It's a long process. It's obvious that the Bush administration believes government needs to be refocused. The president is a conservative, fiscally and philosophically. A case in point is the Community Oriented Policing Services officer-hiring program that President Clinton touted. In essence, Bush said it has run its course.
Programs never go away in Washington, and that's one of the reasons the government is so big.
The goal of the program, which started in 1994, was to have 100,000 new officers by 2000. Bush intends to shift the emphasis from hiring more officers to helping police departments buy computers that can free up police officers from doing paperwork. The federal government has a new boss. Bush needs to find a balance between what works and needs to be kept and what doesn't work and needs to be scrapped. We believe he will.