President Plans Forum on Key Economic Initiatives

The White House announced Thursday that President Bush will convene a high-profile forum later this month to lay the groundwork for his top economic initiatives: the partial privatization of Social Security and an overhauling of the tax code.

The conference, set for Dec. 15 and 16, is modeled after one that Bush called in Waco, Texas, in the summer of 2002 as the nation was struggling to recover from a recession.

Widely regarded at the time as a public relations effort, the meeting nevertheless helped set the stage for one of Bush’s across-the-board tax cuts. That initiative included a tax reduction on dividends, an idea that Wall Street discount broker Charles Schwab had promoted during the Texas forum.

Plans this time call for the president, Vice President Dick Cheney and some Cabinet officials -- along with experts from outside government -- to lead as many as six panel discussions, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. Healthcare, education, budget discipline and legal reform also will be addressed, he said.

“The conference will be an opportunity to discuss what we must do to keep our economy growing and to make sure America remains the most competitive economy in the world,” McClellan said.

He did not dispute the notion that the two-day session was, at least in part, an effort to build and shape public opinion for Bush’s economic agenda.

But economist Bruce Bartlett, a former Treasury Department official in the first Bush administration, said the forum appeared to be more an exercise in public outreach than an effort to rethink economic policy. Still, such a conference could prove beneficial, he said.

“The main virtue of this kind of event is that it forces the president to focus intently on economic issues, at least for a couple of days, to the exclusion of everything else that intrudes upon his time,” Bartlett said. “So I don’t think it’s a complete waste of time.”

During the president’s first term, his economic team has assumed a relatively low profile amid the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But Bush is seeking to reshape the tax code and to allow workers to divert a portion of their Social Security taxes into private accounts, he is in the process of replacing a majority of his top economic advisors.

The president already has named Carlos M. Gutierrez as Commerce secretary, replacing Don Evans, and he has yet to name a replacement for Stephen Friedman, who is stepping down as director of the White House’s National Economic Council. In addition, N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisors, is expected to leave soon.

In addition to calling the economic conference, Bush has set an end-of-the-year deadline for the creation of an advisory panel on tax reform that would report back to the Treasury secretary. It would tailor its work to meet the president’s previously stated principles, which McClellan described this way: “He wants to make it fairer and simpler, and he wants to make sure that our tax code encourages economic growth. So that’s the broad mandate for the bipartisan advisory panel.”

Bush has stated that he would want a tax code overhaul to remain “revenue-neutral.”

Many GOP lawmakers -- while supportive of Bush’s plans to change the tax code and Social Security system -- are urging the president to move quickly. There is a fear on Capitol Hill that Republicans have a relatively short window of opportunity, perhaps less than a year, in which to enact such reforms.

For instance, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, wrote in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal that the president needed to unveil his tax plan no later than March 1 -- about six months earlier than the White House anticipates. But McClellan said such concerns are unfounded.

“This president laid out a very bold agenda for the second term. He’s firmly committed to it. We’re going to work very closely with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle who want to reform the tax code and get this done,” McClellan said. But, he added, “I think it’s too early right now to start getting into timetables.”