NEWS ANALYSIS : Bush Seeks to Focus Debate on an Embattled Congress

A $700,000 grant to refurbish the Cresson Street trestle in Manayunk, Pa. A $100,000 outlay for onion storage research in Vidalia, Ga. Appropriations of $100,000 for efforts to control the dreaded leafy spurge weed, and $46,000 to study the feeding and reproduction of mink.

“The examples would be funny if the effect weren’t so serious,” President Bush said Friday as he announced a 45-day freeze on spending for 68 federal programs.

Using the time-honored device of assailing what he characterized as blatant pork-barrel appropriations, Bush seized the moment to shift the focus of political debate away from his own problems and the nation’s worries about recession and unemployment.

The target of his attack, not surprisingly, is Congress, a body that seems to be held in perennially low public esteem, and has now been further damaged by scandals involving bad checks at the House bank and allegations of cocaine use at the House post office.

In his nationally televised speech, delivered before an audience of applauding political appointees assembled for the occasion in the White House East Room, Bush declared his intention to save “outraged and disgusted” American taxpayers from a flood of “wasteful spending” on such things as bridge repairs, bug research and even $100,000 earmarked for “manure disposal.”

At the same time, he ridiculed “a Congress controlled by the Democratic caucus which cannot manage a tiny bank or a tiny post office.”

In effect, he was telling members of the House and Senate: Let’s talk about your problems, not mine.

At the end of a week in which Bush and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton emerged as the undisputed front-runners in this year’s presidential race, he chose to focus not on his likely opponent in November, but on defining the opposition as the embarrassed, Democratic-led Congress.

In a speech ostensibly scheduled to mark the March 20 deadline he set two months ago for congressional action on his economic recovery plan, Bush drew heavily on what he called “the irresponsibility of Congress.”

“Our congressional system is broken,” he said, citing past traditions of bipartisanship he says are now being ignored. In doing so, he seemed to overlook the long history of presidential campaigns that took aim at opposition-led Congresses, even as he mimicked Harry S. Truman’s 1948 attacks on the “do-nothing” Republican-led Congress with his own complaint about “the status-quo Congress and the do-nothing caucus.”

Bush’s goal in trying to halt spending on 68 projects--some of which may be legitimate uses of taxpayers’ money, some of which may be of questionable value--is to force Congress to vote on each one, White House Chief of Staff Samuel K. Skinner said in an interview.

“This is just the beginning,” Skinner said, predicting more such lists, “maybe one every day, maybe a group every week.”

The project hit list “is a substantive response” to Congress’ refusal to approve the economic plan Bush sent to the House and Senate in early February, said Skinner, defending the decision to focus much of the speech on Congress and “the chaos and corruption up there.”

What really is at stake, however, is not $3.1 million for a poultry center in Arkansas, or nearly $3 billion earmarked for Navy programs, including two SSN-21 submarines now considered unnecessary because the Soviet submarine threat has diminished.

Rather, the real issue is Bush’s ability to shape the debate over economic recovery legislation, and more broadly, the way the President’s response to the nation’s worries about unemployment and other recession-related woes will be perceived by voters.

Abandoning the more reasoned approach he took to Congress in his State of the Union speech on Jan. 28, “he just savaged them” on Friday, one senior Republican operative said, adding: “I don’t think he gets any good legislation out of that. He’s given up on that.”

Bush also is seeking, the Republican said, to score points at the expense of a Washington institution, much as Ronald Reagan did before him. But his ability to do so may be constrained by his own Washington experience, which dates back to 1964.

“He tried to out-Reagan Reagan, and you can’t do it as a blue-blood Washington insider,” he said.

Bush List: Submarines and Manure

President Bush announced plans to deny $3.6 billion in federal money for 68 programs. Sponsors of the spending programs, a bipartisan group of lawmakers, were not identified. The Biggest Items

$2.8 billion for the Seawolf submarine program.

$3.1 million for an Arkansas poultry center. Among the Other Cuts

$100,000 manure disposal project at an unspecified location focusing on “comprehensive management technologies for handling of animal manure and the development of resolution techniques for conflicts between producers and the general public.”

$39,000 project to develop disease-resistant celery seeds in East Lansing, Mich.

$1 million for a parking garage in Ashland, Ky.

$8.6 million for road sealing on Indian reservations, which is said to duplicate funds provided by another program.

$200,000 in onion storage research in Vidalia, Ga.

$100,000 in research on asparagus yield declines.

$46,000 for the study of mink reproduction and research into the use of squawfish in mink diets. The Next Step

The cuts--known as rescissions--must be approved by the Senate and House to take effect. Of the 120 rescissions proposed over the past five years, only three have been approved. But Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) says Administration officials last week discovered a little-known provision of the law under which one-fifth of lawmakers could force a vote on the cuts. While Congress still may not approve Bush’s cuts even when forced to vote on them, Cox said this way congressmen would face a tough choice.

Source: Bush Administration, Times Wire Services