| For Immediate Release | Contact: Sean Rushton or Melissa Naudin |
| February 19, 2001 | (202) 467-5300 |
Washington, D.C. – Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), America’s largest taxpayer advocacy group, today denounced former President Bill Clinton’s highly-paid speech Monday evening to the Oracle Corporation and the possibility of his joining the company’s board of directors.
Oracle was an instigator and one of the main beneficiaries of the Clinton Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against the Microsoft Corporation.
“The government’s case against Microsoft has been about favoring individual competitors rather than impartial application of the law,” CAGW President Thomas A. Schatz said. “At the very least, this speech creates the appearance of impropriety and further illustrates the former president’s tin ear for ethics. At worst, and taken in the context of Clinton’s arm-length list of other abuses of the public trust since leaving office, this engagement smacks of an unambiguous payoff for doing Oracle’s bidding while in office.”
The speech also raises questions about the integrity of Oracle itself. “While other organizations are dropping President Clinton from their schedule as quickly as possible due to his post-election scandals, Oracle had no hesitation in lining up the former president within the first month,” Schatz added. “This is not the first time Oracle exercised questionable judgment in attempting to further its political agenda. The company used outside operatives to examine the trash of nonprofit organizations to discover what everyone already knew – these groups were receiving support from Microsoft.”
The Microsoft case goes to U.S. Court of Appeals later this month, and regardless of the final result, the Clinton Justice Department’s legacy in this matter will be a massive and unnecessary loss of investor assets, and further intervention by government into the technology marketplace.
“Former President Clinton and Oracle are a perfect couple. Both have advanced degrees in questionable judgment,” Schatz added. “This quid pro quo highlights that the Microsoft suit was motivated by parochial interests to reward friends and contributors, and had nothing to do with consumers or markets. It is hard to see what the suit has accomplished besides wasting $40 million of taxpayer money at the federal and state levels.”
CAGW is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization with over a million members and supporters, dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in government.