Congress Slows Bush’s Domestic Programs, Aide Says : Politics: Adviser Roger Porter denies the President is neglecting problems at home. His remarks are seen as a defensive move before the ’92 campaign.

President Bush’s chief domestic adviser, laying the groundwork for the 1992 campaign, said Sunday that the Administration has designed a comprehensive domestic program in education, health care, economic growth and crime-fighting, “and we’re waiting for Congress to take action.”

Seeking to rebut arguments that the continent-hopping President has neglected domestic problems, Roger B. Porter said that in his first term, Bush has advocated and signed such legislation as the Clean Air Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, child-care measures and the 1990 budget agreement.

“The President has demonstrated that when the Congress is willing to work with him in a bipartisan fashion, a great deal has been accomplished,” Porter said.

He said that the Administration has proposed several pieces of health care legislation and is awaiting a recommendation from Louis W. Sullivan, secretary of Health and Human Services, on the need for reforms aimed at providing more Americans with health insurance.

The remarks, on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press,” were another indication that the Administration is gearing up its defense against what is likely to be one of the Democrats’ chief lines of attack during the campaign. Bush strategists have urged Administration officials to speak out on the President’s domestic accomplishments, and at a press conference last Friday, Bush himself, speaking before TV cameras, directly addressed the subject:

“Please, American people,” he said, “do not listen to the charges by frantic Democrats who are trying to say we don’t have a domestic policy. We have a very good one.”

Yet conveying this message may not be easy. A recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, for example, indicated that by a margin of 45% to 21%, Americans do not think the President has done a good job on domestic issues.

The President himself acknowledged in a press conference earlier this summer that he finds foreign affairs more to his taste than domestic matters.

On Sunday, Porter insisted that the notion Bush has neglected domestic affairs “is a perception that exists inside the Beltway,” referring to the interstate highway that loops around Washington. A few minutes later, however, he acknowledged “there is a perception that some people have as to whether or not we’re paying sufficient attention to activity at home.”

“But I think that what will matter is what results are,” Porter added.

In a separate interview on the television show, Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) said Bush’s complaint that the Democrats block his proposals “is precisely the opposite” of the truth.

He described Bush’s strategy as “a negative veto strategy. He has very little in the way of a domestic program. . . . What you’ll see is a political plan over the next year and a half for the President simply to veto whatever the Congress does, and then to run against Congress.”

He cited as an example the President’s objections to legislation to extend unemployment insurance benefits, which has passed both houses of Congress. Bush, who has complained that the $5.8-billion measure would violate last year’s budget agreement, is expected to sign the legislation but then effectively withhold the money to pay for the extended benefits by declining to declare an emergency need.

Under last year’s deficit-cutting budget agreement, the government can spend for unbudgeted items only if the President declares such an emergency.

“The President said that the Kurds needed help; it was an emergency. . . . The President said the Israelis needed help; it was an emergency. We now say there are Americans who need help (and) the President says no,” Mitchell said.

Porter, asked why a President who had forged an international coalition against Iraq could not pull together a health care reform plan, said that “the issue is a very complicated one. It’s not simply putting out a proposal.”

He said that, while there are about 30 health care reform proposals in circulation, none have much support because they call for substantial tax increases or “impose an enormous amount of mandates on employers and employees.”

The Administration is “not going to put something out until we have got an answer that is able to command a good deal of support,” Porter said.

He said that the Administration already has taken several reform steps and offered several proposals.

Porter said that the Administration has expanded Medicaid, the federal-state program of health insurance for the poor, to cover all pregnant women whose income is 133% or less of the federally designated poverty level. The move added 2 million women to the Medicaid program, at a cost of $8 billion in the fiscal 1991 budget.

The Administration has also proposed legislation aimed at expanding federal immunization programs, reducing smoking, reforming malpractice laws, improving infant health care and fighting cervical and breast cancer, Porter said.

He said that the President wants to sign pending civil rights legislation, despite his objections to language in the version put forward by Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.) that would bar employers from requiring more education than is necessary for a job.

Porter said that the White House “is continuing to have discussions with Sen. Danforth. We are seeking a compromise. We agree with about 80% of what is in the civil rights legislation.”