It's dismaying that Bill Clinton has retreated on his pledge to cut the White House staff by 25 percent, particularly since he hasn't nearly filled all the slots yet anyway. He only needs to leave some of them empty to keep his vow.
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We hope this doesn't mean (though we fear it does) that he's also pulling back on his promise to slash 100,000 positions from the federal bureaucracy. Such a move would go a long way toward persuading voters that he is serious about being a fiscally responsible president.If Clinton makes real cuts in the entrenched bureaucracy, he can expect howls of protest from public employee unions, but he will demonstrate to the nation that he is, indeed, a "new" kind of Democrat.