REINVENTING THE "CONTRACT"

In an implied slap at the GOP, President Clinton presented $13 billion in cuts at four federal agencies as proof that he can shrink government "without a mean spirit or meat ax." On the chopping block are programs at the Small Business Administration, the Interior Department, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and NASA, which alone would sustain $8 billion in cuts. The White House had already publicized many of the reductions. But the president, advancing a new Democratic effort to paint the GOP as heartless, rolled the cuts together to promote his "reinventing government" project as a coherent and kinder alternative to the sweeping cuts sought by Republicans.TIME White House correspondent James Carneysays Clinton is gambling: "If the strategy fails, it looks like he's doing a pale imitation of the'Contract With America.'If it succeeds because people think the Republicans are going off the deep end, then Clinton's right where the public wants to be."