Bush Defends Drug Plan Against Carping

President Bush, embarking on a campaign to sell his $7.9-billion drug program, today visited a public hospital to view babies abandoned by addicted mothers and defended his plan against “carping” from Democrats.

“My response is, they’re wrong,” Bush said of the Democrats’ complaints that the plan does not go far enough and is inadequately funded.

“It’s a good plan. If people would stop just criticizing for partisan reasons and get behind the program, and then if there’s something additional we should do, then let’s do it,” he said.

Abandoned Babies

The President met with reporters after paying a visit to D.C. General Hospital, where he stopped by a ward of babies abandoned by their crack and cocaine-using mothers.

Bush, wearing a blue smock, quieted one 4 1/2-month-old baby boy by cradling him against his shoulder. The infant, one of 13 boarder babies at the hospital, beamed at Bush and his health secretary, Dr. Louis Sullivan.

Asked if he would take full responsibility for the drug war, Bush replied, “I’ll take all the responsibility in the world. You see these kids and you want to try harder.”

Afterward, the President argued to reporters that his program is $2 billion more than the amount being considered by the House. “They’re carping,” he said of his critics, dismissing their objections as “those partisan comments.”

In particular, he singled out Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Narcotics, who emerged from a White House briefing on drugs Tuesday and declared that Bush would have to raise taxes. The President said Rangel “couldn’t wait to get out on the lawn of the White House and say, ‘Raise taxes.’ ”

Bush’s program calls for tougher penalties on drug users and more money for law enforcement, prisons, drug treatment and education.

“Nobody is criticizing the strategy, no one is coming at us and saying, ‘You’ve left this out’ or ‘Left that out’ . . . the country’s fed up,” Bush said. “They don’t want it to be a Republican answer or a Democratic answer or a liberal or a conservative answer.

“I haven’t heard any real substantive attack on the strategy itself.”

Bush was noncommittal when asked about the possibility of establishing an international military strike force to combat drug lords, as proposed by Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.(D-Del.). However, Bush said there was “a lot of interest” in such an idea and noted that he had made such a proposal himself during his presidential campaign last year.

Bush also said he was open-minded about the possibility of sending American troops to Colombia, if asked, to help battle the country’s drug barons. However, he said Colombian President Virgilio Barco Vargas has made it clear that he does not want American troops and that the deployment of U.S. forces might anger the population there.