Bush Will Name Economic Aides, Ask Deficit Cut Plan

Hoping to ease financial market jitters, President-elect George Bush will name his economic advisers within days and order them to advance a deficit-cutting program with which to enter budget negotiations with Congress, his transition team’s co-director said Sunday.

In a cooling-off message to the financial world, Bush transition co-director Craig Fuller insisted that the establishment of a Bush economic team was “priority one.”

“We are very serious and determined to find a way to drive this deficit down,” Fuller, the current vice presidential chief of staff, declared on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Fuller and co-director Robert Teeter, speaking on ABC’s “This Week With David Brinkley,” said the transition effort, now in its infancy, is aimed at the naming of strong Cabinet members with overlapping spheres of policy influence.

The men took pains to extend separate collegial messages to Congress, specifically mentioning Bush’s hope to negotiate peacefully with the legislative branch on pressing budget matters.

Over the three business days after Vice President Bush’s election, the dollar fell to a 10-year low on world currency exchanges, while prices on the nation’s stock markets dropped precipitously. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 47.66 points on Friday in its largest decline since April.

Analysts believe the market was reacting to the sharp decline in the dollar, as measured against foreign currency, reflecting worries that Bush’s strong no-taxes stand will cause him problems with the Democrat-controlled Congress.

Bush himself, vacationing here in Florida, refused to comment on the market gyrations, but President Reagan defended his vice president Sunday as he returned to the White House from a weekend at Camp David, Md., when a reporter asked why the market had fallen.

“I’ve given up trying to guess why the market does that; I don’t think it has anything to do with George Bush,” he said.

Fuller said Bush was as yet not inclined to make a public statement about his budget priorities.

No Change on Dollar Policy

“The economic policy is set by the current sitting Administration and we’re not going to rush out to suddenly issue statements . . . “ Fuller said. “We see no reason to change the policies that are in place right now with respect to the dollar.”

He suggested that market worries about Bush’s economic positions were erroneously fueled by a statement by economist Martin S. Feldstein, a frequent Bush adviser, that the dollar could be allowed to fall up to 20% to battle the trade deficit.

Feldstein was not representing “either the views of the (Reagan) Administration or the views of the Bush Administration,” Fuller said. “So, I think misreading some of the tea leaves might have caused it.”

The vice presidential chief of staff refused to detail any strategies for combatting the deficit--much as Bush had refused to do during the lengthy presidential campaign--on the grounds that it would dull Bush’s negotiating edge with Congress.

‘Come Up With a Program’

“That (economic) group has to sit down and take a realistic look at where things are, sit down with President-elect Bush and come up with a program that we can work with the Congress on,” Fuller said.

Under questioning, Fuller said he did not think that financial analysts were awaiting specific budget targets before their optimism revives.

“I think what they’re interested in is seeing a concerted effort, a serious effort, to look candidly at the problem and take it head-on right when the Administration starts,” he said.

Fuller likewise dodged specifics when asked about speculation that Richard G. Darman, a former aide to James A. Baker III at the Treasury Department, would be named to head the Office of Management and Budget.

“There’ll be three to five names for each of these key posts that George Bush wants to look at,” Fuller said.

Teeter emphasized, as did Fuller, the vice president’s continuing opposition to taxes and his reliance on the so-called flexible freeze as a weapon against the deficit.

Increase Tied to Inflation

Under that proposal, increases in overall spending would be limited to the rate of inflation. Programs within the budget could be increased or cut, as long as the total was kept firm.

Bush’s vows that the flexible freeze will balance the budget by 1992 have been greeted with skepticism, largely because he has refused to consider cutting Social Security or defense or raising taxes, while pledging billions in new spending for education, child care, the environment and other programs.

Teeter said domestic programs will likely bear the brunt of budget cutbacks, as they did under Reagan, unless other options develop in concert with Congress.

The Bush transition team, described by the vice president as a “lean” operation, officially opens its doors for business today in Washington.

Although the transition’s leaders characterized their own efforts as just beginning, they portrayed Bush’s potential Cabinet as a group of strong-minded individuals. The two men did little to downplay suggestions that they would be two parts of a troika to run the White House staff.

‘Deputy President’ Query

Responding specifically to questions whether, as the New York Times reported Sunday, Secretary of State-designate Baker would wield wide-ranging influence and be, in effect, the “deputy President,” Fuller demurred.

“He wouldn’t want that title to be placed on him so early,” the chief of staff said.

“He will certainly have influence beyond foreign policy but there’ll be other members of the Cabinet who will have their say on foreign policy issues as well. So I think we’re going to see a very strong team . . . on a wide array of issues.”

Neither Fuller nor Teeter specifically denied speculation that they and Gov. John H. Sununu of New Hampshire would form a troika to run the remainder of the staff, much as Baker, former Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III and former Reagan adviser Michael K. Deaver did in Reagan’s first term.

Bush relied on an even larger group--which nicknamed itself the “G-6”--to run his successful presidential campaign.

“Really, we have not discussed that (with Bush) at all,” Teeter said on the Brinkley show.

Then he said: “ . . . I’m not saying it wouldn’t work. I think we did run the campaign effectively.’

Relaxing in Florida

Bush, for his part, spent another day relaxing in Florida and, his aides said, mulling over decisions about incoming Administration personnel and the governing setup of his White House.

From his base in Gulf Stream, where he has stayed since Thursday at the home of a longtime friend, Bush traveled Sunday to Jupiter Island to visit his 87-year-old mother, Dorothy, with whom he attended church.

Bush, upbeat as he has been since he arrived here, joked that he “just came to get my instructions from the head of the family here on how to do my job.”

Asked if he had made any more Cabinet decisions, he said: “I have to ask my mother.”

He leaned over her, listened and looked up at assembled reporters. “She says, ‘No comment,’ ” Bush said after a pause.

Later in the day, Bush piloted a powerboat from Jupiter Island to Gulf Stream. He is scheduled to spend today running, swimming, golfing and fishing--thus far his line has come up empty--before returning to Washington on Tuesday.