Quote/Unquote
May 30"There's not going to be a U.S. Department of Attitude Adjustment."
May 29
"It better serves the interests of the American people to keep the government open. It better serves the interests of the American people to make sure we're spending the money in a frugal manner."
--House Speaker Newt Gingrich on why Republicans are determined to include an anti-shutdown provision in the fiscal 1997 supplemental appropriations bill.
May 28
"It is a perverse rule of bureaucracy that people with a common set of goals and a common set of agendas are the ones most likely to end up at each other's throats."
--L. Craig Johnstone, the State Department's director for resources, plans and policy, quoted in The Washington Post about efforts to reorganize the foreign affairs agencies.
May 27
"In the military, when you ask someone to do something, they do it right away. In the civilian world, they look at you like you're nuts."
--Peter Colyn, an Air Force retiree, quoted in a Washington Post article about life after military service.
May 23
"When you bring in women, it's always for the better. They're smart and we like to look at them."
--Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., on having more women in the Senate.
May 22
"We never thought it would happen. A government data center that's more qualified than a commercial one?"
--Pat Ways, a vice president at Computer Sciences Corp., on why businesses haven't been concerned up to now about legislation encouraging agencies to compete with private companies to provide services such as data processing to other agencies.
May 21
"Well, we don't have to worry about the rules for that. We're all so busy and we're professionals, of course."
--Space shuttle commander Charles Precourt, responding to a question from a C-SPAN viewer about regulations governing sex in space.
May 20
"As chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, it's my job to set specific spending levels for programs. This agreement does not prevent my committee from attempting to terminate or cut programs of questionable worth."
--Rep. Robert Livingston, R-La., on the budget agreement up for debate in the House Tuesday.
May 19
"What was done cannot be undone, but we can end the silence. We can stop turning our heads away, we can look you in the eye, and finally say, on behalf of the American people, what the United States government did was shameful, and I am sorry."
--President Clinton at a White House meeting with survivors of a 1930s syphillis experiment on black men in Tuskegee, Ala.
May 16
"With an agreement, you don't have an agreement until you have an agreement."
--OMB Director Franklin Raines on the process of reaching a fiscal 1998 budget deal.
May 15
"Because I'm running it and I've got my butt on the line, OK?"
--Defense Comptroller John Hamre on how the new Task Force on Defense Reform will be different than previous streamlining efforts.
May 14
"You can't yell 'Fire!' in a theater but you can recommend shooting federal agents."
--Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., on his concerns that there should be harsher punishments for people who encourage attacks against federal employees.
May 13
"The warm-climate community just hasn't found the colder climate that attractive. It's an area of America that has simply never attracted the Afro-American or the Hispanic."
--Rep. Helen Chenoweth, R-Idaho, quoted by the Seattle Times, regarding U.S. Forest Service efforts to recruit minority workers in her state.
May 12
"I, after pushing for all of those years for governmental reform on Capitol Hill, now sit on the largest bureaucracy in government and I feel something like Captain Ahab. I have finally come face to face with the white whale that I've been chasing all these years and I'm lashed to it."
--Secretary of Defense William Cohen in remarks at the Business Executives for National Security dinner last week.
May 9
"Government executives are highly motivated people. But they can be additionally motivated by incentive and consequence."
--Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corp. Deputy Administrator David Sanders on the merits of performance-based organizations.
May 8
"Someone proposed the Air Force hold bake sales to pay for the F-22s [fighter jets]. That one came from the Army, I think. We also dropped the idea that we ask Bob Dole for a big loan."
--Defense Secretary William Cohen on ideas that were rejected in the Quadrennial Defense Review.
May 7
"People come first. As vital as technology is to our work, intelligence is primarily a human endeavor."
--Director of Central Intelligence-designate George Tenet on his management philosophy.
May 6
"In a time of leaner budgets and smaller staffs, they work hard to inspire and maintain the public's trust in government, to forge effective partnerships between the private and public sectors, and to make government work better for all our people."
--President Clinton on civil servants, in his Public Service Recognition week message.
May 5
"I continue to be dismayed about our culture of disdain in which everyone seems to be seeking an excuse for looking down on someone else."
--State Department personnel chief Anthony Quainton, lamenting a "caste consciousness" at the department's overseas posts.
May 2
"When the Post Office starts selling teddy bears, they're getting totally away from the agency's core mission."
--Robert Raasch of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on agencies' efforts to be more entrepreneurial.
May 1
"This is the worst kind of government, cutting deals in the dark . . . . This process stinks."
--Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., on budget negotiations.
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