THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
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For Immediate Release
December 28, 2000
STATEMENT BY COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT
BETH NOLAN
Today the President has revoked Executive Order 12834, effective at
noon on January 20, 2001. The Executive Order has imposed special
post-employment restrictions on senior appointees of the Clinton
Administration in order to ensure that they not appear to have undue access
to their former colleagues when their government service ended. It did so
by extending to five years the one-year lobbying bar imposed on senior
officials and trade negotiators by statute and also imposed a lifetime bar
on activities that required registration under the Foreign Agents
Registration Act.
When the President signed the Executive Order, he did so to ensure
that his senior appointees would be focused only on serving the American
people. It has served that goal well. It has been in force throughout
this Administration and has applied to thousands of senior appointees.
Clinton Administration appointees have known from the outset that their
sole purpose in accepting a government position was to work for the
American people and not to further their own post-government careers.
The Executive Order has been applied only to those appointed by
President Clinton; no appointees in prior Administrations have been subject
to it, including senior appointees who held over from the prior
Administration and served under President Clinton. The main policies
underlying the Executive Order no longer apply when there is a change of
parties at the White House. Senior appointees of the Clinton
Administration will not have the kind of special access to a Republican
Administration that the Executive Order was designed to regulate.
Indeed, as President Clinton is about to leave office, we have been
urged by many, including the sponsors of the Presidential Appointee
Initiative, to reexamine the need for continued application of the
Executive Order. We agreed that a reevaluation makes sense at this time.
The President believes that the Executive Order has served its
purpose. Former Clinton Administration appointees will still be limited by
the post-employment restrictions that apply to all former government
officials. Because special access is no longer a concern, however, the
special measures contained in the Executive Order are no longer necessary.
Thus the President has determined that his senior appointees will no longer
be subject to the requirements of the Executive Order after January 20,
2001.
Furthermore, as a new President from a new party is about to assume
office, the new Administration should have the same flexibility to decide
for itself what post-employment restrictions it may wish to impose beyond
that which the law already requires. By revoking Executive Order 12834,
President Clinton leaves the new Administration with maximum flexibility.
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