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.
Under the leadership of Vice President Gore, our initiatives have already saved taxpayers $ 63 billion. The age of the $ 500 hammer and the ashtray you can break on David Letterman is gone. Deadwood programs like mohair subsidies are gone. We've streamlined the Agriculture Department by reducing it by more than 1,200 offices. We've slashed the small-business loan form from an inch thick to a single page. We've thrown away the Government's 10,000-page personnel manual.
And the Government is working better in important ways. FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has gone from being a disaster to helping people in disaster.
You can ask the farmers in the Middle West who fought the flood there or the people in California who've dealt with floods and earthquakes and fires and they'll tell you that.
Government workers, working hand-in-hand with private business, rebuilt Southern California's fractured freeways in record time and under budget.
And because the Federal Government moved fast, all but one of the 5,600 schools damaged in the earthquake are back in business.
Now, there are a lot of other things that I could talk about. I want to just mention one because it'll be discussed here in the next few weeks.