Political Quotes

“I know the Vice President was joshing when he put it all in my hands. On the other hand, it has been well over 2 years that we in Congress, on two subcommittees in particular, have been having hearings. When you take the number of hearings that we have had on the mother of all computer glitches, the year 2000 need for compliance in all of our computers, then with all of the committees that have had hearings, I think the total is something like 25 hearings. In January I had the honor of giving the radio address in response to the President's address, in which I asked the President to use the bully pulpit, to issue an executive order to appoint a year 2000 computer czar. Finally, in February, John Koskinen was appointed. He started in March. He is trying very hard to spend his time getting government compliance as well as looking at the private sector, State and local government, as well as internationally. But, my friends, we are moving too slowly. We have legislatively, in Congress, had on bills the idea of quarterly reports, a CIO, a national strategy, and now we are going to accelerate it with monthly reports. But the point is this has been in the offing. The President has not requested the money for this. What will be happening is not that the year 2000 will be forgotten, because it cannot be. It is an unrelenting deadline that we are going to have to face. We are going to have to face it also with contingency plans.”