President Boasts of 25% Cut in Staffers at White House

President Clinton Thursday claimed victory in his symbolic campaign promise to cut the White House staff by 25% but Republicans and some outside analysts suggested that the achievement proves only that the White House is skillful at juggling numbers and rearranging chairs.

On the eve of the new government fiscal year, which begins today, Clinton declared that he has delivered on a campaign pledge to set an example for the entire federal government by paring the White House payroll by some 389 employees, from 1,394 to 1,005.

“We have cut it and I can guarantee you that people around here have been complaining about it,” said the President, denying a Republican charge that the cuts are phony. “The truth is, we’re doing more work than my predecessors did with fewer people.”

But his critics contended that the numbers were achieved mostly by returning borrowed employees from other agencies, starting from a high base line to make the cuts easier and carving deeply into the operations of the White House Office of Drug Control Policy. Also, they contended, those who left the White House--through early retirement, normal attrition, reassignment and layoffs--were disproportionately underlings.

“For them to pretend that they’ll cut the staff by 25% . . . is basically a lie,” Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) declared on the House floor Wednesday morning.

Some of the largest White House units--the National Security Council, the Office of Management and Budget, the office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the Office of Administration, the domestic policy operation and the White House proper, are spending more now than before Clinton took office. Only because the drug control office has been pared by 121 employees--from 146 to 25--was the White House able to claim a net cost reduction of $3.5 million--less than 2% of its total fiscal 1994 budget.

Thirty percent of the emptied slots were held by political appointees, 30% by career civil servants and 40% by borrowed workers--”detailees.” Of the 109 employees who were actually given discharge papers, 46 have since been placed in other jobs.