Every budgeteer knows that much of the crucial work at the White House budget office is coordinated by the five mega-wonks called program assistant directors, or PADs.
But the ranks of the PAD people are getting pretty thin: Kenneth S. Apfel has left the Office of Management and Budget to head the Social Security Administration; Nancy-Ann Min DeParle has been nominated to run the Health Care Financing Administration; and Gordon Adams just announced he's leaving to be deputy director of a defense think tank in London.
That leaves just two PADs, Michael D. Deich and T.J. Glauthier, to hold down the fort as the Clinton Administration's fiscal 1999 budget is being assembled.
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