Straight Out of the Chute, President Pressing Agenda

Oil drilling in the Arctic. Federal programs run by church groups. New limits on union political activity.

Those policy proposals for years have been unthinkable, stymied by a Democrat in the White House. All that has changed with George W. Bush becoming the nation’s 43rd president.

Bush has said much about his main policy priorities--cutting taxes, improving education, reforming Social Security and Medicare. But as president, he is expected to transform the political dynamics of policies that reach far beyond his trademark short list.

He will make some changes with the stroke of a pen: In a process that began as soon he took office Saturday, Bush is reviewing--and may reverse--some of the environmental, abortion and other policies President Clinton put in place by executive action.

“We are reviewing everything,” White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Other policy shifts will be pushed hard in Congress during Bush’s first months in office.

More broadly, Bush is bringing not just a litany of new policies to Washington; he is bringing a style and philosophy vastly different from Clinton’s. A president who was a self-proclaimed “policy wonk” and master of the arcana of government programs has been succeeded by a president who prefers to lay out the parameters of policy and leave the details to others.

“It is a very different style,” said Gail Wilensky, a top Bush advisor on health policy. “He’s not going to try to out-wonk the wonks . . . or see how many lines of statutory language he can send up to Capitol Hill on every issue.”

An administration that viewed government as a force for improving society and helping individuals has given way to one far less inclined to respond to social ills with new federal programs and regulations.

A White House inclined to keep a close watch on how states spend federal dollars has been supplanted by one that believes flexibility for the states is the watchword.

There are elements of Bush’s platform reminiscent of the Reagan administration--big tax cuts and a rapid defense buildup. Reagan was the last Republican to take over the White House from a Democrat. But the political circumstances of Bush’s ascension to the Oval Office are dramatically different.

Reagan took power in a commanding political position. He won in a landslide. Republicans rode his coattails to gain control of the Senate. Democrats were cowed by his popularity, which propelled his economic program quickly through Congress.

Bush won without even winning the popular vote. Republicans almost lost control of the Senate in his wake. Many Democrats still question his legitimacy and are angling to win control of the House and Senate in 2002. And far from being able to jam his priorities through Congress, Bush may see his first 100 days scrambled by erstwhile presidential rival Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who intends to introduce today his latest version of campaign finance reform legislation. In a sign of the sensitivity of the situation, Bush has summoned McCain for a meeting Wednesday.

Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” McCain insisted that a vote on his bill must take place by the end of March. “I believe we can work together on this,” he said, “but we know that delay is death.”

On the regulatory front, Bush has said that he will review and possibly reverse many of the last-minute regulations and executive orders Clinton issued in the waning days of his administration, such as rules to block development of millions of acres of forest land. Laying the groundwork for such a review, his first act as president Saturday was to issue an order freezing some rules for Medicare, the environment and other programs that had not taken effect. But more controversial decisions may follow.

For instance, Bush has said that he probably would issue an executive order stopping the flow of federal money to international family planning groups that provide either abortion services or abortion-related information. Also reportedly under consideration is an executive order that would tighten rules governing the use of union dues for political purposes.

Bush is expected to quickly create a White House office in charge of liaison with faith-based groups. The idea is to make it easier for religious institutions to learn about ways to get federal dollars to run drug rehabilitation programs, child care facilities and the like.

Education reform repeatedly has been cited as his opening gambit. On Tuesday, he plans to introduce legislation to give states more flexibility in using federal education funds while also increasing their accountability. And based on early signals, it appears the administration already is softening its push for the reform proposal’s most controversial element: voucher payments that disadvantaged students in failing schools could use to attend private school.

Bush will also quickly submit his tax cut legislation. Even before he does, Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) is expected today to introduce a bill based on Bush’s tax plan.

Paul H. O’Neill, Bush’s Treasury secretary, told a Senate committee last week that the administration might push for accelerating part of the proposed tax cut in light of the weakening of the economy. Bush and GOP congressional leaders also face a key tactical decision: whether to move the tax cut through Congress in one big package or in pieces.

Another, broader set of fiscal decisions will have to be made in the next few weeks, given that Congress awaits Bush’s first budget proposal. A comprehensive overview of where the Bush presidency is headed may not be possible until that spending blueprint is sent to Capitol Hill, probably in February. Still, new policy directions are shaping up on a number of fronts:

Defense: At the Pentagon, Bush will signal a new direction by swiftly asking Congress for additional billions to begin reversing what Republicans view as the military’s decline during the Clinton years.

In a supplemental request to the current budget, the administration will seek a pay raise for troops and funds for spare parts and other operational needs. The 2002 spending plan could include far larger sums, as the Joint Chiefs of Staff have said they need to boost the annual $300-billion defense budget by $50 billion a year to pay for what they have on the drawing board.

The issue of whether to build a national missile defense shield system looms over all others in the national security area. Bush could start plans for building a missile defense radar installation in the Aleutian Islands next year, a move that would be read abroad as a clear commitment to deploy an antimissile shield. Indeed, he has indicated his intention to support a different, and larger, system rather than the limited, land-based version contemplated by the Clinton administration.

Energy: Bush, whose resume includes a stint as a Texas oilman, has said he intends to depart from Clinton’s policies and heavily promote oil and gas exploration to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, which is at an all-time high.

In defiance of environmentalist organizations, he supports opening a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil and gas drilling, even though it surely will mean a pitched battle in Congress and no oil is likely to be extracted for years. Bush is expected to use the high energy prices nationwide and California’s power crisis to make the case for drilling in the fragile Alaskan region. But so far, he has resisted a more direct federal role in helping California work its way out of its crisis.

Abortion: Instead of supporting the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of RU-486, the pill used for early abortions, his administration will launch a review of the drug to ensure that it is safe. That could potentially lead to putting more restrictions on its use, a move that would inflame abortion rights supporters who say the drug, widely available in Europe and viewed as safe, is a noninvasive way for women to end pregnancies.

Bush also will push for more restrictions on abortion--such as a ban on so-called partial birth abortions. And he has left open the possibility of joining legal challenges to a woman’s right to abortion.

Health care: Bush will loosen the federal rules that govern many health care programs administered by the states, giving more power to governors to decide how to spend federal dollars with fewer strings attached. And with the exception of prescription drug coverage, Bush will largely halt the injection of new dollars into health insurance coverage, which was an annual Clinton trademark.

Where he will spend money is on health care research. He has pledged to complete Clinton’s goal of doubling the budget of the National Institutes of Health to $27.3 billion by 2003, with an additional $12 billion to “renew the war on cancer.”

For prescription drug coverage, Bush will send Congress his “helping hand” program--a roughly $48-billion grant to help states provide prescription drugs to the poor elderly. However, because the grant proposal is unlikely to survive on Capitol Hill--many lawmakers view it as inadequate--Bush has signaled that he would be satisfied with a broader prescription drug plan so long as it included an overhaul of Medicare that moved more of that program into the hands of private insurers.

Bush also will try to shape legislation pending in Congress to give patients more leverage in dealing with their managed health care plans. Unlike Clinton, he will try to make sure that any new federal law does not supersede laws already passed by states. And he will want to impose limits on the damages that injured patients could recover from negligent plans.

Environment: The Bush administration is likely to flex its muscles to make environmental regulations less onerous for business. His designee for Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Christine Todd Whitman, stressed that she will give more voice to polluting industries in developing their own plans for meeting clean air and water standards, rather than imposing heavy fines and hauling polluters into court. And the Interior and Agriculture departments are expected to listen more carefully to the concerns of ranchers, snowmobilers, miners, oil companies and others who have a stake in using public lands.

The Bush team already has expressed objections to the array of environmental rulings the Clinton administration passed in its waning days, such as the designation of new national monuments. Although it will be difficult for Bush to reverse all the rules, his appointees likely will try to reduce the effect of the actions by failing to aggressively enforce them.

Foreign policy: Bush wants to conduct an extensive study of U.S. diplomatic policy before taking any dramatic initiatives. But the world may not be willing to wait. Whether he is ready or not, Bush especially will be required to take action in the Middle East, with its festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iraq’s efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction.

In Asia, Bush is expected to pull back from Clinton’s effort to repair relations with North Korea.

On trade policy, Bush brings a robust commitment to expanding world commerce, less fettered than Democrats by concerns about setting labor and environmental standards for U.S. trading partners. A looming issue will center on a hemispheric free trade deal that the United States would like in place within the next few years. To get such a deal, Bush will have to win authority to conclude trade accords without congressional tinkering, an authority that Congress denied Clinton.

Times staff writers Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Marlene Cimons, Norman Kempster, Jonathan Peterson, Paul Richter, Edmund Sanders, Jube Shiver Jr. and Elizabeth Shogren contributed to this story.