President Revisits Issues, and States, to Push Goals

MILWAUKEE -- Using issues that worked for him two years ago, President Bush is revisiting some of the most important states on the political map, putting pressure on a Congress that has moved slowly on his limited domestic agenda.

During the first six months of the year, the peripatetic president has visited 33 of the 50 states. But it is the states to which he has returned again and again that draw attention, and the topics on which he is focusing set out a road map for his own political course.

He was in Ohio on Monday--visit No. 4 in 2002. On Tuesday, he spent two hours in Wisconsin--his third time in the state this year. And on Thursday, he is planning to attend an Independence Day parade in a small town in West Virginia--visit No. 3 there.

He is talking about school vouchers, about his faith-based initiative, about overhauling the welfare system and about patriotism.

The issues formed the foundation of his 2000 presidential campaign, and they work comfortably for him in 2002.

Indeed, in the case of his proposal that the federal government relax regulations so religious-based organizations can run some social welfare programs traditionally run by government agencies, Bush has a handy target in Congress’ skittishness.

The welfare program Bush wants to expand is built on proposals advanced by Republicans in the mid-1990s and endorsed by the Clinton administration. On Tuesday, he found a nexus of the two issues at Milwaukee’s Holy Redeemer Institutional Church of God in Christ.

Speaking in a meeting hall of a church where welfare recipients receive job training, Bush said that, in rewriting welfare laws, Congress must not undo the toughened welfare requirements the House and the Senate imposed six years ago.

“One way to make sure that we continue to make progress is insist upon work, and then help people who need help to find a job,” the president said. Religious groups can do that, he said.

“Government can hand out money.... But what government cannot do is put hope in people’s hearts or a sense of purpose in their lives,” he said. “When we find programs that work, when we find a place that is actually effective at helping people, this government will welcome such programs.”

Critics have argued that allowing churches and other religious groups to receive government money for job training, for example, may violate the constitutional doctrine of separation of church and state.

However, Bush said, “our government should not fear faith in our society.” He singled out the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty in New York City.

“They don’t ask, ‘What is your religion?’ They ask, ‘Are you hungry?’ But because of their name and their identity, federal officials have repeatedly discouraged them from applying for federal funds,” he said. “That’s not right. The federal government should not ask, ‘Does your organization believe in God?’ ... They ought to ask, ‘Does your program work?’ ”

The House has moved ahead of the Senate on the faith-based legislation and the welfare measure, approving its own versions while Senate committees work on the two pieces of legislation.

For his travels this week, Bush has chosen states that have generally played important roles in picking presidents in modern campaign history.

Bush took Ohio by a 3.5 percentage point margin over former Vice President Al Gore, the Democrats’ candidate in 2000. He lost Wisconsin by a margin of 0.02 points, and he won West Virginia by 6.3 percentage points.

The issues on which Bush is focusing do not demand congressional action or even the prospects of congressional action to carry political weight. They have a particular appeal to the conservative base that Bush courts.

“If none of this stuff gets enacted, it has a long shelf life,” said Ross K. Baker, a Rutgers University political scientist, feeding a president’s opportunities to accuse Congress--as Harry S. Truman did effectively in 1948 and nearly every president has done since then--of being a “do-nothing” legislative body.

The effort to win congressional approval for each of the social policy issues has faced obstacles since Bush took office nearly 18 months ago.

As Congress worked on his education proposals, Bush quickly accepted compromises that abandoned the voucher program, which would allow parents to send children to parochial or other private schools with tuition help from taxpayers. Vouchers were not part of the education legislation he signed in January, and until Monday in Cleveland--after the Supreme Court decision supporting their use--he had drawn little attention to what had been a central piece of the education overhaul on which he had campaigned.

He quickly won approval last year of a $1.35-trillion, 10-year tax cut; now he is campaigning on occasion to make it permanent. And the faith-based initiative faces difficult obstacles in the Senate.