Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 10, 1993 TAG: 9302100173
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
CLINTON TRIMS 350 FROM WHITE HOUSE
Saying he would tighten his own belt before asking voters to do the same, President Clinton announced Tuesday that the White House staff would be trimmed to fulfill a campaign promise, but critics immediately accused him of playing statistical games.Clinton announced that he would reduce the executive staff by 350 positions, from the 1,394 employees of the Bush administration on Election Day last year to a projected 1,044 on Oct. 1 this year, the start of fiscal 1994.
The reduction was designed to match Clinton's campaign pledge to cut the White House staff by 25 percent. He also promised to reduce federal administration costs by 3 percent during his first term and slash the 2.2 million federal payroll, excluding postal workers, by 100,000 jobs, mainly through attrition.
Clinton's biggest cutback will be administered to the office of the drug czar, a high-profile White House unit during the Reagan and Bush years. Clinton will reduce its staff from 146 to 25, putting most of the work back to the agencies directly involved in the war on drugs. A White House statement said the office had become "a political dumping ground" during the Bush administration.
The first lady's staff also has been reduced, officials said, but they were unable to say by exactly how much. The office of the president itself will be reduced from 461 to 419, and the executive mansion staff will go from 95 to 89.
In what White House chief of staff Thomas McLarty called "real and symbolic" cutbacks, Clinton also restricted door-to-door limousine service to just two White House aides, opened the White House mess - the executive restaurant - to all White House workers, and ordered a review of the big-ticket items of presidential travel and security.
The only two members of his staff who will be ferried between home and office are security adviser Anthony Lake and his deputy, Samuel Berger. Previously six staffers had limo privileges. McLarty said he was offered the privilege but declined it.
Tuesday's economies were a prelude to wider government cutbacks being announced today and to the "sacrifices" Clinton said he will ask of the public and business next week when he outlines his economic program in his State of the Union address.
Criticism of Clinton's announcement centered on his exclusion from the cutbacks of two of the largest executive branch agencies, the Office of Management and Budget and the U.S. Trade Representative's Office. Between them, they employed 738 in December 1992.
Clinton's reductions also included sending 70 "detailees," employees of other agencies on assignment to the White House, back to their original departments, meaning no overall federal job reduction.
Memo: Shorter version ran in Metro edition.