Bush Vows to Cure a Dysfunctional D.C.

Vowing to make the nation’s capital more civil and functional, Texas Gov. George W. Bush promised Thursday to cut wasteful spending, speed the approval of presidential appointments and promote bipartisan cooperation in the often-contentious federal budget process.

Bush gave the first of two back-to-back government reform addresses on the home turf of presidential rival Al Gore--who has received mixed reviews for the effort to “reinvent government” that has been a cornerstone of his vice presidency.

But a heartbeat after pledging to “set the right tone” for a higher-minded political process, Bush attacked his Democratic rival for his part in the “Washington war room mentality--the hostile stance, the harsh charges, the lashing out at enemies.”

“We have had eight years of this, and eight years is enough,” Bush declared. “We need a clean break from the recent past. It is a time for leadership that sets a new tone--a tone of respect and bipartisanship.”

Bush lauded state and local governments for getting the difficult work of democracy done while he scolded the Republican-run Congress for being part of the problem in Washington. “There’s enough blame to go around,” he said.

To revamp Washington--a blue sign on Bush’s lectern dubbed it “A new approach”--the probable Republican presidential nominee unveiled a six-point plan.

He would adopt biennial budgeting, confining the difficult process to nonelection years.

He would enact a law to prevent government shutdowns.

He would change the drawn-out process in which Congress writes a budget proposal, the president drafts his own version and then the two duke it out. Instead, he would introduce a joint budget resolution in which the two branches of government agree on spending goals early in the game.

In addition, Bush said he would set up a commission to eliminate wasteful spending, seek a line-item veto--a version of which was scuttled by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1998--and speed appointments by requiring Congress to act within 60 days of receiving nominations from the president.

“There is too much argument in Washington and not enough discussion,” he said as he basked in the Southern sunshine and vowed to win here, where Gore was a senator. “There’s too much polling and not enough decision-making. There’s too much needless division and not enough shared accomplishments.”

Gore spokesman Doug Hattaway scoffed at the idea of the Texas governor as a government reformer. Bush said he would curb state government in Texas, “and it hasn’t happened,” Hattaway said, and he promised to appoint an inspector general for government waste, which he has not done.

“Gov. Bush should keep the promises he made in Texas before promising to reform the federal government,” Hattaway said.

But Paul Light, vice president of the centrist Brookings Institution in Washington and a frequent commentator on government reform, applauded many of Bush’s proposals.

“This is a nice, centrist package of ideas,” Light said. “It fits in well with what Clinton was talking about in 1992.” And it also furthers the Bush agenda between the primaries and the upcoming conventions: to capture the vast middle ground of American political thought.

Light was particularly pleased by the idea of speeding up the presidential appointment process, which he called “cumbersome on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue,” with the president and Congress sharing blame for lengthy delays.

Examples of how arduous it is to get presidential appointments approved are legion, and Bush said Thursday that at “some memorable low points [Senate nomination] hearings have become a gauntlet of accusation, interest group warfare and public humiliation.”

James C. Hormel, an openly gay San Francisco philanthropist and civic activist, was sworn in as ambassador to Luxembourg only after two years of fierce opposition from conservative lawmakers and some Christian groups.

U.S. District Judge Richard A. Paez endured a record 1,506-day wait--and a bitter partisan fight--before he won Senate confirmation in March to the federal appeals court. Critics of the delays said the Senate should have voted on his nomination much earlier--even if it meant rejecting him.

Flying from Texas to Tennessee on Thursday, Bush expanded on his ideas behind reinventing government, calling the line-item veto a means to “contribute to fiscal sanity” and saying that certain concepts in his address came from discussions with his former Republican primary rival Sen. John McCain and with Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.).