Less Here Than Meets the Eye? : White House cuts, however deep or shallow, do send out exactly the right signal

President Clinton, preparing to ask for national sacrifices in the economic program he will present to Congress next Wednesday, has targeted the White House staff and the whole of the executive branch as the first areas where sweeping and painful cuts in federal spending will be made. Well, cuts, anyway. Acting on a campaign promise, Clinton says White House staffing will be reduced by 25%, for an eventual savings of $10 million a year, and the federal payroll will be reduced by at least 100,000 jobs through attrition over the next four years, for a savings of about $9 billion. Certainly a slimmer, less wasteful bureaucracy is to be encouraged and welcomed. It is no reflection on Clinton’s sincerity, however, to suggest that applause for his efforts be withheld until a final tally of what has actually been saved can be made.

The White House reductions, for example, involve more than a little sleight of hand. To get to his promised 25% cut, Clinton has excluded from his calculations about 800 employees of the military, the Secret Service and the budget and trade representative offices, all of whom work at the White House. Moreover, many of those whose jobs will disappear are relatively low-level, lesser-paid employees who do not owe their positions to political pull.

Shaving 100,000 from the civilian federal work force of 2.1 million certainly is achievable. Each year about one-tenth of that work force retires or otherwise leaves the payroll. The personnel shrinkage is to be accompanied by across-the-board cuts averaging about 3% a year in every department’s administrative outlays. At the same time Clinton wants to eliminate about one-third of the existing 700 advisory boards and commissions--the Advisory Panel for the Dictionary of Occupational Job Titles, the Technical Advisory Group for Cigarette Fire Safety, etc.--for an annual savings of about $50 million. Other modest savings will be made by ending such money-losing executive privileges as private dining rooms and reducing the number of officials entitled to chauffeur-driven cars.

All this is laudable. As, indeed, earlier cost-cutting promises and measures were laudable, from Lyndon B. Johnson’s well-publicized show of saving a few bucks by turning off unnecessary White House lights through Jimmy Carter’s and George Bush’s more ambitious pledges to rein in government growth. To say nothing of all the endless bold talk by every President about eliminating waste, fraud and abuse throughout the vast federal bureaucracy. And in the end, just what was accomplished? In truth, not much. Americans must all hope that Clinton can deliver more. But, as we said, let’s wait to see what the bottom line actually shows before counting the billions saved.