Bill Clinton: “Good afternoon. I have just finished a very productive and stimulating meeting with two outstanding Americans, John…”

“Good afternoon. I have just finished a very productive and stimulating meeting with two outstanding Americans, John Gardner and Doris Kearns Goodwin. In the best tradition of our citizenship, they have set aside their very busy lives and concerns and work to take some time to come to Washington to try to help make political reform a reality. We discussed how the trust of the American people has been eroded by what they see in Washington, by how the lobbyists hold sway more today then ever before. And the American people don't like it. The hardworking American families of this country know that they did not pay for the kind of influence that they see exercised too often in today's Congress. When Congress treats telecommunications reform, for example, merely as a joust among would-be monopolists, ordinary consumers lose out. When the NRA hijacks a congressional hearing process, crime victims and police officers lose out. And everybody knows that last week's vote in the House to dramatically undermine our ability to enforce our environmental laws would not have happened if real campaign finance reform and real lobbying reform had been on the books. For too long these issues have been mired in partisan in-fighting and paralyzed by special interests. We have an obligation to act when we can to move beyond partisanship. I had hoped we had reached such a point several weeks ago in New Hampshire when I shook hands with Speaker Gingrich on a proposal made to us by an ordinary American in the audience that we create a political reform commission that would work more or less like the base closing commission to make recommendations on campaign finance reform and lobbying reform. Shortly after I returned from New Hampshire, I sent the Speaker a letter putting forward my ideas on how to do that. That moment of optimism gave way to 5 weeks of silence. When I asked John Gardner and Doris Kearns Goodwin to help me make this happen, I certainly hoped that the respect and eminence that they bring to this process would help move things forward. If there were a commission, these are the kinds of people I would appoint to it. We continue to hope that the Speaker will live up to his handshake and move forward on this commission. But we shouldn't wait, and Congress shouldn't either. Today I am announcing that I will use the power of my office to bring the sunlight of full disclosure to the lobbying process in Washington. Right now lobbyists can operate in secret. They can lawfully conceal who they work for, what loopholes or contracts or regulations they are seeking to pass, or what actions they are seeking to stop. And lobbying of the executive branch isn't disclosed at all. Last week, an overwhelming bipartisan majority in the United States Senate voted for lobbying reform. But the House leadership has made it clear that they will not even schedule a vote on this measure for quite a long while. Delay, debate, and division: that's the same old thing. They won't put lobbyists in their proper place in our governmental structure. So today I have decided to act on my own within my executive authority. I am requesting the Attorney General to prepare an Executive order that would bar executive branch employees from meeting with any lobbyist who does not fully disclose his or her activities to the public. In other words, if lobbyists want to contact the executive branch, fine, they can. That's an important part of our work here. But they can do it only if they tell the public who they are, what they're working on, how much they're spending, and what policy they are pushing or trying to block. We will, in other words, follow the strict and meaningful standards of the Senate bill. From now on, the executive branch will operate as if the Senate bill had become law. I have now acted on lobby reform. Now there is no excuse for congressional delay. The Senate has done its work. I urge the House to finish the job. This is really a moment for real bipartisan progress on political reform. In recent days, strong and often growing bipartisan majorities in the United States Senate have voted to preserve, first of all, public funding of Presidential campaigns--something John Gardner here did so much to create--to schedule a vote on campaign finance reform over the objection of the Senate majority leader and to pass a tough gift and lobby reform program in the Senate. This bipartisan impulse is our best hope for true and lasting reform. But to get there it will have to spread to the House, which has been moving back into the past, not going forward into the future. That is our challenge today. From the reform victories of the turn of the century progressives to the changes that followed Watergate, moments of national renewal have always called forth people of good will, regardless of party, who were willing to do what it takes to change things for the better. This is part of our national history, and it must be part of our common ground. I call on Congress to join us here to pass lobby reform and campaign finance reform, to do it in a bipartisan way, and to restore the public trust. In the meanwhile, I am going to establish lobby reform in the executive branch by enacting by Executive order the bill passed by the United States Senate. I'd like now to invite John Gardner and Doris Kearns Goodwin to say a few words. [At this point, John W. Gardner, founder of Common Cause, and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin made brief remarks.] Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich”