Clinton's America/Paper Cuts

...Again, given that detailees are likely to be hit first, a de facto increase is possible...

...Another had only one year before she was scheduled to retire, and now cannot support her unemployed husband...

...These are the people who "work hard and play by the rules," who will lack the resources to get health care and job training once thrown out of their jobs...

...But White House Communications Director George Stephanopoulostried to turn even this inconsistency to political advantage...

...While several were hired during the Reagan and Bush administrations, they were considered non-political and did not have to be "vetted" before being hired...

...The obvious thing that happened is...

...For example, Bush's Office of the President employed 461, while only 392 were on the White House payroll...

...Clinton's 350 number, then, is more correctly seen as a number between 75 and 350, and more likely closer to the former—detailees are easier to cut, since many are not really being cut at all...

...What it means is that the Clinton administration can take credit for making cuts without losing bureaucratic power—and perhaps even gaining it...

...And with Dan Quayle out of the picture, who needs his Space Council...

...The last piece of White House stationery they handled was a letter from Marsha Scott, now the Clinton director of presidential correspondence, asking them to make way for the Clinton loyalists: "We are in the process of making significant reductions in personnel...

...Acting Director John Walters resigned in protest of the cuts, refusing to participate in the "hypocrisy" of emasculating the agency while claiming to strengthen it by giving it cabinettable status...

...The drug czar has always sat at the cabinet table when drug related issues were discussed...

...N ow that Clinton has demonstrated his willingness to share the pain of the American people, his aides are sending up trial balloons concerning a possible request for an additional $3 million to beef up the personnel office, and a possible application of the $10 million they expect to save from staff cuts to go to new computer equipment to replace that which was purchased in Bush's mid-term...

...If so, this would mean a cut in actual White House personnel of five percent...

...At the same time, we are also bringing in people from our own team to work in each area...

...The only real reductions were in offices with no clout—the Council on Environmental Quality, the National Space Council, the Office of Administration, and the Office of National Drug Control Policy...

...President Clinton doesn't care about the drug problem," said Walters...

...She was rehired, after a petitioning campaign on her behalf by employees who escaped the axe...

...It is therefore with great sadness that I must terminate your employment...

...According to information acquired by Citizens for a Sound Economy through a Freedom of Information Act request to the Office of Personnel Management, even this figure is suspect...

...We're' not doing that...

...But the prospect of "unfirings" certainly had the effect of making some of the "worker bees" less willing to speak for attribution to this reporter...

...The forty-seven messengers, computer technicians, and accountants fired from the Office of Administration were easy marks, being similarly leaderless and having no one to protest on their behalf...

...What does it say about Clinton that the first people he fired are the very sort he says he was elected to help...

...it means diluting it, by adding jokers to the pack of discards...

...While these expenditures cannot be considered of the perk variety, real progress is being made on that front...

...H igh on Clinton's hit list were nineteen "worker bee" employees of the White House Correspondence Office, mostly older women, some of whom have worked in the White House since the Nixon and Johnson administrations, and who worked for low wages "at the pleasure of the president," unprotected by the federal career civil service system...

...Had we not included the detailees in this calculation, it would have been fair to come back and say to us, well, you have more bodies there, you're just playing a mathematical game...

...This left a baseline of only 1,394 jobs, from which Clinton cut 350, or 25 percent...

...Since the "worker bees" were not protected by career civil service regulations, many were forced into early retirement only a few years or months before they would have been entitled to collect their pensions...

...We in government can't ask the American people to change if we will not do the same," said the belt-tightening Clinton...

...Their job was to sort the mail and send out letters following responses drafted by political appointees...

...1 n an attempt to soften up the American people for coming tax increases, President Bill Clinton announced a plan to share the nation's sacrifice by reducing his own White House staff by 25 percent, and cutting salaries 6 to 9 percent...

...These forty-seven mostly minority employees were thus of little use to Clinton...

...The firing of the long-term career staff of the correspondence office came on the heels of a pep-talk from Marsha Scott, an interior decorator by profession...

...Many of Clinton's "reductions" are merely shifts of detailees to other agencies...

...One woman had only four more years until retirement, and will have a difficult time getting health insurance, given her recent cancer surgery...

...We wanted to make sure we had a hard, straight count," he said at a February 9 press conference...

...The Office of National Drug Control Policy, which suffered a third of the staff reductions, had no "czar" to complain...

...To fulfill his promise, Clinton engaged in some creative accounting: he first narrowed the pool of jobs subject to elimination by exempting the bloated Office of Management and Budget and the United States Trade Representative from cuts...

...Scott asked the staff to make a wish list of new furniture they would like, and reassured them that "the department was going to expand, that we were going to work as a team, and that, by gosh, we're going to have fun doing it"—all this while the Clinton bean-counters were already licking their chops...

...and, furthermore, were subject to the Hatch Act, which prohibits certain government employees from campaigning and other political activities...

...They were not verifiable Clinton loyalists, having undergone no political "vetting" before being hired...

...Whether this was due to heightened press interest in the plight of the "little old ladies" or to a twinge of conscience on the Clintonistas' part isunclear...

...B ut this is a mathematical game: adding detailees to the equation doesn't mean increasing the scope of the cuts...

...White House cars, which are there to transport one to any "official" function at a moment's notice, will be reduced from 108 to 104, the* posh White House mess will be open to everyone, and more employees will be able to sit in the Kennedy Center's presidential box...

...There is real fear among the worker bees of high-handed retaliation should any of them complain: one, of them, younger and in less dire straits, spoke on the condition of anonymity, lest the Clinton people look up her maiden name on her 171 form, and get her father fired from his federal job...

...With Al Gore on hand, CEQ would have been eliminated under any circumstances, just as Vice President George Bush's Task Force on Regulatory Relief was replaced by Dan Quayle's Competitiveness Council...

...The workers began to distrust their new supervisors when word spread that Acting Deputy Director of Presidential Correspondence Sandy Hudnall, unbeknownst to her, had been overheard in the ladies' room saying, "They think I'm being nice now, but just wait and see"—and, as she flushed the toilet—"There goes another Bush person...

...It's an irony, of course, that Clinton, after numerous vague campaign promises about "healing" our racial conflicts, should have chosen the most ethnically diverse of the White House offices for some of his cruelest cuts...

...As we go to press, there is still no word about the tennis courts...

...Of the 1,394 jobs under Bush, 275 were held by "detailees," i.e., those who are employed by other government agencies, but sent "on loan" to the White House...

...Clinton plans to "reduce" this office to 419...