Bush Pushes ‘Sensible Ideas’ Budget : ‘We Can Do Job Without Taxes,’ He Tells N.H. Audience

President Bush opened a campaign for his “sensible ideas” federal budget today in New Hampshire, the state that revived his flagging campaign for the presidency one year earlier.

Although Bush’s fiscal 1990 budget is under attack among congressional Democrats for lacking specifics on spending cuts, the President gave no hint in his speech to the Business and Industry Assn. of New Hampshire that the plan might be in trouble.

“Sensible ideas work,” Bush told a Manchester, N.H., audience of about 1,200 people. “We can do the job without taxes,” added the President, who has repeatedly promised to fight any new taxes.

However, Sen. Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.), who hitched a ride back to Washington with Bush on Air Force One, told reporters that a tax increase of some form may be needed next year.

“No promise is forever,” Rudman said. He predicted “a good three months of heavy slugging” on the budget.

Bush said his appearance was only the first in a series of stops around the country on behalf of his $1.16-trillion spending plan, which calls for restraints on defense spending but slightly more money for education, environmental cleanup, the homeless and other domestic programs.

Bush stopped in New Hampshire on the way back to Washington from a vacation weekend at his seaside retreat in Kennebunkport, Me.

He had grateful words for New Hampshire and its voters, saying his victory in the state’s Republican primary last Feb. 16 “gave me the chance to pick myself up off of that canvas.”

Reminiscing about the campaign, Bush said: “A year ago about this time I came to New Hampshire under quite different circumstances. I had just lost in Iowa. I was up at 6:50 a.m., my first morning here, holding my coffee in one hand and shaking the hands of some of the guys at the factory with the other.”

“The columnists had begun to write my political obituary,” he added.

New Hampshire Gov. Judd Gregg joked that he wanted to extend to Bush a “welcome back on his regular February visit.”

Former New Hampshire Gov. John H. Sununu, now Bush’s chief of staff, was seated behind Bush on the stage.

Turning to his budget proposal, Bush said, “Our plan is a realistic one. It is a budget plan that will work, but not with business as usual. It will require a partnership with Congress.”

Bush’s speech highlighted most major features of his budget plan. However, he did not mention one of its more controversial components--a reduction of the tax on capital gains, which include profits from the sale of stock, homes, real estate and other assets.