Remarks by Vice President Gore to ASNE

LUNCHEON ADDRESS BY VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE

William B. Ketter, Quincy (Mass.) Patriot Ledger, ASNE president, presiding: Ladies and gentlemen, please let me have your attention while I introduce our head table guests.

Today we thank and honor the hard-working and conscientious members of your Society who have headed up this year's ASNE committees. I personally am deeply grateful to them. From my perspective, ASNE has had a successful year, due in large part to the imaginative and resourceful committee chairs at today's head table. I also appreciate the work of the dedicated members who served on the ASNE committees with these chairs. I'll ask the committee leaders to stand and remain standing while I introduce them all. Please hold your applause until the end.

Beginning on my right: Rich Oppel, Austin (Texas) American-Statesman, Convention Program; Josette Shiner, Washington Times, The American Editor; Chris Peck, Spokane (Wash.) Spokesman-Review, Ethics and Values; Tim Gallagher, Ventura (Calif.) County Star, Future of Newspapers and chair of the convention floor managers; Frosty Landon, Roanoke (Va.) Times, Freedom of Information; Linda Lightfoot, Baton Rouge (La.) Advocate, Press, Bar & Public Affairs; Maxine Lynch, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Minorities; Saundra Keyes, Miami Herald, Education for Journalism; Merv Aubespin, Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal, Human Resources; Shelby Coffey, Los Angeles Times, International; Bill Woo, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Change; Mike Pride, Concord (N.H.) Monitor, Small Newspapers; and Lou Ureneck, Portland (Maine) Press Herald, New Media.

Continuing on my left: Julia Wallace, Salem (Ore.) Statesman-Journal, Literacy; Edward Seaton of the Manhattan (Kan.) Mercury, head of the ASNE Foundation; Hunter George, Lakeland (Fla.) Ledger, Membership; and Acel Moore, Philadelphia Inquirer, Nominations.

Now, I'd like to take a moment to introduce some of the key leaders of this convention: Wanda Lloyd, USA Today, press room; Thom Greer, Cleveland Plain Dealer, elections — Thom has done this a number of years and has done yeoman duty; Scott Anderson, Ft. Lauderdale (Fla.) Sun-Sentinel, the Digital Deli on the latest in cyberspace — another person who has done yeoman duty over the years for ASNE; and Gregory Moore, Boston Globe, editor, The ASNE Reporter, your convention newspaper.

John Carroll, Baltimore Sun, who heads our Writing Awards Board, could not be with us for lunch today. He had to return home.

I would ask you to please give applause and recognition to all of these committee chairs and ASNE leaders. Thank you.

I'd also like to take a moment to pay a special recognition to two people sitting in the audience today, Elise Burroughs and Nancy Andiorio. Both Elise and Nancy joined the ASNE staff in October of 1983. Elise left ASNE last November to rejoin the staff of Presstime, and Nancy is departing in May to return to her native Pittsburgh. Between the two of them, they have worked a quarter of a century for the American Society of Newspaper Editors. We are much indebted to these dedicated and talented professionals. We thank you for your loyalty, your perseverance, and your hard work. Good luck, Godspeed, and please keep in touch with ASNE.

I also want to take a moment to thank the Portland Oregonian for its generous sponsorship of this luncheon, and to thank the Freedom Forum for hosting last night's reception. Now, Bill Woo will give us another reflection on "Journalism That Made A Difference."

Remarks by William F. Woo

This example of "Journalism That Made A Difference" is from the life of a courageous woman. In 1936, with her new journalism degree from the University of Alabama, Hazel Brannon Smith has two goals: to write at her own newspaper and to fight racism. "I don't plan to take dictation," she tells the university official, "I plan to give it. I have been liberated all my life." In 1943 she buys the Advertiser in Lexington, Miss., and begins writing editorials supporting integration. The White Citizens Council organizes to stop her and gets businesses to take their ads out of the Advertiser. The advertising boycott against Smith lasts 17 years. She keeps going by mortgaging everything, by borrowing, by cutting her news staff, and she keeps writing. In 1963 she reports a story of how a black World War II veteran, a mental patient, was shot in the back by a policeman who wanted to arrest him. A friend asked Smith if she was trying to start a riot. Smith replies: "Hell no, I'm trying to stop one. I don't have the right to withhold a story when local law officials, who are supposed to uphold the law, take the law into their own hands and kill somebody. I don't have the right to withhold a story like that." In 1964 Smith becomes the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Slowly, circulation rises, she beats the boycott, and the Advertiser survives for another 21 years. "I stood up for what was right," she says. Hazel Brannon Smith died in 1994. Her courageous journalism made a difference in Lexington, in Mississippi, and in the nation.

Ketter: Thank you Bill. Frank Sutherland, Nashville Tennessean, will introduce our speaker today.

Remarks by Frank Sutherland

When I was asked to make this introduction, I told Lee Stinnett that I saw no use in making a formal introduction, that everyone knows about the vice president of the United States. What I wanted to do instead was to tell you about Al Gore's days as a reporter at the Tennessean and his early days as a congressman from Tennessee.

Lee said that President Ketter preferred formal introductions, in the ASNE tradition, but when I said, "I have some old photographs of reporter Gore," Lee said, "What the hell! Ketter is only president till Friday," so this introduction of the vice president is going to be a little different.

His first byline appeared in the Tennessean while he was a specialist 5 in the Army. This story from the spring of 1971 was about a firebase being overrun. When he came to the Tennessean as a new reporter a few months later, editor and publisher John Seigenthaler emphasized to the young reporter that he would now be covering local news.

This was actually reporter Gore's first byline in the Tennessean and on 1-A. (Shows picture of "Hillbilly days.") He was indoctrinated into the Tennessean newsroom in traditional Tennessean fashion. Tennessean reporter Jerry Thompson phoned in an obit to Gore. It was for a fellow named Erog, which, of course, is Gore spelled backwards. It was a fine obit.

Much of reporter Gore's career at the Tennessean involved hair. Reporter Gore asked Seigenthaler if he could grow his out from his Army cut, and Seig said, yes. But, as you will notice in the subsequent slides, reporter Gore had trouble choosing a hairstyle, during both his reportorial and political careers. Reporter Gore even wrote about long hair. In this case it was about an issue that cost a veteran his job because he had too much hair. In another story a group of hippies from California, with long hair, of course, moved to a small middle Tennessee community called Summertown, mostly populated by members of the Church of Christ, a conservative denomination. Reporter Gore wrote first about the confrontations and then about the dialogues between these two groups. His stories showed the respect that Salman Rushdie talked about in his speech to us, and that community lives in peaceful coexistence to this day. Reporter Gore's sensitivity to that dialogue made that success possible.

In the first year or two after his father lost his re-election bid to the United States Senate, reporter Gore avoided assignments involving government. But, increasingly, he got back to stories involving politicians. Ultimately, his reporting of corruption in the metro council and city government got two councilmen indicted and got a conviction. He could adjust his hairstyle according to the needs of the assignment.

One day he was assigned to cover a visit of Vice President Spiro Agnew to Nashville to meet the city officials. Upon reporter Gore's return, I asked him how it was, being with the vice president, and he said, "I could do that job."

If reporter Gore is known for anything in our newsroom, it was his passion for accuracy, context, and fairness. Those values that we have been talking about at this convention that are at the core of what we do. He was the only reporter I knew who, without fail, went to the library to check the clips before every assignment. He worked with photographers to make sure that their work paired well together, and he stayed, again without fail and no matter how late, until the night editors had finished editing his stories. He would fight against any editing that hurt the accuracy or changed nuances of a story. That honesty and fairness came to be known among our readers and among our competition, including the Nashville Banner, which endorsed him when he decided to leave the Tennessean in 1976 and run for Congress. The Banner cited his integrity as a competing reporter. And that is all I am going to talk about the Banner.

Of course, the candidate's hairstyle changed, too. But even with his new hairstyle, campaigning in rural Tennessee was often difficult.

However, Al Gore was elected congressman and went to Washington, and here he is in Washington practicing being wooden, and here he is practicing being relaxed. I asked him one day what life as a congressman was like. He replied that being on the Oversight Committee in the House was just like being an investigative reporter, except he had subpoena power. Congressman Gore used his reportorial skills to unearth major problems in investigations of abuses in the contact lens and baby formula industries, investigations that got him into the national news, and his career really took off. As you know, he was subsequently elected to the Senate and then ran unsuccessfully for president in 1988, with a new hairstyle.

But he never forgot the Tennessean, coming back to speak to our Letter Writers Forum and staying in touch with the people at a personal level. And he never forgot those family values that had been instilled in his youth. These traits, along with the journalistic values instilled under the tutelage of John Seigenthaler, make him the honorable politician we know today.

When you introduce the vice president, you are supposed to use the courtesy title, The Honorable Al Gore. Well, in Tennessee we applied that title to him when he was a reporter, an honorable reporter. So ladies and gentlemen, whether as a reporter or the vice president of the United States, the Honorable Al Gore.

Remarks by Vice President Al Gore

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you, Frank. That introduction needed a little editing, the pictures particularly, but thank you for your kind words.

Frank and I were reporters together, as I hope was clear from that presentation. And both of us learned about the newspaper business from John Seigenthaler, who is here with his wife, Dolores. I am grateful to John and grateful to Frank because I learned a lot from him when we were reporting together. I have some slides of Frank, if you could turn the. ... He's changed his hairstyle also from the early days, but I wouldn't worry about that news report today on balding, Frank.

One story he left out was when I was first elected to the Congress, for a two-week period one summer he filled in for the Tennessean's regular Washington correspondent. Since we were so close and had worked together for so long, watching him cover me as a freshman congressman. ... It's something you ought to do a seminar on sometime. We won't even get into those expense accounts, Frank.

I don't know how many of you have traditions like the Tennessean used to, and I guess still does, but young reporters who thought they knew it all, and I certainly fit in that category, were initiated with certain lessons. One lesson that a reporter has to learn early on is you really cannot believe everything that you hear over the telephone. Late one night while I was doing obituaries, the phone rang, and it was an obituary for Trebla Erog, a Swedish gynecologist from Carthage, Tenn., my hometown. He was a member of the B'nai B'rith and the Knights of Columbus, and, well, you know, he was a joiner. And there were various other interesting features of his life, which I dutifully and accurately took down and turned into a pretty well-written obituary. When I turned it in there wasn't much fanfare. Then this disembodied voice called back a half hour later. Tragically, and interestingly, the doctor's wife had, upon seeing the corpse, died at the funeral home. Rather than preparing a dry obituary of Mrs. Erog, I smelled a larger news story that could have been, instead of "Hillbilly days," my first front-page story. Later that evening, news of the tragedy that befell the two Erog children as they were racing across the bridge in a car arrived at the newspaper. It confirmed my initial instinct that this was a big story.

Ever since then I've believed very little of what I've heard over the telephone. It was a wonderful education.

Thank you for inviting me here. I want to acknowledge Bill Ketter, who has had such an outstanding tenure I understand from all involved, and Lee Stinnett, executive director of ASNE, and Bill Woo of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and all the distinguished guests at the dais here. Ladies and gentlemen I am grateful for the chance to speak with you. I'm glad you came on a good day. The temperature is coming up. It's been so cold here this year, people who don't know me better thought I was frozen stiff.

I'm sorry John Carroll had to leave. At a reception a few weeks ago in Baltimore, a gentleman said, "Why don't you tell Jay Leno to stop telling those stiff jokes about you." I repeated that from the podium and told my joke. I said, "I've heard almost all those jokes by now." That was a Thursday night. The next night I turned on my television, and Jay Leno started his monologue with a videotape of my statement. Right after the line where I said, "I've heard almost all of those jokes by now," he cut the tape. He said, "I hate to break it to you, Mr. Vice President, but you haven't heard nearly all those jokes." He said, "Bring them out boys," and a guy came out with a hand truck stacked up high. He said, "Let's just take a few off the top here: If you use a strobe light, it looks like Al Gore is moving; Al Gore is so boring his Secret Service code name is Al Gore. ..."

Every time I hear a new one, I always have the same reaction: very funny, Tipper.

I really do enjoy being vice president, though. I actually went on the other late night show not too far back, David Letterman, and they asked me to give a top 10 list of the most enjoyable things about being vice president. I've already taken too long introducing this speech, so I won't go through the whole list, but I remember number five on the list of most enjoyable things about being vice president. It has to do with this seal here, the great seal of the vice president of the United States. If you close your left eye and turn your head just right, it says President of the United States of America. You can try it. You can try it. It gives me a thrill every time I do that.

Moving right along, I really do have some things to talk to you about because this is a group, obviously, that I want to take advantage of to be able to say some things. The president is out of the country. This is my chance. Right? I'm going to miss Alexander Haig's line on this, but I do want to talk about a few issues that you're going to be writing about in the coming days. I had originally intended to talk completely about reinventing government. I'm going to present some facts and figures to you on reinventing government in just a moment, but I'd like to talk briefly about some issues that are in the news today.

When the American people elected President Clinton and me three and a half years ago, they gave us some clear mandates about how they would like to see business done in Washington. One of these mandates was to get the economy moving again. Another was to protect the environment. One important mandate was to fight crime with all our hearts and soul. Another was to change the way Washington works, to reinvent our government so that it serves the American people. We took their mandates as our mission, and I am proud to say that we are delivering.

Let me begin, though, by commenting on two specific items before moving into the heart of my remarks. First, I'd like to say a word on the minimum wage. Yesterday, we saw a group of a few moderate Republicans clearly break with the leaders of their party and join President Clinton in a bipartisan call for 90 cents to $1 increase in the minimum wage. For months now, Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole have done everything they possibly can to prevent this proposal from being voted on, on the floor of the House and Senate. Just this week Sen. Dole angrily ended Senate consideration of an important illegal immigration bill, rather than have a vote taken on increasing the minimum wage. The majority leader of the house, Dick Armey, said publicly that he would fight a single penny increase with every breath in his body. Never mind that increasing the minimum wage has in the past often been a bipartisan effort, and many of these same Republican leaders, including Gingrich and Dole, have previously supported increases in the minimum wage. This year, this time, they made up their minds to fight against the president's plan to give hard-working Americans a well-deserved raise. Today, reports suggest that Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole may be cracking and may just be considering allowing this proposal to come to a vote. In response, I have just three words: It's about time. This year, unless it is changed, the minimum wage will be at a 40-year low. And let's be clear, on behalf of the president, I want to say to Speaker Gingrich and Sen. Dole, let's have no games, no poison pills, no tricky conditions. The American people don't want the Republican leadership to load up the minimum wage increase with a bunch of unrelated provisions designed only to complicate its passage and further delay its enactment. What the American people want, and what hard-working families deserve, is a very simple up or down, yes or no, no riders-attached vote on the president's plan to give Americans a 90-cent-an-hour increase in the minimum wage. We want that vote now, not later. It is the right thing to do, and now is the right time to do it.

This has come about, the cracking by Gingrich and Dole, because President Clinton turned up the pressure. He talked about it in his State of the Union Address. Then two Saturdays ago, in his radio address, he pointed out that the Republican members of Congress who were fighting against an increase in the minimum wage, made more money themselves during the period they shut down the government than people on the minimum wage make in an entire year. As the pressure increased, we began to see movement on the issue. The House Republicans cracked first. Now, here's a prediction: Over the next week or so, you will witness Sen. Dole dancing on the ideological stage from right to left, introducing legislative trick language, going through all kinds of permutations, but when it's all said and done, mark my words, he will cave to the pressure from the American people, 84 percent of whom support President Clinton's demand that we have an increase in the minimum wage. Mark my words, it will happen, within the next week or so.

Let me move on to a second issue that is topical. That is the issue of crime. Recently, we have heard from Republican leaders, like Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole, that the president's judicial appointees somehow have been soft on crime and are not up to the job. Now, I know full well that we are all moving very quickly into the thick of the political season, and we all have some rough sailing ahead in the political conflict. There'll be lots of charges and counter charges in the coming months. But let me be absolutely clear on this point: The only thing that's really soft on this issue is Republican logic. Facts are facts, and it is a fact that President Clinton has assembled perhaps the best, most tested, professional bench since Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth sat in the dugout of the '27 Yankees. Our judicial selection process is about excellence, and is not about ideology. More of the president's judicial appointees have received the American Bar Association's highest rating than the appointees of any of his three predecessors. Forty percent of them served as criminal prosecutors. Women and minorities have been appointed in record numbers.

Why all the noise? I think the answer is very simple. It's a political trick that's almost as old as three-card monte, but not nearly as honest. You know the old saying lawyers have: If the law is on your side, use the law. If the facts are on your side, use the facts. If neither the facts nor the law is on your side, pound the table. In this case, they've modified it to say that if neither the facts nor the law is on our your side, pound the judiciary. Try to change the subject. Come up with political tricks. That is precisely what the Republican leadership of Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole is doing, throwing up smoke screens to hide their own poor record on crime, with cheap charges against the president's judicial appointees. It's the same old business as usual, inside the beltway gamesmanship that so many Americans have come to expect from the Senate in the 1996 version of the Republican Party.

I have news for them. America's not buying it, and you shouldn't buy it either. From the moment the American people voted to send us to the White House, nothing has been more important to President Clinton and me than winning this great national war on crime, and I'm proud to say that, despite all the world-class nay saying by Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole, we have been able to make a real difference — getting tough, putting the best-trained and best-equipped law enforcement officials back on our streets, the best judges back on the bench, the strictest laws back on the books. What has been the result? Many of you have covered the result since the president's anti-crime bill passed. The national homicide rate is going down for the first time in 30 years. Americans said, during the debate on the president's anti-crime bill, we want guns off our streets. The president listened, and now there is an assault weapons ban, even though Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole voted twice to put these people-killers back on the streets. They even voted against the ban on cop-killer bullets. Why? Well, it's pretty simple. They have an IOU to the NRA. It's just that simple. When the American people said we want more community police officers on the sidewalks, President Clinton heard, even if Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole refused to listen. Now, we are putting 100,000 more police officers on the sidewalks of cities across America. Thirty-three thousand of them are already on the beat, covering 87 percent of the country. Crime rates are coming down. When the American people said violent criminals can't be out on the street, President Clinton said, "You're right!" And he pushed, successfully, for passage of the three strikes and you're out law for violent offenders. When the American people said never again to terrorism on American soil, one year ago, President Clinton heard them and went to a reluctant Republican Congress and demanded that terrorism become a top law enforcement priority for the United States.

Congressman Henry Hyde, one of the most respected, senior members of the Republican leadership, went to the well of the House to describe the tribulations within the Republican Caucus on that bill. He came back and reported that one of his colleagues had just told him that he trusted the Hamas terrorists more than he trusted the American government. This coalition that has such influence within the Republican leadership circles today, has been attempting to repeal the assault weapons ban, get rid of the law putting 100,000 extra police officers on the street, weaken the anti-terrorism legislation. Because of that record, now, they want to say, let's find some judges to criticize. That's what this is all about. Now, tomorrow after much squawking and squealing, the Congress finally will send the president an anti-terrorism bill. It's not as tough as we would have liked, but it's one, that for now at least, must do the job. We still can do more, and mark my words, the fight to prevent crime and terrorism is not over. It is just beginning. It's not going to be an easy fight. We've learned there will be all sorts of lobbyists in cahoots with the congressional Republican leadership, trying to block our path every step of the way. It hasn't always been that way. For 20 years, Democrats and Republicans made the fight against crime a bipartisan issue. But over the past few years, Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole have refused to stand with the president in his fight against crime, and instead are hunkered down with the National Rifle Association and the gun lobby. What else could explain their determined opposition to the ban on assault weapons? What else could explain their performance on measures that are designed to strengthen our police forces around this nation? Well, tomorrow the NRA is holding its convention down in Dallas, and since it has the full support of Speaker Gingrich and Sen. Dole, you can bet it will be plotting new ways to tear the heart out of the Brady Bill that's done so much to save lives and take our communities back from violent criminals. They'll try every trick in the book to gut the crime bill that for the first time has helped push the murder rate down, the robbery rate down, the burglary rate down, the rape rate down, the rate of crime in every category down, all across the country. We're not going to let them get away with it.

The second mandate the American people gave us, is one that is very near and dear to my heart, and one on which I've spent a great deal of time. President Clinton and I campaigned on a pledge to bring change to the way Washington works. The American people told us to get it done, and we are. This is the Reinventing Government Program, or REGO. Unlike Erog, REGO is Gore spelled sideways.

From our first days in office, we set a goal of giving Americans a government that works better and costs less. Working better and costing less means a lot of things, big and small. Let me give you an example. All of you use one of these. This is a stapler. How much would you pay for this stapler? We found that the federal government was paying $54 for this stapler. Four dollars went for the actual stapler. Fifty dollars went for the paperwork associated with the purchase of the stapler — true story. We've changed that. Now, we just pay the $4 and get the stapler. Somebody else can have the paperwork. We have eliminated paperwork associated with small purchases like that. Incredibly, over a five-year period, that one change amounts to $12 billion spread across the breadth of the federal government. The point is, most taxpayers would not see spending $50 extra as just a minor problem, and neither did we. It's a small example, but it is an important illustration of what we're doing. In the grand scheme, we can boil it down to two things: making the federal government smaller through downsizing and improving the way government provides services.

When the president asked me to head up this program to reinvent government, I kept the focus on these two goals: creating a government that works better and costs less. I want to point out that in spite of all the anti-big-government rhetoric of the past two administrations, they didn't do it. We're the first to effectively tackle this. And again, the record speaks volumes. While the Republicans talked an awful lot about cutting the deficit, the reality is that during the Reagan-Bush years, the debt quadrupled and the budget deficit annually quadrupled, from $73 billion to almost $300 billion each year. It was President Bill Clinton, working with the Democratic Congress, who in 1993 secured the single largest deficit reduction package in American history. You remember that fight. It was very difficult because not a single Republican would vote for it in the House or the Senate. The House of Representatives passed it by a single vote. Then it came to the Senate where it was a 50-50 tie, causing momentary despair. Yes, you know your Constitution. It has a provision, which roughly translated says every time I vote, we win. I voted. We won. We enacted the package. Under that package, the deficit that built up under two Republican presidents has been cut by nearly two-thirds. Incidentally, this will only be of interest perhaps to historians, but the new Congressional Budget Office figures that just came out show that as of Sept. 30 of this year, President Clinton will have reduced the budget deficit four years running. You know the last time that happened in a president's term? It was the term of President John Tyler, 152 years ago.

Now, moving right along, look at the size of the government. Again, the rhetoric from the Republicans was all about cutting, but it never happened. The federal government got bigger and bigger. From the mid-1960s to 1992, more than 300,000 people were added to the federal payrolls. Nobody stopped it, or slowed it down, until Bill Clinton did. I'm going to release here, right now, some brand new figures that demonstrate the latest update on what has happened in the downsizing of government. Since Jan. 20, 1993, until today, we have reduced the federal government work force by 240,000 positions. Today, officially, the civilian federal work force is the smallest that it has been since John F. Kennedy was president of the United States. We've been able to do this because we were after results and not cheap political points. We didn't appoint some ideological commission to come up with a series of recommendations that everybody new were going nowhere. Instead, we set up the National Performance Review, predominantly with career civil servants. My chief of staff in the Reinventing Government Program, has been and is Elaine Kamarck, who is here today. We chose as the NPR project director Bob Stone, a career civil servant with 24 years at the Department of Defense. Virtually all of the ideas that we have implemented to reduce the size of the government and improve its efficiency, things like this change in the way we buy staplers, virtually all of these ideas come from federal employees. For years they've been given the impression that if they were creative and stuck their necks out, they'd get their heads chopped off. We have gone about the effort of trying to change the culture of Washington. We're proud of what we have done.

I said that we weren't after cheap political points. We did try to get some political points. We did try to get some recognition for it. I wrote a book about it, called "Commonsense Government Works Better and Costs Less." I don't get any of the proceeds. They all go to cash awards for federal employees demonstrating excellence in government. The book is full of stories of how government is working better and costing less. For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, this has not become a best-seller. I do commend it to you, and noticing that some potboilers here in Washington have become best-sellers, I am announcing today, the release of a new version of this book. I have the new cover here: "Commonsense Government Works Better and Costs Less," by Anonymous. I sense a best-seller this time around, and I commend it to you.

When President Clinton said that the era of big government is over, he meant it. Under President Clinton, Washington has been changed. The change is real and is continuing, and the proof is in the numbers. But, not surprisingly, the Republicans, I'm sure with all the best motivations, are trying to discredit our accomplishments. It is astonishing that the party that has spent so many years talking about shrinking government, while failing to do it, is now trying to deny it when it's happening before their very eyes. But to quote James Carville, "We're right, and they're wrong."

I'd like to just briefly raise their allegations and set the record straight.

Allegation number one, the Republicans say that virtually all of the downsizing in government is due to the end of the Cold War, and that the cuts have all come from Defense. That is wrong. As I've said, we've cut the federal work force by 240,000 positions. Here's where the cuts are coming from: Of the 14 Cabinet departments, 13 have reduced their number of employees since President Clinton took office in January 1993. The one exception is the Department of Justice, which is increasing law enforcement personnel and prison guards. I welcome any criticism of that. The cuts have been spread throughout the government. The government-wide average is a little over 10 percent. Six Cabinet departments: the Department of Defense, Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor and Transportation have had reductions of 10 percent or more. Five agencies have taken larger percentage cuts than the Department of Defense. In raw numbers, the Department of Defense has made the largest reduction in personnel, but DOD's cut has been proportional.

The reality is that within our federal government the Department of Defense is the 800-pound gorilla. Taking a slice out of DOD is the equivalent of a massive cut at other departments and agencies, and that's why, in raw numbers, anytime you have anything approaching an across-the-board cut, DOD will show greater numbers than any other agency. Unless you look at these cuts in context, you'll miss the point. Defense civilians comprise over 40 percent of the work force. To give you a sense of how big the Defense Department is, I'd like to compare it to some other agencies. I'm not going to compare the whole Department of Defense. That wouldn't be fair. Let me just take a few parts of the department: the Defense Logistics Agency is four times larger than the Department of Housing and Urban Development; the Department of Defense Civilian School System is more than three times the size of the entire Department of Education; the Defense Finance and Accounting Service is larger than the State Department; and the Defense Commissary Agency is larger than the Environmental Protection Agency. There are parts of the Defense Department that many people have never heard of that are much larger than entire Cabinet departments. To downsize the federal government, the largest department has to contribute its share, and it has. This does not in any way diminish the fact that every single part of the government is shrinking.

Allegation number two, the Republicans say that even if they admit the government is a lot smaller, it is not because of reinvention. Wrong again. Let's remember how this began. It was a National Performance Review recommendation that President Clinton took on as a major commitment. On Sept. 11, 1993, long before Congress passed any law to reaffirm what we were already doing, the Congress gave every agency and department head his or her marching orders. Thousands of positions in government are being eliminated by finding new ways of doing more with less. One of our guidelines is to flatten out organizations by cutting layers of management, just as the private sector has done, just as many of you have done. Overall, agencies have eliminated 54,000 supervisors, a cut of 23 percent in supervisors. The Department of Agriculture eliminated 15,000 positions by reducing from 43 to 29 agencies, and eliminating 1,200 field offices. Why would we have all those field offices out there? I inquired about that, incidentally.

Another president set up those 1,200 field offices to serve America's farmers. He wanted them to be accessible, so that farmers wouldn't have to be away from their farms in order to conduct their business with the federal government. The president who did this was Abraham Lincoln, and his goal was to make sure that no farmer was more than one day's horseback ride from any Agriculture Department field office. Other than in Amish country, there are not a whole lot of American farmers who still depend on horse and buggies, but those offices survived through 130 years of presidents in both political parties, those who supported big government and those who railed against it. They weren't eliminated until Bill Clinton became president, and accepted the idea that a pickup truck might be a better measure of how far the Agriculture field office is than a horse and buggy.

By streamlining and consolidating and eliminating obsolete or redundant layers and positions, we have cut government across the board. The key is this: Through reinvention we have cut government and not vital services to the American people.

I mentioned defense before, certainly the end of the Cold War has changed the requirements of the Department of Defense, and there has been some downsizing as a result. But through reinvention, we are cutting, while maintaining the best-equipped and best-trained armed forces in the world. We are cutting administration and overhead, not readiness. Here is one example of how we are cutting the parts that we don't need and making the rest better.

Lawyers. The military employs a lot of lawyers who do a lot of important work. I don't want to minimize their significance, but they do some work that taxpayers can do without. For example, many lawyers have spent time and money developing detailed specifications for baking cakes. Here is how Section 4.6.3 entitled "Breaks and Cracks" instruct military officials on judging whether a cake is good enough to eat: "Paragraph A. Cool the cake in the pan for two hours at room temperature, 69 degrees Fahrenheit plus or minus 5 degrees Fahrenheit, with a relative humidity of 50 plus or minus 5 percent. B. Space two 4 inch diameter cylinders, for example, two flat-topped metal cans 6.5 inches apart at the closest point. C. Place the cake with pan and liner removed with the flat side down equally on the two cylinders. D. Examine after two minutes for breaks and cracks."

I'm not sure I'd want to eat a cake that passed that test. We've come up with a different approach. We've told them to go down to the store and buy some cake mix, and test it by tasting it to see if it's good or not. That works for American families. It ought to work for the Department of Defense.

One other quick example: We found that the Navy was spending $500 per telephone to be installed on ships because of a specification that the telephone must continue operating in the event the ship is sunk. We've told them to go down to the phone store and purchase a telephone off the shelf. If the ship sinks, buy a new telephone.

Reinvention is working. We just got a letter from a shipbuilding company in Mississippi talking about how much of a difference this has made in saving money.

Allegation number three, downsized workers are being replaced by contractors. Wrong again. Three up, three down. For this administration downsizing is downsizing. No bookkeeping games to shift people around or to make it look better. Administration policy explicitly prohibits federal agencies from contracting out inherently governmental functions. The Work Force Restructuring Act of 1994 reaffirms this policy. Where there are functions that can be performed outside of the government more efficiently and cost effectively, we will look for opportunities. But we will not accept the idea of cutting federal workers just to replace them with contractors. The facts bear this out. Of the 19 major federal agencies, 12 of them, representing 87 percent of the personnel reductions, have also reduced their expenditures for contracting out. The cuts are real.

In closing, I don't need to tell you how much inflammatory talk you're going to hear over the coming months. Those who cannot tout their own record will try to tear down ours. And they will pound the table. But when you look at the record, you will see that President Bill Clinton has indeed taken on the mandates of the American people as a mission, and we are delivering. We haven't finished our job, we have a lot more to do. We understand that, but we've made a whole lot of progress, and there is more to come. Thank you very much for hearing me out today.

Ketter: The vice president has agreed to take questions. Usual rules apply. Let me just ask one question from the podium.

Mr. Vice President, we're celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Freedom of Information Act. But as you know, probably better than any government official, a lot of government records today are electronic records rather than paper records. There is legislation in the Congress for an Electronic Freedom of Information Act. We'd like to know how the administration stands on that.

Gore: We've been aggressive in supporting and promoting the Freedom of Information Act. The record of the Clinton-Gore administration and White House in making information available and in respecting the spirit and not just the letter of the Freedom of Information Act is unparalleled when compared to that of any other presidential administration. We will review the details of pending legislation, and wherever possible be supportive of expanding the terms of the Freedom of Information Act. I cannot comment further on the details of the legislation. E-mail, for example, poses unique challenges because in some contexts e-mail takes on the character of a conversation. When important business is transacted through that medium, then, of course, it takes on the characteristics of written documents. Discerning the difference between those two situations is one of the challenges that must be addressed in this legislation. But, in general, we do support expanding the terms of the Freedom of Information Act.

Questions from the floor

Matthew V. Storin, Boston Globe: Mr. Vice President, in your remarks you criticized the Republicans for bashing federal judges. Do you think it is proper for the president of the United States to criticize a decision by a sitting federal judge and threaten to ask for that judge's resignation?

Gore: The president did not, with all due respect, do that or say that. He did say that he reserves the right to express his opinion about particular decisions that are made. Nothing unusual or unprecedented about presidents expressing their opinion about judicial rulings. That has gone on for 220 years. The president did not say he would request that particular judge's resignation. He did go on to say that he would follow the procedure outlined in the law by which a president can express disagreement and seek to change rulings that he believes are contrary to good public policy, namely, by instructing his U.S. attorney in the jurisdiction in question to go into court and formally appeal the ruling. That is what he did. There is all the difference in the world between the respectful and proper approach taken by President Clinton and the demagogic attacks that were launched on a partisan basis by the other side.

Sandra D. Petykiewicz, Jackson (Mich.) Citizen Patriot: Yesterday Speaker Gingrich said that people in the media have a strong liberal bias. How would you characterize the media's coverage of the White House, and do you have any thoughts on how we should cover the upcoming presidential election?

Gore: The upcoming presidential and vice presidential election?

Petykiewicz: Correct.

Gore: I assume that's your question?

Petykiewicz: You are correct. That's my question.

Gore: On the first point, I think that the speaker has a pretty heavy burden to carry if he wants to try to make the case that the newspapers of America have treated Bill Clinton with kid gloves. Hello! Where is the evidence? I don't see it. In fact, I could make a case on the other side very readily here, but out of respect for this distinguished gathering I will not do so. Seriously, I really don't believe that any serious group can sustain an argument that people in the news media in America have shown favoritism toward the Clinton administration. You could probably make the case that the media coverage in this country has been very aggressive, very tough, bent over backwards to perform the traditional function of a free press that questions everything, to not take it on face value, to really dig hard, and even when things are not fully cooked, to say, well, here is what it might be. It sure feels different from inside the administration than the case he is trying to make. I just don't think it's there.

Joseph R.L. Sterne, Baltimore Sun: Mr. Vice President, on the basis of the first part of your speech today, am I right in thinking that the Democratic Party is taking legal action to change the name of the Senate majority leader from "Bob Dole" to "Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole?"

Gore: Al Gore heard that question and Al Gore doesn't appreciate that particular approach. Al Gore did not intend to change the majority leader's name in any way. It is automatic that in the Congress of the United States the speaker of the House is the senior official. The majority leader of the Senate is the second most senior official in the Congress, not counting, of course, the president of the Senate, and, therefore, the appellation Gingrich-Dole Congress is merely accurate, objective, and descriptive.

George M. Benge, Lafayette (Ind.) Journal and Courier: Mr. Vice President, I frequently hear in the heartland that many people there believe firmly that the president and the vice president have increased dramatically the number of jobs available to average people, but I also hear them say, "I know because I hold three or four of them." How do you respond to these assertions that while indeed you may have increased the quantity, you've done nothing but decrease the quality of jobs for average working Americans?

Gore: Thank you for the question. The allegation is simply not true. Let me give you some facts and figures and invite you to check them out. We'll provide backup documentation, and if we have some people here to make sure that it's easy for you to follow up, I want to do that. Here is the fact: When we took over in January 1993, the nation was struggling to get out of a triple-dip recession. We had some growth going at that time and had for a few months, but it was against a backdrop of a triple dip below the prosperity line. Every time the economy gained a little momentum, it sputtered out and slipped back into recession. Unemployment had gone up. The deficits, as I mentioned, were in the $300-billion-a-year range. Job growth was almost nonexistent, and real wages had declined. We put the new economic plan into effect. Since that time, here's what's happened: 8.5 million new jobs have been created. Before 1993, during the prior 10 years, of the new jobs that were created, only some 25 percent of them had wages higher than the average. Since 1993, 55 percent of these 8.5 million new jobs have wages higher than the average wage. It is a myth that the new jobs are hamburger-flipper jobs. Three million of the 8.5 million are in high-wage industries. Manufacturing employment has increased. It is also a myth, incidentally, that service jobs are inherently low-wage. Many of the higher paying jobs happen to be in the service sector. But manufacturing, let me repeat, has contributed a significant percentage of the new jobs that have been added. So the assumption of the question that you reported from your readers is really wrong.

A couple of other facts that have occurred at the same time, the stock market has added 75 percent of its value in only three years. Never before have we seen growth like that. The inflation rate has dropped to a 30-year low. Unemployment has come down by 20 percent. We have also seen more new small businesses created in each of the last three years than in any other year in the history of the country. Private home ownership is nearing an all-time record. Home building is going up. The University of Tennessee women's basketball team won the national championship. We may not be able to take credit for all these things, but the economy is coming back strong.

Ketter: We have one last question, Mr. Vice President.

Rosemary J. Goudreau, Norfolk Virginian-Pilot: Mr. Vice President, yesterday, Salman Rushdie was here, and among other things he described the similarities between newspaper folks and novelists. He made the point that sometimes you have a better opportunity to get at the whole truth in a novel. He gave as an example, "Primary Colors." Given the buzz about that book since its release, with the suggestion that it had to be someone close to the Clinton-Gore campaign, and given that it is a bestseller, there are a lot of people out there who are wondering how much of this is true. Can you give us a sense of what is some of the truth of this book, and what is the fiction?

Gore: I thought you were going to ask me who wrote it! That's what most people ask about. I hate to admit this, but I haven't read that book. I've been busy ghosting this book. I hear what a lot of people say, that it is just mixing little factoids with really off-the-wall fiction, and I trust that you all didn't take too much to heart the implicit advice from Mr. Rushdie that you blur the lines between fact and fiction in your publications. I know you didn't. But, I'm sorry, I didn't read the book, so I can't give you a better answer than that.

I'd like to close by thanking you very much for your kind attention, and please get rid of those pictures, Frank. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Ketter: We want to thank you Mr. Vice President. We know that your book is about common sense and government, but we know you also have a sense of humor now. It is a privilege to see a former journalist going places, doing things. We salute your public service, and we thank you for being with us.

Gore: Thank you very much, sir.

Ketter: We want to again thank our luncheon sponsor, the Oregonian. Thank you very much, Sandy Rowe, and to the two companies that made important gifts to support the program costs during this convention. Those two newspaper companies are Freedom Newspapers, Chris Anderson's newspaper's organization, and the Riverside (Calif.) Press-Enterprise, Marcia McQuern's paper. Thank you very much.

About this afternoon, over the last few conventions, you've told us you wanted more opportunities to interact with other editors and to share ideas at the ASNE convention. You asked for it, and we are going to give it to you in an exciting afternoon ahead, an afternoon of the Idea Roundtables. There are nine sessions this afternoon. Each of them will be repeated three times. So you can participate in three. Bring your ideas, and pick up plenty of ideas to take home to your newsrooms.

I also want to remind everyone that voting for the board of directors concludes at 4 p.m. If you haven't cast your ballot, please do so. And for the retired members of ASNE who are here, we changed the bylaws this morning, allowing retired members who are attending the convention to vote in the election of the ASNE directors. Just go to the ASNE registration desk, identify yourself, you will be given a ballot, and you can vote. Thank you very much. We are adjourned.

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