Bush to Act Swiftly on Social Concerns : Aides Say He Will Move More Slowly on Such Issues as Defense and Deficit

George Bush, mapping his strategy for Friday’s inauguration and the days immediately afterward, plans to move quickly to give his presidency a more sensitive and less confrontational stamp than President Reagan’s, according to top Bush aides.

The new President is expected to issue executive orders and announce strong policy positions in a number of areas--possibly including civil rights, child care and environmental protection--where he can demonstrate an open and responsive approach to social concerns.

At the same time, Bush intends to proceed more deliberately in developing his positions on such major issues as the budget deficit and arms control. The nation’s drug problem and the financial crisis of the savings and loan industry are among other issues that will receive the highest priority for early action by the Bush Administration.

But, said Robert Teeter, co-director of Bush’s transition staff, “we have no grand offensive for the first 100 days.”

Traditional Period

Ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed his New Deal through Congress in the first 100 days of his first term in 1933, that has been the traditional period for new presidents to initiate action on their major goals and set the tone of their administrations.

But now, unlike 1933, the United States faces no domestic or foreign crisis and there was no overriding issue in the presidential election campaign. “If there’s a natural breaking point for planning ahead,” Teeter said, “I would say it’s six months.”

John H. Sununu, who will be Bush’s chief of staff, said at a luncheon session last Friday with the Times Washington Bureau that Bush will use his Inaugural Address on Friday to outline the broad themes of his presidency.

Not until a Feb. 9 speech to a joint session of Congress, Sununu said, will Bush spell out a detailed agenda. In that speech, Sununu said, Bush will go “issue by issue, program by program” through his agenda.

Differences of Tone

If distinctions become apparent between Bush’s presidency and Reagan’s, both Sununu and Teeter indicated, they probably would be differences of tone rather than substance.

In all areas of government policy, Sununu said, Bush’s style and his agenda will establish him as a hands-on President who relies on more than brief memos to make decisions. The new President, Sununu said, will be “present and participating” in discussions before they have been “distilled down . . . to a three-paragraph decision memo to him.”

He said that Bush will not let the bureaucracy “pre-bias the decision by offering the choice of absolute disaster or heaven on earth.” The 41st President, he said, believes “there is an advantage to seeing data before it becomes biased as it gets processed through the system. He is not uncomfortable going that far down into the detail structure.”

The new staff chief and Teeter also said that Bush is determined to reach out beyond the bureaucracy for advice.

In his dealings with the press, Sununu and Teeter predicted, Bush will be much more open than Reagan.

Bush’s determination to involve himself in policy formulation helps explain the apparent dearth of a detailed action plan as Bush approaches his inauguration.

Unlike Reagan, who laid out broad objectives and largely delegated to subordinates the task of selecting programs to achieve them, Bush is determined to play a role in choosing the means as well as the ends.

And since his election on Nov. 8, Bush has concentrated on personnel, not policy. Only on Thursday, with his selection of James D. Watkins as his energy secretary and William J. Bennett as head of his Administration’s war on drugs, did Bush finally round out his Cabinet.

During most of the transition, James A. Baker III, Bush’s longtime confidant as well as his choice for secretary of state, has been busy advising Bush on his other Cabinet choices and boning up for his own confirmation hearings, which begin Tuesday.

“We’re so busy we haven’t been able to talk about foreign policy,” a Baker aide said.

Little Pressure

Several Baker aides, arguing that the Reagan Administration has left the world in good shape, said they feel little pressure to come up with startling foreign policy initiatives. “Some things don’t need to be fixed for change’s sake,” a senior aide said.

But aides pointed out that Bush presented a detailed list of foreign policy goals during his election campaign and that they already know what their first tasks are.

Baker will travel to Europe soon after the inauguration to meet with U.S. allies and to begin work on joint positions on conventional military force reductions, nuclear arms control and other issues--all intended to allow the West to regain the initiative in arms talks with the Soviet Union and to prepare for Bush’s first summit meeting with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev later this year.

Bush and Baker will go to Tokyo Feb. 24 for the funeral of Japanese Emperor Hirohito, and Bush may meet there with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and several other allied leaders. But Sununu said that there will be no such sessions if they violate protocol or “offend any sensibilities” in Japan.

Baker plans to present a new approach to the long-festering problem of Nicaragua, where the Reagan Administration’s policy of military aid to the Contras has stalled in Congress. Aides said the policy is still taking shape, but Baker has told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he intends to launch a new diplomatic effort before asking Congress to renew military aid to the Contras.

At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary-designate John Tower, a former Texas senator, is expected to launch a major review of U.S. grand strategy and of the roles and missions of U.S. armed forces. The review will guide Tower’s efforts, dictated by the federal budget deficit, to scale back Reagan’s most recent defense-spending plan by about $10 billion in 1990 and as much as $116 billion over the next five years.

‘On the Table’

“Everything’s on the table; nothing is sacrosanct,” a Tower aide said.

The review probably will consider U.S. military commitments to Europe, where more than 340,000 American troops are stationed, and to South Korea, where the United States has almost 48,000 servicemen and women. Congressional concern is growing over the scale of both of these commitments.

In addition, Tower aides say the review will address broad questions about the future of U.S. nuclear weapons, particularly those deployed on land-based missiles.

By March, the Bush Administration must tell Congress whether it plans to spend about $350 million to develop a single-warhead mobile missile called Midgetman or whether it will use the funds to continue development of the Reagan Administration’s preference--a system of 10-warhead MX missiles shuttling between garrisons on rail cars.

Bush also faces an early deadline for addressing Reagan’s proposed Strategic Defense Initiative, the space-based anti-missile system that is often called “Star Wars.” The Defense Department must report to Congress by mid-March on a scaled-down defensive system to intercept missiles launched accidentally or without authority.

Economic Arena

In the economic arena, Bush will find himself under pressure to act on three fronts--to reduce the budget deficit, to solve the financial crisis in the savings and loan industry and to deliver on his campaign promise to cut capital gains taxes.

On the budget, Bush committed himself during the campaign to a “flexible freeze”--a requirement that overall federal spending will grow no faster than inflation, with room for some programs to grow faster if others are restrained.

Beyond that, his plans remain uncertain. Richard G. Darman, his choice as budget director, has refused to tip his hand even in courtesy calls to Republican members of Congress.

For the most part, the fiscal 1990 budget that Reagan sent to Congress last Monday will dictate what Bush, who has vowed not to raise taxes, can do. He can hold defense spending, where Reagan proposed growth of about 2% on top of inflation, to no growth. But even that would yield only about $2.1 billion in actual spending that Bush could apply to his “kinder and gentler” social agenda.

Education Programs

Aides say that Bush probably will shy away from Reagan’s proposal to wipe out 25 small education programs. He might restore some of Reagan’s housing and environmental cuts. And because Bush promised to expand Medicaid to include some of the uninsured, he probably will back away from Reagan’s effort to shift $1.7 billion in Medicaid costs to the states.

On the pressing issue of the savings and loan crisis, Sununu said that reforming the industry is as important as providing funds to bail out failing institutions and protect their depositors. In the coming week--probably hours before Bush’s inauguration--the Treasury Department will report to Reagan and Bush on its recommendations for dealing with the crisis.

Treasury is preparing to recommend that the twin responsibilities for regulating the savings industry and insuring deposits, now joined in the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, be separated to tighten supervision of the industry. And the department is expected to propose requiring savings institutions to increase their capital resources to cover a larger share of their outstanding loans.

As for its plan for bailing out insolvent S&Ls--a; task whose ultimate expense is estimated at up to $115 billion--the Treasury Department may propose raising a quick $50 billion to $60 billion by selling bonds. This mechanism would reduce the annual costs to the interest on the bonds--perhaps $5 billion or $6 billion.

Budget considerations may also play a part in the timing of Bush’s plans to ask Congress to lower the capital gains tax from a maximum 33% to 15%, according to Sununu.

Not only would lowering the capital gains tax cut revenue, but it would also open up the tax code to further change and provide Congress with an opportunity to raise other taxes.

Staff writers Melissa Healy, Doyle McManus and Tom Redburn contributed to this story.