Bush, Democrats Bicker Over Making Call for Sacrifices by the Public : Budget: The President rejects a proposal that he go on TV to tell the nation it must take painful steps to reduce deficit. He hints at easing Gramm-Rudman.

Only a day after they had begun talks seeking to end the nation’s budget deficit crisis, President Bush and congressional Democrats fell to bickering about who should take the lead in rousing the nation to accept sacrifices.

Democratic participants called on Bush to take the first step by appearing on national television to spell out the full dimensions of the crisis and convince the American people that painful steps must be taken.

Bush, at a press conference, rejected the idea, saying he would address the nation after a bipartisan solution has been hammered out.

The maneuvering followed forecasts that the budget talks, which are to be resumed today, are likely to be bogged down in political point-scoring for a time before any solid results can be expected.

“There’s no question (that) each of the parties to the negotiation is very concerned about absorbing political blame,” said Thomas Mann, director of governmental studies at the Brookings Institution. “Each goes to great lengths to show they have no desire to do the unpopular things they all know will have to be done in the end.”

Bush himself seemed to accept the partisan tactics, saying: “After some initial posturing around, we’ll make some headway.”

Although refusing to talk about specific proposals, Bush hinted that an important element of any agreement should be an easing of the Gramm-Rudman budget-balancing law, which requires next year’s deficit to fall below $64 billion.

Many economists have said that a deficit-reduction package designed to reach that goal would require such large budget changes that it would force the economy into recession. But, if the lawmakers fail to reduce the deficit through spending cuts, tax increases or both, the law would force automatic, across-the-board cuts.

In a closed session of the House Budget Committee on Wednesday, Richard G. Darman, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, reviewed estimated deficits and the automatic across-the-board cuts in spending programs that would be required should the talks fail to produce an agreement.

Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said after the session that the numbers were “frightening.” Rep. Leon E. Panetta (D-Carmel Valley) quoted Darman as saying that, without an agreement, Gramm-Rudman would trigger spending cuts ranging from $59 billion to $124 billion.

“If we allow that to happen, it could devastate the defense side of the budget and the non-defense side of the budget,” Panetta told reporters. “You can’t use smoke and mirrors to get around that any more.”

When asked at a midday news conference if it would be a good idea to change the Gramm-Rudman targets, Bush answered: “That might be part of it because this problem is pretty big. But I don’t have a position on that . . . because I’ve said there are no preconditions.”

He told reporters that he would not go on television now and take the lead in explaining the need for an extraordinary deficit-cutting agreement because doing so might inadvertently “frighten (the) markets.”

“Let’s not talk about who’s going first,” he said. “We’ve got a problem, a national problem.”

Administration officials have estimated that the overall budget deficit--including the soaring cost of bailouts for failed savings and loan firms--may be as high as $200 billion in the year starting Oct.1.

Bush said that the best way to reach agreement is for all of the summit negotiators to go behind closed doors and “reason together” to get a solution, which he would then endorse in a televised talk.

Leading Democrats contend that Congress will not be able to make painful decisions to raise taxes or cut domestic spending unless the President leads the way in focusing public attention on the size of the deficit and on his serious concern about its unchecked spiral.

“The public can’t see this deficit iceberg, but it can wreck what we built,” said Sen. Wyche Fowler Jr. (D-Ga.), one of the negotiators. “There’s no way that 21 members of the budget summit group or 535 members of Congress can come out and say, ‘Here’s the strong medicine,’ when (Bush) hasn’t defined the illness.”

Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which must act on any tax increase proposal emerging from the summit meeting, made the same argument, saying: “The American people must hear from the President of the depth of the problem. He has the bully pulpit . . . . If he doesn’t do it fairly soon, more and more senators and House members will take positions they will find difficult to change.”