Quotes of the Year

1997: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Quotes of the Year

People say funny things. That's one of the reasons we started putting a notable quotation in the Quote/Unquote section on the front page of GovExec.com each day. Another reason is that people on Capitol Hill, in the Clinton administration and around the government say things that can have a major influence on the careers of federal managers and executives.

Our Year in Review would not be complete without a look back at the most important, the wittiest and the most compelling quotes of the year.

For a look at all the year's quotes, stop by the Quote/Unquote Archive.

January 16
"Washington is like a dead mackerel on the beach. It shines and it stinks."
--Outgoing assistant secretary of Labor Joe Dear.

January 22
"Even if the government had ideas, which it doesn't, it doesn't have the resources."
--Commentator George Will, on ABC's This Week.

January 23
"I am distressed when I see government workers described . . . as 'non-essential employees.' All government workers are essential; if they are not, they should not be working for the federal government."
--Office of Personnel Management Director James B. King.

January 28
"I've never been Secretary of State. I have been a woman for nearly 60 years. So I am now going to see how you put the two together."
--Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, at a meeting with employees.

February 3
"Downsizing we've done. We don't need to worry about getting the numbers down."
--An unnamed Clinton Administration official quoted in The Washington Post.

February 6
"The era of big government may be over, but the era of big spending isn't over."
--House Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Livingston, R-La., on President Clinton's fiscal 1998 budget.

February 24
"I would think Riddick would like to serve his country, but in some other capacity. Maybe now he can run for Congress or something."
--Rock Newman, manager for former heavyweight boxing champ Riddick Bowe, on Bowe's decision to leave the Marine Corps Reserves after only three days of training.

February 26
"I couldn't help thinking, you know, the hero works for the U.S. Geological [Survey], and his life is saved in the end by a contraption developed not here at home for uses on the ground, but by NASA for use in space. And I thought, the government is not the enemy."
--President Clinton on the movie "Dante's Peak," in an appearance before the American Council on Education.

March 7
"What's the difference between Jurassic Park and the U.S. Army? One is an amusement park dominated by dinosaurs, the other is a movie."
--Joke circulating among Army officers critical of the service's planning, according to the Wall Street Journal.

March 18
"It is nasty and brutish without being short."
--Former National Security Advisor Anthony Lake on the political appointee confirmation process.

March 26
"Only with a major crash, only with people dead and sobbing survivors filling television screens, does the FAA step up to the plate and make changes."
--Former Transportation Department inspector general Mary Schiavo in her new book, Flying Blind, Flying Safe.

April 2
"There is no better way to create a truly demoralized organization, one that is frozen in its tracks, than to announce that a new 'business' manager is going to come in and reassign career executives willy nilly."
--Senior Executive Association President Carol Bonosaro on a proposal to allow the IRS commissioner more leeway in moving senior career officials.

April 3
"When faced with a 20-year threat, the government responds with a 15-year plan, in a six-year defense program, managed by three-year personnel, attempting to develop a two-year budget, which in reality is funded by a one-year appropriation (which is typically one to six months late), actually formulated over a three-day weekend and approved in a one-hour decision briefing."
--A sign posted over a Pentagon official's desk.

April 9
"I think the biggest insult to me in that statement is someone calling me a bureaucrat. I think I've been called a lot of things and bureaucrat hasn't been one of them, so that's a bit of an insult."
--New White House AIDS Czar Sandy Thurman on a statement by ACT-UP, an activist group, that she is "the latest in a series of ineffective, no-name bureaucrats" named to the AIDS post.

April 30
"For $10,000, you can have a private meeting with Vice President Gore to discuss reinventing government. And for $20,000, you don't have to go."
--President Clinton, reading from a "White House memo" on campaign contributions at last week's White House Correspondents dinner.

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 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 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.

June 3
"I felt there were 168 smiles from above."
--Dan McKinney, whose wife, Secret Service Agent Linda McKinney, was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, quoted by the Associated Press on the guilty verdict brought against Timothy McVeigh.

June 10
"Nowadays managers are the only group it's politically correct to make fun of."
--National Performance Review Director Bob Stone.

June 23
"I for one am not going to be in an airplane on New Year's Eve in 1999."
--Attorney Cathleen Judge on the effects of the Year 2000 problem on computers, including navigation systems.

June 24
"I learned a couple of months ago where the definition of the word politics comes from. . . . It comes from 'poly,' the Greek word meaning many, and 'ticks,' meaning small blood-sucking insects."
--Joseph Romm, acting assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, at Johnson Controls' Energy Efficiency Forum last week.

June 27
"The law gets a bad rap. Congress, in fact, gets a bad rap. Much of what is bureaucratic red tape that causes inefficiency are self-inflicted wounds that the government has done to itself over the years."
--Elaine Kamarck, Vice President Gore's outgoing senior policy adviser.

July 8
"If we are serious about dealing with the problems of race in America, then the government must look in its own backyard--the federal workforce."
--Rep. Albert Wynn, D-Md., at a press conference Monday.

July 10
"Don't take yourself so goddamn seriously."
--Boston Philharmonic Conductor Benjamin Zander's advice to a group of federal managers and executives.

July 17
"Right now, we're holding things together with string and baling wire."
--Acting National Park Service director Denis Galvin on the agency's budget problems.

July 25
"Just because he isn't promoting the Clinton administration's political agenda regarding nudity, he is being forced out of his job."
--Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla., on the transfer of Canaveral National Seashore Superintendent Wendell Simpson in the midst of a controversy over nude sunbathing along the seashore.

August 18
"There's the notion that real altruism comes from bureaucrats, that they are the moral equivalent of nuns and monks. That is one of the legacies that we must get rid of."
--Steve Forbes, in remarks to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

August 22
"The debate is over. We know now that welfare reform works."
--President Clinton.
"The real test is whether people stay off. Is it too early to tell? You bet."
--Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala.

August 29
"There are more vacancies in this administration than you'll find at Disneyland at the height of a hurricane."
--Paul C. Light, director of the Public Policy Program at the Pew Charitable Trusts.

September 3
"Anyone waiting for a regulatory fix might as well be waiting to shake hands with Elvis."
--Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, on the long time federal land agencies take to develop regulations.

September 17
"At some point we have to decide--are we proud professionals, or are we always going to be cowering and sycophantic?"
--Steven Kelman, former administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, on the mindset of the procurement workforce.

September 24
"The IRS is an easy target for criticism and a convenient whipping boy. I believe the great majority of the 102,000 employees of the IRS, our neighbors, do their very best."
-- Sen. Richard H. Bryan, D-Nev., at the beginning of Senate Finance Committee hearings on alleged abuses by the IRS.

October 1
"The first role of government is not to provide jobs. It's to provide services."
--Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., on his Freedom from Government Competition Act.

October 6
"All roads lead to OMB."
--G. Edward DeSeve, acting deputy director for management at OMB.

October 21
"The government and aerospace industries would be the two on top of my list, and aerospace would be there because they have to deal with government so much."
--"Dilbert" cartoonist Scott Adams, when asked where the most Dilbert-like workers can be found.

October 29
"Your background is uniquely suited to the task. You are not a career civil servant. You are a successful businessman."
--Sen. William Roth, R-Del., to IRS commissioner-designate Charles O. Rossotti.

October 30
"Only in America could a poor black kid end up with the Vice President of the United States visiting him at the hospital."
--AFGE President John Sturdivant to Vice President Al Gore when Gore visited him in the hospital earlier this year.

November 3
"It would not be hard. I mean, they're not the brightest people in the world."
--Accused spy and Pentagon attorney Theresa Squillacote, talking to an undercover FBI agent prior to her arrest about her chances of landing a job at the Office of Management and Budget.

November 13
"You get the sense in talking to management in the bureau that they've just been holding on for a long time. There's no thought that they have the ability to make things better, and they're just trying to keep them from getting any worse."
--Kevin Gover, the new head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

November 24
"I may have to introduce legislation to rename the agency the 'U.S. Lip Service.'"
--Sen. Frank H. Murkowski, R-Alaska, accusing Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman of failing to follow through on his promise to be "directly responsible for the Forest Service."

December 2
"That will produce a predictable amount of squawking from the agencies."
--White House press secretary Michael McCurry, commenting on his announcement that OMB had sent President Clinton proposed fiscal 1999 spending caps for agencies.

December 11
"I'm not 'dissing' the GPRA process. Frankly, I'm saying, you are finally starting to catch up with us; we're there; we've been doing it."
--Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre on the Defense Department's efforts at results-based management.