PLAYING IN CLEVELAND

As his Washington team struggled, Clinton took a positive message to the heartland. Campaigning in Cleveland, Ohio, he announced today that the fiscal '94 federal budget deficit shrank to $203 billion -- much lower than the $220 billion forecast by Wall Street analysts -- and predicted it would fall again in 1995. Clinton crowed about the fact that the deficit is down for two years in a row for the first time in two decades and said a further decline next year would mark the first three-year string of decreases since Harry Truman. He also attacked Gingrich's "Contract With America" -- a policy blueprint the G.O.P. will press if they gain control of Congress Nov. 8 -- saying this would "explode the deficit" by adding a fresh trillion dollars of debt.