Gore to Head Panel to Locate, Wipe Out Waste

Embarking on a path that has frustrated many before him, President Clinton on Wednesday ordered a crash six-month program to find ways to cut the costs and improve the performance of the federal government.

The “national performance review,” will be headed by Vice President Al Gore, and based, at least loosely, on a recent Texas budget-cutting effort.

To encourage the public’s participation and support, the White House will set up toll-free telephone numbers and urge Americans to write Gore with their ideas.

“As we locate waste and wipe it out, it will be a breath of fresh air for American taxpayers,” Clinton said at a morning press conference attended by congressional leaders and officials of the executive branch.

The move represents another step toward the President’s often-declared campaign vow to “reinvent government” but also has a more immediate political motive: Clinton wants to convince Americans that he is serious about reducing government bloat at a time when he is asking them to pay more taxes.

While many of the details of the effort have not been fleshed out, plans call for each major federal agency to assign five to 10 officials to take part in the brainstorming. The center of the action will be at a “war room” in a yet-undetermined site in Washington.

The plan is patterned on an effort organized by Texas state Comptroller John Sharp two years ago when that state faced a huge budget deficit. Sharp brought together 100 auditors and others from 16 agencies, and they worked in isolation for five months to recommend savings worth an estimated $4.2 billion. The Texas Legislature adopted more than 60% of the group’s recommendations, for total cuts of $2.4 billion.

Sharp was present at Wednesday’s announcement and will be a consultant to the effort. Also involved will be David Osborne, whose book, “Reinventing Government,” influenced Clinton on ways to change the culture and structure of the bureaucracy.

Gore declined to say how much the Administration hopes to save from the effort, but he promised that the number would be “substantial.”

The Clinton economic plan envisions that $23 billion will be cut from government costs over the next four years, including $16 billion from a federal salary freeze and cuts of 100,000 jobs. Some critics have expressed skepticism that such savings will be realized.

Administration officials said they believe they can succeed because they will enlist government workers in the cause. Their chances of success are also improved, they said, because the White House is not facing a Congress hostile to its actions.

“In the past, most efforts to reinvent government have come from those who really wanted to slash and burn and stop government from doing anything altogether,” said Bruce Reed, deputy assistant to the President for domestic policy.

Just as it took President Richard Nixon, a conservative, to make an opening to China, “the President believes it will take a Democrat who believes in government to make this work,” he said.

The initiative drew mixed reviews. Some in Congress who have advocated steps to streamline government hailed it but asserted that serious government reorganization must be accompanied by congressional action to consolidate or eliminate most bureaucracies.

“This is a good first step, but I don’t see it as a substitute for congressional action,” said Sen. William V. Roth Jr. (R-Del.), a longtime advocate of government reorganization.

Roth is pushing legislation that would create a bipartisan commission to recommend proposals for government reorganization. His proposal would give teeth to such recommendations by providing that once they are approved by the President, they would take effect automatically in 30 days unless rejected by votes of both houses of Congress.

Tom Schatz, executive director of Citizens Against Waste, a nonpartisan watchdog group, insisted that the problem is not identifying waste but eliminating it in the face of resistant bureaucracies, interest groups and congressional committees.

“The fact is that there are hundreds of recommendations that are already out there,” he said.

Some analysts argue that in the aftermath of former presidential candidate Ross Perot’s campaign for a leaner government, this may be a propitious moment to push for a sweeping reorganization of government. But in the same breath, they warn that the recent history of such efforts records one lamentable failure after another.

In the 1960s, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara went to the Department of Defense with a government reorganizing scheme called PPBS--planning, programming, budgeting system. The system foundered before the Pentagon brass had learned the acronym.

Roy Ash, who directed the Bureau of the Budget under Nixon, headed a high-profile task force called that Ash Council. It gave the bureau a fancy new name, the Office of Management and Budget, but accomplished little else of note.

President Jimmy Carter spent enormous political capital on his effort to reorganize the bureaucracy but ran afoul of Congress.

And President Ronald Reagan appointed industrialist Peter Grace to head up a commission to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in the government. The Grace Commission generated 2,478 recommendations in a 14-volume report. Copies are now layered with dust on bookshelves throughout Washington.

How to Report Abuses

A list of telephone numbers citizens can call with complaints of waste, abuse, fraud or neglect. Or they can write to President Clinton or Vice President Al Gore with suggestions on how to make government more efficient: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, D.C., 20006. Agency: Phone Agriculture: 1-800-424-9121 Commission on Civil Rights: 1-800-552-6843 Commerce: 1-800-424-5197 Defense: 1-800-424-9098 Education: 1-800-647-8733 Energy: 1-800-541-1625 Environmental Protection Agency: 1-800-424-4000 Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.: 1-800-964-3342 Federal Emergency Management Agency: 1-800-323-8603 General Services Administration: 1-202-501-1780 Health and Human Services: 1-800-368-5779 Housing and Urban Development: 1-800-347-3735 Interior: 1-800-424-5081 Justice: 1-800-869-4499 Labor: 1-800-347-3756 NASA: 1-800-424-9183 Nuclear Regulatory Commission: 1-800-233-3497 Resolution Trust Corporation: 1-800-833-3310 Transportation: 1-800-424-9071 Treasury: 1-800-359-3898 Veterans Affairs: 1-800-488-8244