Democrats Upset by President’s Plans to Attack Them

Democratic congressional leaders Tuesday sharply attacked President Bush for his announced plan to berate Congress today because it has not met his 100-day deadline for passage of anti-crime and transportation bills.

Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) charged that the President’s tactics represent “a new low in political cynicism,” and Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) said that Bush already may have begun a reelection campaign centered on “Congress-bashing.”

The unusually strong, coordinated criticism of the President by the top Democrats in both chambers appeared to signal a growing partisan spirit on Capitol Hill in response to Bush’s recent confrontational stance on domestic issues.

Many Democrats have been angered by the President’s repeated criticism of the House-passed civil rights bill as a blueprint for racial quotas in hiring and by his multiple threats to use the veto to thwart that and other Democratic domestic initiatives.

However, House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.) agreed that Congress is moving far too slowly and brushed off the partisan attack, saying, “It demonstrates how woefully lacking the Democratic Party is for issues they can sink their teeth into against a popular President.”

And Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) implied that the flap over the 100-day deadline is a tempest in a teapot, saying, “I don’t think it’s impacted outside the capital.”

Mitchell and Foley made their comments to reporters after the White House had said that the President would criticize Congress on his 67th birthday tonight for failure to enact his proposals for revising federal criminal laws and reauthorizing the national transportation program by Friday.

Bush has invited 1,000 persons to the White House lawn to hear his speech. By scheduling the talk in the evening and inviting such a large audience, the President appears to be trying to turn up the heat on the Democratic leadership, which sets the congressional agenda.

In addressing a joint session of Congress on March 6 after victory in the Persian Gulf War, the President said, “If our forces could win the ground war in 100 hours, then surely the Congress can pass this legislation in 100 days.”

The Senate is now considering a transportation bill and is preparing to take up a package of anti-crime bills later this month. In the House, both bills are still awaiting committee approval but are expected to be considered by the House this summer or fall.

“The prospects for enactment would be enhanced if we had more cooperation (from the President) instead of a cynical attempt to score political points,” Mitchell fumed in advance about the topic of Bush’s speech.

“The so-called 100 days has no legal or policy basis,” he added. “It is an arbitrary date picked by the President for purely political reasons.”

Mitchell said that it is “a new low in political cynicism” for Bush to criticize Congress for inaction on the transportation bill when a Republican senator, John W. Warner of Virginia, has been blocking action on the measure for three days in a bitter dispute over allocation of highway funds to the states.

Foley, in a separate meeting with reporters, said that the President is wrong on both procedure and substance.

“It is, with great respect, not the President’s business to attempt to organize the schedule of the Congress,” Foley said. “The President was very ill-advised to attempt to impose artificial and extra-constitutional deadlines on legislation.

“We are going to pass better legislation than the President has recommended in both surface transportation and crime. His recommendations, I am sorry to say, are woefully inadequate and in some cases poorly considered,” the Speaker added.

When asked if the President has a domestic agenda, Foley snapped, “Not that I can determine.”

However, House Republican leaders accused the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jack Brooks of Texas, of locking up the President’s crime bill so tightly that a subcommittee could not begin to consider it.

Wearing “100 Days” buttons, Michel and other GOP spokesmen said that the lack of action on the transportation and crime legislation represents a lost opportunity. But Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.) acknowledged that “one hundred days by itself is not magic” and indicated that the GOP lawmakers would be satisfied if a crime bill were passed by fall.

Staff writer James Gerstenzang contributed to this story.