Word: gore
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...many government workers does it take to change a light bulb? Forty-three, according to a safety procedure proposed last year at the Rocky Flats nuclear- weapons plant in Colorado. Al Gore's report credits the Denver Post for disclosing the 33-step process that a plant staff member wanted to adopt for replacing the light bulb that warns workers of nuclear accidents. The proposed guidelines would require an estimated 1,087 worker hours to complete, compared to 60 hours currently...
Nonetheless, Gore's task force this week will release a report, formally labeled the National Performance Review, that aims at nothing less than "reinventing government" -- the title of a best-selling 1992 book that the Vice President has adopted as his slogan. Gore's report will recommend sweeping changes in the way the federal bureaucracy draws up its budgets, organizes its departments and agencies, buys its equipment and supplies, even in its procedures for hiring, promoting and (gasp!) firing employees...
Jokes about the inefficiencies and convolutions of government bureaucracy are as American as, well, a crust-enclosed dessert filled with the fruit of deciduous Eurasian plants known as apple trees. The first two are gags that were probably old when Vice President Al Gore's father Albert Sr. was first elected to the Senate in 1952. Their antiquity indicates how deeply entrenched are the habits of bureaucratic bumbling, and the immense force of inertia that sustains them. The paperwork story was presented as fact by a Treasury Department worker sounding off at one of the "town-hall" meetings the Vice...
...White House, however, is at least giving Gore's report a splashier send- off than any of the previous overhaul efforts. Following Gore's press conference on Tuesday, Bill Clinton himself will hit the road to whoop up Gore's plans, with likely stops in Cleveland, Ohio, and Houston. The Administration plans some kind of publicity event on five of the six days after the conference, each probably featuring a horror story of inefficiency. Gore has compiled an extensive list, headed by the 10 pages of specifications for ashtrays -- or, as they are known to the government, "ash receivers, tobacco...
...White House has reason to keep stoking up the pressure too. Clinton will trumpet the claim that Gore's recommended package will save $70 billion to $100 billion over five years, and will double to 200,000 the President's earlier projections on reducing the federal work force. That may be overoptimistic, but even considerably smaller savings might enable Clinton to hack his way out of a political tangle. The President has solemnly vowed to slice deeper into the federal deficit -- but how? The hairbreadth margins of his July budget victory indicate that further tax increases and deeper cuts...