THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, December 24, 1994 TAG: 9412230049
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
The Clinton administration is scrambling to compete with the new Republican majority in Congress by proposing cuts in programs.
Republicans gleefully accuse Clinton of me-tooism and a deathbed conversion. There's more than a grain of truth in that, but at least intermittently Clinton has been a new kind of Democrat. His efforts to reduce the deficit, advance the cause of free trade and reinvent government are not old-fashioned liberalism.
One reason Clinton's in political trouble is that he's gone too far in a reform direction for many Democrats while not going far enough to appeal to some Republicans. His new proposals may also fall between two stools, but some deserve consideration as debate continues about what tasks government should perform.
Clinton has proposed giving unemployed workers education vouchers to let them choose the retraining programs most likely to enable them to acquire new jobs.
Now Clinton is suggesting a similar change at Housing and Urban Development. Instead of giving the poor access to public housing, the administration proposes giving vouchers - housing stamps on the model of food stamps that would give access to the private housing market.
Republicans also favor this idea which could put an end to housing projects that so often have turned into slums. The plan would also eliminate much of the federal housing bureaucracy. But it hardly addresses the philosophical question of government handouts or the question of cost.
Clinton has also begun to embrace privatization. He has suggested selling off government oil reserves. He favors contracting for various functions now performed badly in-house by the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), such as data processing. He has even said he might consider letting employees of those agencies take them private. The 40,000 air-traffic-control workers might become a semi-private corporation supported by fees. And a similar fate has been suggested for Federal Housing Administration.
The justification for many of these reforms confirms the claims of critics of bureaucracy. The head of GSA says his agency is ``locked in a horrible situation of rules and regulations'' where no one has any incentive to innovate. HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros says privatization is the way out of a byzantine tangle of regulations at his department. The air-traffic control solution would get around what Don Phillips of the Washington Post describes as ``burdensome federal rules regarding worker compensation and procurement.''
In other words, federal bureaucrats admit the federal bureaucracy is such a mess that reform is often impossible. The only way to get the federal government to work is to spin off, sell off, or kill off programs. Clinton may have reluctantly come to this conclusion, but the Republicans are going to be a lot more enthusiastic spinners, sellers and killers.
The real trick will be keeping the zeal in check so that only programs that deserve to die get the ax. The problem with revolutions is: Once the guillotines are set up, there's a temptation to just keep those heads rolling. by CNB