President Was Warned to Rally the Public to Deficit Package or Risk Humiliation : Budget: Bush hastily decided to make television appeal after discussions with GOP congressmen. His big problem seems to be within his own party.

President Bush’s hasty decision to make a nationally televised appeal for support on the $500-billion budget compromise came only after White House meetings Tuesday at which congressional Republicans delivered a blunt warning: Failure to rally the public with such a personal appeal could bring on a humiliating defeat.

The episode reflects how much Bush has to lose--or win--in the struggle over the budget compromise and how much his potential vulnerability is due to fellow Republicans. If the President should fail, the result could be economic chaos for the country and severe political damage for Bush himself.

Congressional Democrats have pledged to support the controversial budget measure, which contains such a broad array of tax increases and spending cuts in popular programs that it will inflict at least some pain on almost all voters.

But the Democrats have made their votes conditional on Bush’s delivery of GOP votes. And it is Republicans who are balking--many of them still upset that Bush abandoned his no-new-taxes pledge and agreed to include tax increases in the budget compromise worked out at the eleventh hour last weekend by White House and congressional negotiators.

In putting his personal prestige on the line, Bush has raised the already high political stakes of a congressional struggle that conservative Republicans complain has been shaped more by Democrats so far than by the President and the GOP.

“This essentially is a Democratic package,” charged House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who led a GOP revolt and at first vowed to defeat the compromise measure. “The Democratic leadership should have the burden to pass it. The Democrats got what they wanted, tax increases, no growth incentives, cuts in the defense budget and no reductions in discretionary spending.”

Gingrich said in an interview Tuesday night that, with Bush, as well as House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) and House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.), leading the fight, Congress probably will pass the compromise.

But Gingrich, still an adamant foe of the measure, will continue to lead the opposition.

Democrats said that the ball is now in Bush’s court and that he must pull his own party along with him or face blame not only for the unraveling of the compromise but for any adverse economic fallout.

“This is an acid test for his leadership,” said House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.). “If a President can’t get his own party members to follow him, he’s in real trouble. I’m bitterly disappointed in some aspects of the compromise, especially in its fairness . . . but we did the best we could. And we need the President to convince the American people that the only alternative to the compromise is fiscal chaos.”

The support of Republicans is essential for House passage because, under ground rules adopted by the negotiators, the compromise package must be approved by a majority of each party in each chamber.

“From Day One, when the President talked to Tom Foley and George Mitchell at the White House, the precondition of this whole thing was that both parties would have to support it,” Gephardt said. “Our clear intention is not to put up more than half of our people for this unpleasant package, and the Republicans know it.”

Bush himself, in three separate sessions Tuesday with groups of House Republicans who oppose the compromise, warned of severe economic consequences if the measure fails.

Although Gingrich had told opponents of the measure that they could hold out for a better deal, the aide said that Bush told the House Republicans: “I don’t think you can get a better agreement. You’ve got to take the broader view. This is what is good for the economy. Some of you think we ought to forget this and use the veto strategy. But I don’t see how we can get a better deal.”

Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr. (R-Fla.), one of a group of 14 House members who met with Bush in a session that lasted for 90 minutes, said that the congressmen “strongly urged the President, because of his popularity, to get on the television and explain thoroughly to the American people exactly what the consequences would be if we didn’t pass the budget compromise.”

Earlier in the budget negotiations, Bush had promised Democratic leaders that eventually he would publicly lead the fight on any budget compromise that emerged, but he did not make the decision to go on television Tuesday night until after the meeting with Shaw’s group, the second of his three sessions with a total of about 30 House members.

The House members strongly urged him not to delay making the speech because the first test vote on the compromise will be taken Thursday, when both the House and Senate vote on the overall budget resolution. The resolution sets the outlines for spending, although it does not include the detailed elements of the compromise package.

The final budget package incorporating the compromise is scheduled to be voted on on Oct. 19.

A Bush aide said that he thought the President persuaded about two-thirds of the House members who met with him to support the budget package.