Bush to Shift Focus From Education to Plight of Poor

After focusing much of his campaign in recent months on improving education, presumed Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush today will announce the first in a series of initiatives aimed at helping the working poor move into the middle class.

As part of a speech on opportunity, the Texas governor also will emphasize his tax plan’s role in benefiting the poorest Americans.

The effort marks yet another attempt by Bush to cast himself as a moderate conservative, putting as much distance between himself and the hard-line, Newt Gingrich-inspired policies that distanced crucial voting blocs like suburban moms and minorities from the GOP during the 1996 and 1998 elections.

“He’ll be a different kind of Republican,” one Bush aide said. “It’s a continuation of what he’s been talking about.”

Details of the new proposals will come during the next few weeks. In the past, Bush has talked about measures such as tax credits to allow purchase of private health insurance by the working poor, who make too much to qualify for Medicaid.

Ari Fleischer, a Bush spokesman, described the governor’s new package as innovative and said Bush will discuss health care, savings and home ownership in Ohio today and speak further on health issues in Missouri on Wednesday.

“The speech [today] will focus on . . . helping the working poor to save money to accumulate wealth,” Fleischer said. One example of Bush’s plan to help the working poor is his $483-billion tax cut proposal that would drop the lowest tax rate from 15% to 10%.

Democrats have taken Bush to task for some of his proposals.

“The crown jewel of his agenda is a risky tax cut scheme that mostly benefits the rich,” said Doug Hattaway, a spokesman for Al Gore, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee. “To pay for his tax cut, he’d have to gut programs that already exist to help the working poor.”

Although Bush has never been an especially doctrinaire Republican, he shifted to the right during GOP primaries to stave off a determined challenge from Sen. John McCain of Arizona. The new emphasis on traditional Democratic territory--education and health care--marks his efforts to return to his theme of “compassionate conservatism.”

But if Bush’s record in Texas is any measure, he may have a hard time convincing voters that his proposals are anything other than shrewd politics.

Although Bush can take some credit for improving health care in Texas, including passing a patients’ bill of rights, health care advocates say his record on reform has been spotty.

For instance, a 1997 bill allowing Texans to sue HMOs became law without Bush’s signature. And Texas ranks near the bottom of the nation in several categories of health care, including the number of poor children and elderly people with health insurance.

“It sort of stuns me that Texas is not one of the poorest states in the nation, yet it has one of the highest uninsured rates,” said Diane Rowland, the executive director of the Kaiser Commission on the Future of Medicaid, a nonprofit group that studies health care issues for low-income Americans.

And the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs is mired in scandal, with several Bush-appointed political figures under investigation for improper use of federal housing money.

More than 650,000 households in Texas--an all-time high--are classified as having dire housing needs by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, said John Henneberger, co-director of the nonprofit Texas Low Income Housing Information Service.

“There are massive numbers of poor people living in terrible housing conditions and there has been little or no leadership from the governor to solve the problem,” Henneberger said. “I do hope Bush comes up with initiatives to do something. Texas would be a nice place to start.”

Bush can’t be blamed for health care and housing problems that stretch back for decades, said Fleischer, the Bush spokesman.

“The governor deserves to be judged on the proposals he makes tomorrow,” Fleischer said. “They’re going to be innovative proposals.”

Bush also began the process of taking more direct control of the Republican National Committee, typical for the presumed nominee in an election year.

On Monday, he appointed one of his oldest Texas allies, businessman Fred Meyer, and two other associates, Maria Cino and Jeanne Johnson Phillips, to top spots in the RNC to help oversee planning and operations for the convention in Philadelphia this summer.

Bush campaign officials noted that Meyer is close to McCain, whose endorsement is being sought by the nominee-in-waiting.

Times staff writer Alissa J. Rubin and Times wire services contributed to this story.