize that they and the diversity and strength they embody are the future of America. Not that they don't have problems, not that they don't need help, but -- make no mistake -- they are the future and it will be a wonderful future.

These are some of the issues the President is confronting in his second term.

Sometimes we hear more about the mud-throwing and rumors and anonymous leaks, but these are the issues that history will remember and judge him on. The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.

Its been a particular pleasure to attend this conference because I know that so many of the delegates and speakers are IBEW members who hold elective office. That is so important. There is nothing our political system needs more, in this era of big money in politics, than elected officials who truly understand the lives and problems of working people.

We're all in your debt, for your courage and fortitude, and all I can say is, please, keep up the good work.

Let me say in closing that we in the Clinton Administration want to work with you -- with those of you who are elected officials, with union members, with working people everywhere -- on behalf of a better America for you and your families -- and we ask for your support in the battles that lie ahead.

Thank you very much.

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Web page created 23 October 1997