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- <text id=93TT0987>
- <title>
- Feb. 22, 1993: Clip, Clip Here, Clip, Clip There
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993
- Feb. 22, 1993 Uncle Bill Wants You
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK, Page 14
- NATION
- Clip, Clip Here, Clip, Clip There
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p>Targeting the deficit, the President starts to define "shared
- sacrifice"
- </p>
- <p> Through the camera lens, Bill Clinton looked relieved to be
- wrestling with a problem as relatively manageable as, say, the
- economy. Having strayed into nasty thickets like gays in the
- military and the nanny gap, he needed to steer his message back
- to deficit cutting. To do so, Clinton used his campaign-tested
- technique of taking questions from a TV audience, which allowed
- him to try to prepare Americans for the "shared sacrifice" of
- the economic plan he will unveil this week.
- </p>
- <p> But first Clinton made some sacrifices close to home. On Tuesday
- he proposed to reduce the White House staff by 350 people, which
- he said would satisfy his campaign promise of a 25% cut. By
- far the largest reduction will come at the Office of National
- Drug Control Policy, home of the White House drug czar, where
- 121 jobs will be lost. To discourage the impression that he
- was going soft on narcotics, Clinton elevated the post to Cabinet
- level.
- </p>
- <p> On Wednesday the President signed three Executive Orders that
- are designed to save more than $9 billion in four years. One
- will cut the 3.1 million civilian federal job force by 100,000,
- mostly through attrition, while another abolishes at least a
- third of the 700 advisory boards and commissions (example: the
- Board of Tea Experts). A third directs the Cabinet and federal
- agencies to reduce administrative costs 14%.
- </p>
- <p> Clinton used his appearance before 60 people in a suburban Detroit
- television studio to dampen expectations of a middle-class tax
- cut. Meeting with business executives the next day, he floated
- the idea of a hike in the top corporate tax rate, currently
- 34%, as well as a broad-based energy tax. But the President
- backed away from hints that he might seek a one-year freeze
- on Social Security cost of living adjustments, after trial balloons
- to that effect caused a predictable uproar among the elderly
- and their friends in Congress. Clinton called on Americans to
- hear the "alarm bells in the night" about the economy. But as
- the COLA episode suggested, some Americans are bound to find
- cause for alarm in his solutions.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-