Attack Democrats on Deficit, Bush Urges : Budget: He is upset because rival party has not offered a proposal to cut red ink. The President did present a plan--and came under fire for it.

The federal budget talks turned into a partisan brawl Wednesday as President Bush suggested to Republican lawmakers that they attack Democrats on Capitol Hill for failing to offer their own deficit-reduction plan.

At a White House breakfast with congressional Republicans, Bush expressed frustration at the stalled negotiations and vowed to veto budget-busting spending bills this fall if no compromise is reached on how to slice about $50 billion from next year’s deficit.

Bush, said House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.), is “a very kind, gentle individual, but, brother, he’s got fire in his belly” over the lack of progress during nearly three months of budget negotiations.

But, in an effort to hold the high ground, the White House promised to continue the talks when Congress returns in September from a monthlong break and held out the possibility of calling congressional leaders to Kennebunkport, Me., during Bush’s vacation there.

Bush “reached out a hand to be as as reasonable and as decent . . . as he could be,” assistant House GOP leader Newt Gingrich of Georgia complained, “and the Democrats bit his hand.”

However, Administration officials undercut GOP lawmakers who had told reporters Bush was demanding that Democrats present their own budget proposal within 48 hours to avoid public sniping from the President. A White House spokesman said that no deadline had been imposed.

The White House has been under fire from Democrats and Republicans alike for its latest budget plan, which calls for sharply boosting taxes on alcoholic beverages, limiting federal tax deductions for state and local taxes and cutting federal benefit programs.

Democrats, arguing that they prefer to wait until after the August recess to present their own deficit-cutting measures, continued to revel in the political advantages they foresee from the current White House troubles.

“We didn’t pledge that every time the Republicans slit their wrists that we would slit ours,” said Rep. Leon E. Panetta (D-Monterey), chairman of the House Budget Committee.

Despite the escalating war of words, both sides still face the need to forge some sort of deficit compromise this fall if they are to avoid more than $100 billion in domestic and military spending cuts scheduled to take effect in October under the Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction law.

“Nobody took (an) August deadline seriously because the only real deadline that matters is when Gramm-Rudman hits in October,” said Joseph White, a Brookings Institution scholar who co-wrote a recent book on the deficit politics of the last decade. “But, if they care about actually running the federal government, they are going to have to do a deal before the election.”

Unless changed, the Gramm-Rudman budget law requires that the White House impose on Oct. 1 cutbacks of as much as 40% in a wide variety of domestic and military programs. Budget negotiators, worried that such spending cuts would be politically and economically suicidal, share a goal of reaching a compromise that would provide justification for legislation to again postpone Gramm-Rudman’s day of reckoning.

“The only sensible thing is to avoid Gramm-Rudman,” White said. “But, the more they lie and cheat about it, the more loudly they have to proclaim their virtue.”

Meanwhile, lawmakers maneuvered to overcome the perennial impasse over raising the limit on federal borrowing. The Senate is not expected to act by Friday on a debt ceiling bill approved by the House Tuesday, possibly requiring a rare Saturday session to allow Congress to vote a separate short-term increase in the ceiling.

At the White House meeting with about 150 congressional Republicans, Bush, according to a senior Administration official, told the lawmakers that “we had agreed to a Democratic proposal to exchange budget deficit plans. We are prepared to do that and have been for days. The Democrats are not prepared to.”

Democrats, who are finding it difficult to develop their own specific budget proposal, deny that they agreed to present a plan before the congressional break, which is scheduled to start Saturday.

Bush, the official added, “said he still wants to hear from them before the recess because, come the recess, we will make it abundantly clear to the American people how we feel about it.”

House Democrats, after the GOP meeting at the White House, met in a strategy session of their own.

“The Republicans are in disarray and fighting with each other, so they are pointing the finger (of blame) at Democrats,” said Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). When lawmakers return home in August, he added, “there’s going to be a nice blame game going on.”

But Rep. Mickey Edwards (R-Okla.) said that “there is no Democratic plan . . . . They haven’t proposed one thing to do except to cut defense spending.”

He ridiculed the Democrats for “pouting and whining” and compared the GOP lawmakers at the White House to “troops ready to go to war who want the commander to give them their marching orders.”

Staff writers William J. Eaton and James Gerstenzang contributed to this story.