"I couldn't agree more with President Obama's call to vastly increase the Federal government's ability to merge overlapping and duplicative agencies and deliver better services at the same or less cost to taxpayers. In New York City, we've implemented more than a dozen mergers affecting more than 30 agencies and offices across the City. The positive results - from public health and safety to education and economic development - could not be clearer. For instance, it used to be that the teams that helped individuals find jobs and the teams that helped entrepreneurs create and grow small businesses worked in entirely separate agencies. By merging them together into our Department of Small Business Services, our Workforce1 Career Centers have gone from only helping 2,500 New Yorkers a year find jobs to a record 35,000 job placements in 2011.

"Today more than ever, our country today needs the President to have the same powers to do more with less that every President from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan had, and I commend and thank President Obama for making the case so clearly today."