Bush Pleads for Public Support of Budget Pact

President Bush, seeking to quell opposition in Congress to the new compromise budget agreement, appealed to the American public Tuesday night for a groundswell of support to help pressure recalcitrant lawmakers to vote for the plan.

Declaring that America’s soaring budget deficit is “a cancer gnawing away at our nation’s health,” Bush said of the $500-billion, five-year package: “It is the best agreement that could be legislated now.”

Bush made his remarks with the support of Republican and Democratic congressional leaders, who are trying to fend off revolts from dissenting House members. Those dissenters, primarily Republicans, fear that the program will cut too deeply into their constituents’ favored government programs or cause a taxpayers’ revolt.

Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), who followed Bush’s speech with a brief television appearance of his own, joined in urging lawmakers of both parties to go along with the accord. Like Bush, he said the accord is the best the two sides could come up with.

The success or failure of the budget accord is likely to hinge on the President’s ability to persuade lawmakers of his own party. Many Republicans already have bolted, and Democrats have conditioned their backing on majority support among GOP members in both houses.

House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.) said the address would help rally wavering Republicans to support the budget plan. “I think the President’s remarks galvanized a lot of thinking among members on our side,” he said.

The budget pact, which was unveiled Sunday, was written in “eight months of blood, sweat and fears--fears of the economic chaos that would follow if we fail to reduce the deficit,” the President said in a hastily arranged televised speech from the Oval Office.

“It’s the toughest deficit reduction package ever, with new enforcement rules to make sure that what we fix now stays fixed,” the President declared.

The five-year plan is intended to cut $40 billion from the budget deficit in the current fiscal year, which began Monday, and $500 billion over the next five years. Without the newly proposed spending cuts and tax increases, the budget deficit this year would soar to a record $294 billion.

On the revenue side, the federal tax on gasoline would increase 12 cents a gallon, and taxes on alcoholic beverages and cigarettes would be increased. The Medicare premiums paid by the elderly would be raised, and cuts would be made in the health care program’s expenditures. Defense spending would be cut by as much as $184 billion over five years--the largest cut in any single area of government spending, although cuts throughout government programs would affect millions of Americans.

Warning that without the spending cuts and tax increases, the once-growing economy would tumble, Bush said that “the way down would be very hard.”

He told his audience that the package was assembled without any personal or corporate income tax increases--offering him a degree of consolation for his 1988 campaign pledge of “no new taxes.” He noted, however, that it would boost government revenue through a number of “luxury” taxes on such items as boats and expensive cars, as well as the “sin taxes” paid on tobacco and alcohol products.

“I’m not and you’re not in favor of tax increases,” he said, but “everyone who can should contribute something.”

Citing the cooperation that was finally achieved after a summer of angry and often tumultuous negotiations between the Administration and senior Democrats and Republicans from the House and Senate, Bush said the deficit reduction was achieved with “no smoke, no mirrors, no magic act.”

The President called for Republicans to tell their party’s senators and members of Congress to “stand with the President” and for Democrats to tell their senators and representatives to “stand with their congressional leaders.”

“The time for politics and posturing is over. The time to come together is now,” he said.

Bush, who had avoided taking a direct hand in the negotiations, thus was injecting himself directly into a fight that has proved extremely sensitive. Recognizing the concerns that the budget cuts have raised, he called on members of Congress to reject the fears of voter retaliation--and called on voters to recognize the greater national needs.

“If we succeed, every American will have a large burden lifted,” he said.

In his televised remarks, Mitchell said Democratic congressional leaders recognize that the proposed budget “demands sacrifice from all Americans.” But if it is enacted, he said, “it holds the promise of restoring a sound economy, from which all Americans will benefit.”

Like Bush, Mitchell noted that the package was an imperfect compromise in which “neither side got all it wanted.”

He said Democrats preferred a budget that “asks more from the wealthy and less from the elderly. But when the President asked us to join in rewriting his budget, we agreed, because the nation is more important than partisan differences.”

Mitchell said he hoped that congressional Republicans “will also set aside partisan differences, as we have done, and join us in doing what’s right for our country.”

Other lawmakers, including some who are opposed to the budget pact, praised the President’s performance in his televised address.

Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Highland), third-ranking House Republican leader, declared that “the President made a big hit tonight” and predicted that Bush “is going to deliver the votes needed to produce a package.”

Lewis said that “you could almost feel a surge of support for the package that was not there two days ago.”

Lewis said he thought that the President’s call for lawmakers to look at the “whole package” was aimed at conservative Republicans who are protesting the proposed tax increases.

One such conservative, Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), said Bush’s speech did not persuade him to drop his opposition to the agreement, which he complained not only raises taxes, but also locks in enormous increases in social program spending.

However, Cox acknowledged that Bush’s “extraordinarily polite and bipartisan” appeal was effective.

“The bully pulpit of the Oval Office is very powerful, and I expect that the President’s televised appeal, together with the arm-twisting going on among members of Congress, will produce some changed votes,” he said.

Meanwhile, Senate Democratic Whip Alan Cranston of California said after the speech that he remained “cautiously optimistic” that the Senate would vote for the package because there is no realistic alternative.

The budget battle exploded into the open this week after months of closed-door negotiations by House, Senate and White House representatives who chiseled away at the deficit with a politically sensitive mix of tax increases and spending cuts.

With announcement of a final agreement Sunday, members of Congress were free to take sides. That created for the President the difficult task of keeping in line conservative Republicans who objected to the tax increases, while gaining the support of more liberal Democrats who objected to some of the spending cuts.

Bush prefers a more personal approach to soliciting support on difficult issues than making televised appeals to the nation in an effort to build pressure on recalcitrant lawmakers. But he opted for the television appeal during prime time because he found himself facing the prospect of an embarrassing defeat.

Using a technique that even the President acknowledged he had not tried before, Bush appealed directly to the American people in his speech, asking them to communicate with their elected officials to support the budget plan.

The image he projected was of a political realist, tired of rhetoric and politics; the great doer, not the great communicator.

The President avoided relying on any of the props or theatrics he has tried with varied success in other prime-time addresses, such as when he held up crack cocaine during his drug speech last year. He stuck instead to simple language, a muted delivery and a plain message kept to about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, the President picked up the support Tuesday of the National Assn. of Manufacturers, but the AFL-CIO, still influential with many Democrats, announced its opposition.

The debate is likely to reach a fever pitch today and Thursday morning, leading to a scheduled vote in the House on Thursday.

Rep. Bill Frenzel (R-Minn.), a key backer of the budget deal, said the vote was being delayed until Thursday because “we on the Republican side who want to pass it will need more time to get our 90 votes. It’s coming slow.”

At midday Tuesday--before any impact from Bush’s hands-on approach--only about half a dozen Republicans were considered certain to vote for the plan in the House, Republican sources said, with about 50 firmly opposed and others leaning that way.

Under the agreement endorsed by the budget negotiators, the accord must be supported by a majority of Republicans and Democrats in both the House and the Senate. Sufficient support in the Senate is not considered in doubt.

By moving early to make his television speech, Bush sought to stem any rebellion among his allies and give wavering House members political cover to support the compromise.

Congressional approval is needed to avoid deep, across-the-board cuts that would be mandated by the Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction law, cuts that threaten to disrupt the functioning of the federal government, from air traffic control to zoological parks.

The President’s speech was the final act of a daylong drama that brought three groups of Republican House members--about 70 in all--to the White House, as Bush began aggressively trying to line up sufficient support to pass the cobbled-together budget plan.

With congressional elections five weeks away, what would ordinarily be a difficult issue--involving a reduction in benefits to highly organized special interests and a larger tax bite across most sectors of the voting public--has been elevated to extraordinary sensitivity. In the end, presidential pressure may have less sway on House members from his own party than does the fear of the voters’ wrath.

Hampering the leaders’ search for votes are parochial protests over various tax items in the package. For example, New England politicians were outraged about the last-minute inclusion of a 2-cent-per-gallon tax on home heating oil.

Signaling a White House approach that acknowledged Bush’s dissatisfaction with some aspects of the agreement, White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said: “If you look at individual aspects of this plan there’s a lot of reason to be negative, but you have to look at the overall product.

“Every constituency gets hit,” he said. “Nobody likes paying their bills, and that’s true whether it’s an individual or whether it’s the federal government. But the deficit must be dealt with and it’s not an easy fix. We think it’s the best that both sides could come up with.”

House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who has led opposition to the budget deal, said the Republicans in the House are “very closely divided.” He predicted that Bush could “have a tremendous impact on the 45 undecided (Republican) members.”

Indeed, Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad), who represents southern Orange County and northern San Diego County, said that of 20 Republican members of the House attending a meeting with Bush on Tuesday morning, three or four supported the budget accord when the meeting began and about 15 were on Bush’s side when the 75-minute session concluded.

Expressing optimism that Bush would prevail, Rep. Jack Buechner (R-Mo.), said: “The President has done a pretty good job of moving Republicans off the radical side of the road.”

“What’s the alternative?” he asked. “You open this thing back up and you’ve sent a message to Democrats that the President doesn’t really have control. So you end up with a more populist package that does nothing to improve the President’s own standing, much less our (Republican) standing.”

Staff writers Paul Houston, William J. Eaton and Thomas B. Rosenstiel contributed to this story.