The Work of the Vice President
“Al Gore, more than any vice president in our history, has justified our having a vice president. There is no question that Al Gore has set a new standard for a vice president.”
--James MacGregor Burns, historian
Vice President Al Gore played an important role in nearly every important decision of the Clinton Administration. He was at the forefront of the Reinventing Government Initiative, which cut 137 billion dollars from the national budget, cut out 16,000 pages of needless regulations, and reduced the number of the government’s civilian employees to its lowest level since the early 1960s. He was an advocate for the historic North American Free Trade Agreement, defending it in a televised debate with former presidential candidate Ross Perot. Vice President Gore met regularly with his Russian counterpart, Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, to discuss shared interests such as nuclear disarmament, and he played a critical role in the removal of thousands of nuclear weapons from former Soviet states.
Environmental issues such as global warming had been of great concern to Vice President Gore since his days in Congress. He became the Clinton Administration’s point person on the environment, raising standards for clean air and water and guiding the clean-up of toxic waste sites. In this area of the permanent exhibit, visitors can see numerous photos from Al Gore’s Vice Presidency as well as his remarks to the U.N. Committee on Climate Change in Kyoto, Japan in 1997.