Word: panetta
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...Leon Panetta is wasting no time in trying to yank President Clinton's legislative agenda out of the gutter lane. In his first 24 hours as White House chief of staff, the former budget director and congressional powerhouse held cloakroom negotiations with Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan on Clinton's troubled health care package, went on TV to pooh-pooh a weekend poll showing sinking approval ratings, then staged a lunch for 40 reporters to push Clinton's well-received crime and welfare reform bills. TIME White House correspondent Michael Duffy says Panetta is moving quickly to clarify the stakes...
...exercise final say over issues involving the media, the public "message" and scheduling. And he often acts as Clinton's proxy on more substantive issues. At a meeting last week on entitlements, a bevy of heavy hitters including Gergen, domestic policy assistant Carol Rasco and budget chief Leon Panetta, argued back and forth. Says one who was there: "When George spoke, it wasn't part of the debate. It was time to close your notebook." No one has suggested that Clinton invested such power in a dummy or straw man. Like the President, Stephanopoulos has a sovereign command of policy...
...would take a year to repair I-10, he asked, "What do we have to do to fix it in less time?" And he assures his hosts, "We have no intention, none, of letting this be a short-term thing." Pause. Soon, he says, he and Budget Director Leon Panetta will "go back to Washington and figure out how to pay for it." He is smiling, but this is obviously not a joke...
These are no longer theoretical problems. The once taboo topic of means testing -- linking government payments to income -- was debated at a recent high-level White House meeting. The President mostly listened, but proponents of some kind of limitation included Vice President Al Gore, Budget Director Leon Panetta and presidential counselor David Gergen. Their rationale: only by restraining entitlements can the Administration afford new programs and further deficit reduction. "Everyone agrees this is something to be looked at," confides a senior White House official. "Even a novice looking at the budget can't help seeing what's happening to entitlement...
Clinton, who hopes to complete his consultations with Cabinet members before Christmas for the 1995 budget, is so desperate for money that one half expects to see him drilling for oil on the South Lawn. Panetta, playing the role of Dr. No, has already told the Cabinet that their initial requests were $20 billion over the congressional budget ceiling. To the dismay of some liberals, Clinton has declared the $281 billion Pentagon budget off limits. Moreover, the latest rules of the fiscal game require that new spending must be matched by offsetting cuts in existing programs. Somehow Clinton must find...