Kemp Picked for HUD; Vows Bold Programs : Bush and Choice for Agency Slashed by Reagan Promise Help for Homeless, ‘Enterprise Zones’

As the Electoral College met to formally vote his ascension to the presidency, Vice President George Bush on Monday tapped a former competitor, Rep. Jack Kemp, as his secretary of housing and urban development.

The outspoken New York congressman promptly vowed to assert his own agenda of aggressive programs in a department that was slashed during the Reagan Administration, when incumbent Secretary Samuel R. Pierce Jr. acceded to cuts in federal housing subsidies.

Bush and Kemp--without placing price tags on their proposals--specifically cited their commitments to tax-break assistance for urban “enterprise zones,” help for the homeless and affordable housing for the needy.

Failed Policies Cited

“They constitute a new ray of hope for those left frustrated by decades of failed urban and housing policies,” Bush declared as he introduced a beaming Kemp.

Bush’s announcement opened a week of furious effort by his transition team members to wrap up the selection of the remaining six Cabinet vacancies before a self-imposed Friday deadline. Aides said that, although Bush hopes to choose his Cabinet members before Christmas, not all of the selections are likely to be announced before then.

Two other appointments, however, are expected to be made this week. Samuel K. Skinner, a Chicago-area transit official and the guru of Bush’s Illinois campaign, is described as certain to be named transportation secretary. Aides said his appointment, delayed until his required FBI background check is completed, could be made as early as today.

And Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, president of Atlanta’s Morehouse School of Medicine, remains the strong front-runner for health and human services secretary, though a final decision was not expected until midweek.

Four other positions--the secretaries of energy, the Interior, veterans’ affairs and labor--remain less certain.

In his first suggestion of the direction he will take in filling the remaining positions, Bush told reporters Monday that he is “leaning more toward” an energy secretary with expertise in nuclear energy because of the flurry of recent problems involving the nation’s nuclear reactors.

“I have long been in favor of the safe use of nuclear power,” he said, adding that a secretary with knowledge of the nuclear industry “would be extraordinarily helpful.”

In contrast to the energy post, Bush has yet to give even hints about what he is looking for in the other remaining Cabinet spots. Republican Senate conservatives have been pressing for the appointment at Interior of former House GOP leader John J. Rhodes of Arizona or former Wyoming House Speaker Warren A. Morton. Bush aides, however, have begun gathering information on other potential candidates, including Louisiana’s former Republican Gov. David Treen.

The President-elect said last week that he expected to name a black to his Cabinet, which now includes one woman--Trade Representative Carla Anderson Hills--and one Latino--Education Secretary Lauro F. Cavazos. Besides Sullivan, the prospective black appointees include Julius W. Becton Jr., head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who is considered a front-runner for secretary of veterans’ affairs.

As Bush worked on his Administration on Monday, Electoral College members met around the country to cast the ballots that--popular vote notwithstanding--formally elect the President. The ballots will not be counted until Jan. 6.

When asked Monday if he believed that he would win, Bush replied: “Yes.”

Although the Bush transition team has steadily added personnel to its top-ranking roster, little progress has been made in attacking the incoming Administration’s budget priorities, Bush made clear Monday.

While laying out thematic approaches to the HUD post, for example, Bush refused to be pinned down on the level of funding he would recommend. When asked specifically if he was “dancing around” the level of spending, he bluntly said, “yes,” then laughed and added: “I wouldn’t have phrased it that way, but that’s exactly what I was doing.”

“You don’t show your determination to solve a problem by simply increasing federal spending,” Bush said. “There are other ways to skin a cat.”

Kemp, however, adopted a more optimistic tone and said he does not expect the department he agreed to head to be “emasculated.”

“I want to wage war on poverty,” he said. “I don’t want to wage war on Congress. I don’t want to wage war on programs that can work. And I don’t believe we’re going to balance the budget by cutting housing.”

In one of his few specific pledges, Bush on Monday renewed his call for full funding of the McKinney Act to aid the homeless, whose plight he called “a national shame.”

Under a program approved by Congress in October, $1.3 billion was to have been spent over two years for job training, food and shelter programs for the homeless. But of the $634 million approved for fiscal 1989, only $378 million was appropriated. It was unclear whether Bush’s full-funding vow would mean retroactive funding for 1989 or referred to full funding for the $656 million authorized in 1990.

But Bush emphasized that private concerns, cities and state governments will continue to bear the brunt of fiscal responsibility for the homeless. “The private sector and the city governments and state governments are doing most of it,” Bush said. “And that is the way that is going to have to continue.”

Bush’s selection of Kemp, whose presidential ambitions collapsed in March after mediocre primary finishes, added only the second conservative voice--the other being Chief of Staff John H. Sununu--to a Cabinet and inner circle dominated by Republican moderates.

For Kemp, who said Monday that he has not ruled out another run for the presidency, the appointment guarantees a potentially substantial national forum after 18 years spent battling for notice in the crowded House of Representatives.

And for Bush, aides said, it places an activist “idea man”--as the President-elect described Kemp on Monday--on his Cabinet and effectively silences for the time being a potentially combative spokesman for the party’s right wing, which has long been skittish about Bush.

Kemp insisted that he will be a “team player,” pressing his opinions on Bush in private but “not out on the street.”

During the campaign, Kemp accused Bush of not fully supporting the Strategic Defense Initiative, the space-based missile system, and said the vice president would raise taxes. Kemp is a strong SDI proponent and was the architect of President Reagan’s early tax cuts.

But on Monday, Kemp vowed that he would not speak on foreign policy and said he believes that Bush will stick to his much-publicized vow not to raise taxes.

“The answer is, I read his lips,” Kemp said.

Staff writer David Lauter contributed to this story.