WASHINGTON INSIGHT

BUDGET WARS: Pentagon-watchers are bracing for another battle over the defense budget for fiscal 1995. Although President Clinton has already cut more than he promised from Pentagon spending, insiders say the scramble to offset the cost of new domestic programs--such as health care reform--will intensify pressures for more military cuts. . . . That, in turn, is almost certain to irk military leaders and anger congressional conservatives, who have drawn a “line in the sand” against further reductions in defense spending. . . . Conservatives say the Pentagon has already been squeezed excessively and that the cuts are beginning to threaten military readiness. Caught in the middle will be Defense Secretary Les Aspin, whose “bottom-up review” of the nation’s defense policy was supposed to ward off more military spending cuts. . . . Aspin will have support from Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. But Rep. Ronald V. Dellums (D-Oakland), Nunn’s House counterpart, is not expected to resist recommendations for deeper reductions. . . . One problem for the White House: With debacles in Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia, analysts say Clinton cannot afford to be seen as “weak on defense.”

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LISTEN TO THE PEOPLE: First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and her chief adviser on health care reform, Ira Magaziner, have been touring the country, ostensibly to hear the views of average Americans on health care. More often than not, the views they are hearing are those of special interest groups with offices in Washington. . . . Magaziner drew a crowd of more than 1,000 recently for a forum in Connecticut sponsored by Rep. Barbara B. Kennelly (D-Conn.). Although the audience was filled with “average” Americans, virtually all who took to the microphones were representatives of lobbying groups. . . . Magaziner seemed not to notice. He told the gathering how much he enjoys getting outside the Beltway to escape “this sort of interest group phenomenon that can get your head going in the wrong direction.”

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YOUR MISSION IS: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, roundly condemned for last February’s raid on the Branch Davidian cult compound near Waco, Tex., in which four agents were killed, is trying to recover from a traumatic year that saw its director retire under pressure at the end of October. . . . The newly appointed chief, former Secret Service agent John W. Magaw, has been touring ATF field offices with his Treasury Department boss, Ronald K. Noble, in an effort to lift morale. The year was not all bad. . . . ATF explosives experts last spring were credited with helping solve New York’s World Trade Center bombing, and the agency recently has begun working with local police around the nation to trace guns used by gang members in violent crimes.

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IT’S A WINNER: The Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Seattle produced a boost from the White House for Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord. In his first major speech after arriving, Clinton, talking about emerging Asian nations, said to applause: “In a short time, many of these economies have gone from being dominoes to dynamos.” Then, anticipating curiosity about the origin of the clever phrase, the President added: “The press will ask me at the end of this speech who gave me that phrase. It came from Win Lord, our assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs. . . . He gives me lots of good ideas.” A State Department official joked later that Lord, a former top aide to Henry A. Kissinger and a U.S. ambassador to China, was so giddy that “it was hard to get him back into the limousine.”