And as I have said for three years, we should work to open the air waves so that they can be an instrument of democracy not a weapon of destruction by giving free TV time to candidates for public office.

When the last Congress killed political reform last year, it was reported in the press that the lobbyists actually stood in the halls of this sacred building and cheered.  This year, let’s give the folks at home something to cheer about.

More important, I think we all agree that we have to change the way the Government works.  Let’s make it smaller, less costly and smarter.  Leaner not meaner.

I just told the Speaker the equal time doctrine’s alive and well.

The Role Of Government

The New Covenant approach to governing is as different from the old bureaucratic way as the computer is from the manual typewriter.  The old way of governing around here protected organized interests; we should look out for the interests of ordinary people.  The old way divided us by interests, constituency or class; the New Covenant way should unite us behind a common vision of what’s best for our country.

The old way dispensed services through large, top-down, inflexible bureaucracies.  The New Covenant way should shift these resources and decision making from bureaucrats to citizens, injecting choice and competition and individual responsibility into national policy.

The old way of governing around here actually seemed to reward failure.  The New Covenant way should have built-in incentives to reward success.

The old way was centralized here in Washington.  The New Covenant way must take hold in the communities all across America, and we should help them to do that.

Our job here is to expand opportunity, not bureaucracy, to empower people to make the most of their own lives and to enhance our security here at home and abroad.

We must not ask Government to do what we should do for ourselves.  We should rely on Government as a partner to help us to do more for ourselves and for each other.

I hope very much that as we debate these specific and exciting matters, we can go beyond the sterile discussion between the illusion that there is somehow a program for every problem, on the one hand, and the other illusion that the Government is the source of every problem that we have.

Our job is to get rid of yesterday’s Government so that our own people can meet today’s and tomorrow’s needs.

And we ought to do it together.

You know, for years before I became President, I heard others say they would cut Government and how bad it was.  But not much happened.

We actually did it.  We cut over a quarter of a trillion dollars in spending, more than 300 domestic programs, more than 100,000 positions from the Federal bureaucracy in the last two years alone.

Based on decisions already made, we will have cut a total of more than a quarter of a million positions from the Federal Government, making it the smallest it has been since John Kennedy was president, by the time I come here again next year.