By: (AP) Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, speaking to a roomful of editors and publishers, poked fun Thursday at the federal bureaucracy and what might happen if it attempted to produce a newspaper.
His account:
"Those of us in government need to keep in mind the daily miracle of what it is you do, the work you do. You do something that is rare in Washington: You actually produce something.
"Consider what might happen if government were asked to put out a daily newspaper. Well, for starters, there would likely be a flurry of meetings, leaked memos, and then I suspect leaked recommendations, followed by the adoption of a draft policy guideline and then a 90-day open comment period where interest groups would proceed to shred that guideline.
"Then we would need a request for a supplemental budget, for sure, possibly even a recommendation for a new federal agency, to be followed by a congressional investigation on why we missed our deadline, followed, of course, by an independent commission to study what the congressional investigation had already studied."
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