Politicians Note Demands for Domestic Aid

George Bush is not the only politician in Washington who got the message from Tuesday’s elections: Leaders of Congress, both Democrat and Republican, heard loud and clear that the American people want their elected officials to turn their attention back home.

Congressional leaders said Friday that they plan to sharply scale back America’s foreign commitments--with some warning that even once-sacrosanct aid to Israel might receive closer scrutiny--as both parties search for ways to exploit growing demands for a new domestic agenda.

“The American people are starting to send a message: ‘We, by God, want some help with our problems,’ ” said Rep. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.).

The Democrats who control Congress are eagerly eyeing signs of shifting public sentiment as a potential political opportunity on the eve of the 1992 presidential election. Defensive Republicans, who feel threatened by the public perception that President Bush is preoccupied with foreign policy, are scurrying to catch up.

“The feeling is that if Bush gets nicked, he’ll start bleeding,” said Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento). “Maybe this is it.”

Both Democrats and Republicans generally see the same political dynamics at work, noting that the new mood had been registering in opinion polls for weeks. But Tuesday’s Senate election in Pennsylvania, where Bush ally and former Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh was beaten by Democrat Harris Wofford in a race that focused on health care and economic fairness, proved to be “the cymbal crash at the end of a drum roll,” in the words of one House aide.

“The key thing, taking a page from Harris Wofford, is standing up and saying in a persuasive way what you are going to do for the middle class in this country,” the aide said.

But the voter discontent extended beyond Pennsylvania. While a drive to limit the terms of elected officeholders was narrowly defeated in Washington state, a strong anti-incumbent message emerged from races across the country.

The Pennsylvania election proved to be a painful lesson for Republicans, who now must decide whether to remain bound by the limited domestic agenda of the Bush Administration or move more aggressively on their own.

“This was certainly a blow that I didn’t expect,” acknowledged Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.). “I see some tough races on the horizon.”

As a result, foreign programs are now poison on Capitol Hill, while domestic issues are suddenly hot. Late Thursday night, Democratic leaders decided to abandon efforts to provide $1 billion in aid to the Soviet Union out of the Pentagon’s budget, unless Bush makes a personal push for the assistance.

Another foreign issue that may run into stiffer resistance is the North American Free Trade Agreement now being negotiated. Its opponents say the pact would prove to be a boon to the Mexican economy at the expense of American workers.

“It will be much more difficult from now on to pump money into the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and other countries,” said House Budget Committee Chairman Leon E. Panetta (D-Carmel Valley). “At each turn, the question will be, how can we justify these things when we have so many needs here at home?”

While those foreign programs languish, domestic priorities such as a middle-class tax cut are zooming to the top of the charts in Congress.

On other fronts, Democrats hope to pick up new support on such long-stalled issues as an extension of unemployment benefits, family and parental leave and legislation to prevent employers from replacing striking workers.

Senate Republicans, led by Dole, have offered a new health care proposal designed to respond to the growing public outcry over the costs and availability of medical insurance--an issue that Wofford rode to victory in Pennsylvania.

Still, there is greater agreement so far in Congress on what to vote against than on what to support. While both Republicans and Democrats are endorsing health care reform and tax cuts for the middle class, they remain far apart on the fundamentals of paying for and structuring such domestic goals.

Despite the public clamor for more domestic programs, there is clearly no willingness to pay for them with new taxes.

Indeed, in New Jersey, voters routed the Democratic majorities in both houses of the state Legislature largely to protest higher taxes imposed by Democratic Gov. James J. Florio.

Yet even as lawmakers seek ways to exploit the domestic agenda, party leaders and outside advisers warn that it would be a serious mistake for Democrats to completely abandon foreign affairs during the coming election season.

“The danger is that we become perceived as a domestic party, which is the flip side of the problem Bush faces,” noted Michael McCurry, a Washington political consultant who is now advising the presidential campaign of Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.).

Kerrey and some other Democrats see a blurring of the line between foreign and domestic policies, arguing that the two spheres come together on such issues as trade, energy and banking reform. As a result, they are pushing for a more sophisticated, less demagogic party agenda that seeks to integrate the two.

Using that approach, the Democrats acknowledge Bush’s dramatic foreign policy successes, but they point to areas of the world that he has neglected. They note, for example, that the President was meeting this week with U.S. allies in NATO, an organization that may be obsolete in the post-Cold War world. But to prove his commitment to domestic issues, Bush canceled a trip to Asia, the region that may pose the biggest threat to America’s economic future.

“He canceled the wrong trip. He should have gone to Tokyo and made (the) blue-collar workers’ case directly to the prime minister of Japan,” chided House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.).

“We should measure the success of our foreign policy in terms of how it adds to our strength and prosperity,” he added Friday night in a speech at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.

Still, that attempt by the party’s leadership to weave foreign and domestic policies into a single agenda may get lost in the clamor for Congress to take care of the home front.

“It’s going to be a very domestic Congress, an economic, middle-class Congress,” said Rep. David R. Nagle (D-Iowa).

Times staff writer William J. Eaton contributed to this story.