Bush Attacks Democrats Over Spending : Politics: President lashes out again at GOP rally in the West. A Republican majority in the Senate will help turn things around, he says.

President Bush, still feeling the heat for his policy reversal on the need for more tax revenues to cut the budget deficit, sought comfort Friday in a friendly Republican political rally where he blamed Democrats for “government gridlock in Washington.”

Urging support of Montana rancher Allen Kolstad as GOP challenger to entrenched incumbent Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Bush said only a Republican majority in the Senate could begin to turn things around.

“With the Democrats now in control in the United States Congress--both Houses--we’re facing government gridlock in Washington, with spending skyrocketing out of control, good legislation thrown aside for pork barrel programs, and a budget deficit looming over our children’s children,” Bush said.

“And while the Republican Party is using everything we’ve got to build a strong, competitive America, the Democratic stranglehold on the United States Congress has finally taken its toll.”

But in talking about the current round of budget negotiations between the White House and the congressional leadership, Bush tossed the Democrats a bone or two. “I think, in fairness . . . we’re getting some good cooperation with the leadership on the Democratic side of the aisle--I’d say on both sides of the aisle,” he said.

The night before, addressing a similar Republican rally in Boise, Ida., Bush challenged Democrats to match his offer to talk about tax revenues by controlling their spending, and that applause line worked again Friday.

“I’ve taken a few shots,” he went on, referring to the abandonment of his “read my lips” promise on taxes. “You’ve heard it rebounding around out here. I’ve said before that I’ll negotiate without preconditions. And I will, in spite of the outcry about revenues. But there must be budget reform and true spending control. We owe it to the young people in this country.”

In Washington, congressional Democrats charged that Bush was playing election-year politics when he blamed them for mounting federal deficits, the Associated Press reported.

As House Republicans struggled with the GOP’s position on tax increases, House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) and Sen. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, the Democrat’s 1988 vice presidential candidate, took vehement exception to Bush’s blame-the-Democrats speech in Montana.

“That’s incredible,” Bentsen said when told that Bush had blamed the Democratics for the budget deficit.

Rep. William H. Gray III of Pennsylvania, the No. 3 House Democrat, said Bush’s comments at a GOP fund-raising breakfast were an example of “usual election-year hyperbole.”

Bush, he said, was ignoring a national debt that has grown from less than $1 trillion when Bush became vice president in 1981 to more than $3.1 trillion today.

Foley called Bush’s remarks “a partisan speech for a partisan audience for a partisan purpose.”

Also in Billings Friday, Bush addressed a rally to promote a local anti-drug program aimed primarily at elementary and junior high school children. Later Friday, during a stop in Cheyenne, Wyo., to attend a parade and go fishing with longtime friend Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.), Bush visited nearby Warren Air Force Base, the massive missile silo installation where all 50 of the multiwarhead MX missiles in the U.S. strategic arsenal are based. The purpose, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater told reporters, was to give a boost to the Air Force troops on the base and, more important, perhaps, “make a point in light of the budget negotiations.”

After a brief tour of the underground facilities, Bush addressed about 150 servicemen and women standing in a chill drizzle. “We must maintain an effective deterrent, especially in the face of continuing across-the-board modernization of the Soviet strategic forces,” he said, sounding a note of caution he has struck several times in this new era in superpower relations.

“This won’t be easy in the fiscal environment we face now,” Bush said. “We all recognize that we must get the deficit under control and . . . defense will contribute its share. But I don’t want defense to contribute more than its share.”