On 15 December 1993 President Clinton announced Aspin's resignation, for personal reasons. Given the problems that Aspin encountered during his short term, most obviously the losses in Mogadishu, observers assumed that the president had asked him to step down. Speculation in the media centered on the Somalia embarrassment and on Aspin's differences with the Office of Management and Budget over how much the Defense budget should be cut. The secretary's health problems may well have also been a factor. One news magazine stated that Aspin's major handicap was "neither his famously unmilitary bearing nor his inability to discipline himself or the enormous Pentagon bureaucracy; it is his politician's instinct for the middle ground on defense issues." Aspin continued to serve as Secretary of Defense until February 3, 1994, when William Perry took office.