Wright Calls for Bush to Submit Own Budget

In a preview of what could be a bitter fight with President-elect George Bush over the budget deficit, House Speaker Jim Wright on Monday declared that Bush will be shirking his responsibility if he begins his Administration by working with Reagan’s 1990 budget instead of submitting his own.

While stressing that Democrats want to cooperate with Bush and give him a chance to implement his own deficit-reduction program, Wright said: “I can’t imagine a cop-out like not sending a budget up.”

However, Bush has no plans to submit his own budget, a senior Bush adviser said, and instead his strategy is to work with Reagan’s budget as a starting point while negotiating his own budget compromise with Congress. In fact, Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said flatly that Bush “won’t submit” his own budget.

Collision Looks Likely

Thus, despite all the talk of cooperation and Bush’s good-will gesture of going to Capitol Hill last week for a luncheon meeting with Wright, the President-elect and the Democrat-controlled Congress already appear headed for a collision over the budget.

Wright, interviewed Monday by several reporters at a luncheon session in a House dining room, said that in his meeting with Bush last Friday he got the impression that the vice president, in approaching the budget deficit problem, “intends to engage in realistic assumptions instead of wishful thinking.”

“I can’t believe he would shirk his responsibility” by failing to submit his own budget, Wright said. “I think he’s more responsible than that.”

On another matter, Wright said that “an argument can be made” for decreasing the capital gains tax from a maximum of 33% to 15%, a pledge Bush made during the presidential campaign.

“But if we did that,” Wright said, “the right thing to do would be to do something else to assure equity in the tax code and to be sure we don’t lose money from the Treasury.”

In the lengthy interview, Wright, of Texas, also expressed concern about Mexico’s worsening financial crisis and disclosed that for some time now he has been discussing ways to ease the country’s burdens with advisers to President-elect Carlos Salinas de Gortari. The Speaker also said he expects the House Ethics Committee’s investigation of his conduct in office to conclude next month and declared that he has “total confidence” that the committee will find he has broken no laws nor committed any ethical violations.

The coming struggle over the budget apparently was a dominant subject of the 90-minute discussion between Wright and Bush, even though the Speaker said they did not dwell on the details.

Reagan, who is required by law to submit a budget, plans to present one Jan. 9. Bush can submit his own budget soon after taking office on Jan. 20 if he desires, but under the law is not required to submit one until next year.

Wright said he suggested to Bush that he outline his plan for a budget in his State of the Union address in January and submit his budget the first or second week in February. He said Bush was noncommittal.

‘Wouldn’t Pounce on Him’

The Speaker said he tried to reassure Bush that “Democrats wouldn’t pounce on him when and if he faced the reality” of having to make hard spending and revenue choices in seeking to cut the budget deficit.

Since his election Bush has reiterated his campaign pledge opposing any tax increase and his advisers have said the Bush Administration also will oppose any effort to put defense spending or Social Security on the negotiating table in budget proceedings.

But, Wright said, “if they’re going to negotiate honestly, they can’t take anything off the table. They’ll have to look at all the options and determine which make more sense than others.”

He said he also told Bush that he would consider it “a cop-out” if his Administration seeks to reduce the budget deficit by following Reagan’s lead of selling government assets. The Reagan Administration has put a minor dent in the deficit by raising about $5 billion through the sale of assets, mostly loans sold to private investors.

Occasional Meetings

On the Mexican question, Wright said that for the last six months he has met off and on with advisers to President-elect Salinas on ways to help that country reduce its $102-billion foreign debt and encourage foreign investments.

One plan he suggested, he said, was for the United States to purchase oil from Mexico at the market price under an agreement that would call for Mexico to use the profits to reduce the debt. Salinas’ advisers were “amenable to something of that nature,” he said, although that was only one of several ideas discussed.

Wright said that Salinas, who meets with Bush today and who will be inaugurated on Dec. 1, “understands and likes the United States and doesn’t demonstrate nationalism repeatedly as some of his predecessors have done.”