Bush's Budget Test

...White House media managers entitled the press fact sheet that accompanied the Chief Executive's first appearance before the Congress, "President Bush's Agenda—Building a Better America...

...To stand a chance of passing what Presidential-class politicians call "the tombstone test"—that is, the ultimate judgment of history—the noncharismatic Bush must work with the Democrats to cut the deficit by (gulp...

...If sometime later this year a grand bipartisan bargain is struck on an overall budget strategy, the seeds for broad reforms could be planted...

...For any meaningful budget changes to be achieved, something probably has to give on all three major fronts: domestic spending, revenues, defense...

...Like Reagan, George Bush seeks to preside over a "Don't Worry-Be Happy" administration...

...Naturally, there is a danger that the exercise will yield a self-serving opaque report —that it will snip here and there at the edges of policy initiatives without ever coming to grips with root issues...

...The Democratic Congressional chieftains listening to him may harbor deep private reservations about his disinclination to take public responsibility for the hard choices that lie ahead, but this was a theme they could readily accept...

...The big unknown in the Bush agenda is his instruction to the National Security Council "to review the range of foreign policy and national security challenges facing the nation" and to report back within three months' time...

...raising revenues...

...Those sentiments underlie the Bush revisions to Reagan's final budget...

...Most of all, à la Coolidge, Bush seems committed to preserving the economic and political status quo...

...In coping with the mess he inherited, Bush could score— but only if he goes against type and moves to overhaul the basic notions of U.S...

...Even before the negotiations with Capitol Hill start—or precisely because they have yet to occur—one has to assume that whatever sums the government ends up collecting and spending in fiscal 1990 (beginning October 1,1989) will diverge significantly from what has been placed on the table...

...As budget chief Darman put it over the breakfast table the day after the President's Speech: "If you had bought a new car and taken a ski trip to Colorado last year, you do not begin the new year by making up a personal budget that automatically calls for buying a new car and taking a ski trip...

...These days, to be sure, there is a certain gusto at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that doesn't square with the sleepy quality of the Coolidge and Reagan periods, yet the presence of both men is almost palpable...

...It is of course altogether possible that the "Grand Compromise" on the budget that Darman and some of the Democrats have in mind will produce no more than a bag of hot air, reminiscent of the effort once mounted by Gerald R. Ford—another Republican President who mixed it up with the Congress—to "whip inflation now.' On the other hand, leaving aside the nasty fight over confirming John G. Tower as Secretary of Defense—which was less of a partisan struggle than it might have appeared to be—it is clear that Bush has elicited a remarkable spirit of cooperation during his maiden weeks in the White House...

...Nevertheless, for their part, the Democrats sense that the country, at least for now, stands behind Bush...

...It remains the foundation of their forthcoming attempted venture in power sharing...

...Finally, he must work with them to reorder the nation's military priorities in the light of what the Europeans term "the Gorbachev factor...

...Still, just as the Reagan budget marked the last spasm of a particular Utopian conservative outlook, the Bush revisions represent an initial stab at what are likely to be protracted negotiations with the Democrats...

...But neat slogans do not obviate the need for negotiations with Democratic Congressional leaders on how to slice up next year's government pie...

...As you might expect, the Democrats are deeply chagrined by the fact that the Bush budget would slice Federal programs much more deeply than the President acknowledged in his February 9 opening speech to a joint session of Congress...

...The study, already well under way, is one reason why the White House and Secretary of State James A. Baker III are being criticized for assuming office without a cohesive foreign policy...

...Although some preliminary skirmishing took place before Bush left on his whirlwind trip to the Far East, nothing of importance has been settled, let alone announced...

...Nearly everyone here expects that those talks will soon start in earnest...

...national security...

...From the outset, Bush has stressed he wants to manage a government committed to the highest ethical standards—which, in turn, would then minister to a "kinder, gentler" nation...

...Given our personality-oriented press corps, fixated upon the presidency, it is altogether too easy to forget that the Constitution reserves to Congress the sole right to dispense public funds...

...The real uncertainty, as he settles into his new job, is whether some harsh, unforeseen events—a domestic economic slump or a foreign policy crisis—will intrude on his rather narrow vision of the presidency...

...Congressional Democrats tend to view Darman's approach as public relations sophistry...

...It avoids dealing a blow to big Federal payouts...

...The government should work the same way...

...The political synapse between Coolidge and Bush quickly becomes apparent when one equates Reagan's tenure with that of Warren G. Harding...

...Even if they wanted to pick a fight, and they do not, they have yet to fashion a coherent set of spending and taxing priorities that sharply conflict with those the new Administration has presented to them...

...That $60 billion alone is more than five times the spending increase advanced in the Bush budget...

...From the Administration's perspective, it was merely fixing a base line for the hard bargaining yet to come...

...It calls for no new taxes...

...That evokes Coolidge's efforts to clean up the stink left by the Teapot Dome scandal in the Harding Administration...

...The people didn't send us here to bicker," Bush observed from the rostrum of the House of Representatives...

...Washington-USA BUSH'S BUDGET TEST BY ANDREW J. GLASS Washington Soon after moving into the White House, Ronald Reagan ordered a picture of President Calvin Coolidge, a taciturn Republican forebear, hung in the Cabinet Room...

...Moreover, they recognize that if a few phrases about Reagan and Star Wars were snipped out of Bush's address to Congress, it could have been delivered by a victorious President Dukakis seeking to pursue a centrist course...

...One school here holds that the study, headed by White House National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, is nothing more than a transparent device to cool the many irons that Baker's predecessor, George P. Shultz, placed in the fire in a last spurt of diplomatic activity...

...George Bush surely realizes that his newly-minted agenda, point by point, falls short of curing the nation's deep-seated fiscal and social ills...

...And in agreeing to freeze Pentagon outlays in real spending terms, it merely keeps the defense establishment treading water...

...Even expert lip readers know that such a deal will entail new taxes...

...Should he make that run, and should the Democrats not block him, then his prospects for passing " the tombstone test" will surely be enhanced...

...The Reagan period revealed that when it comes to the first two, our political players seem unable to move the ball much beyond the midfield...

...Reading the polls (what politicians do best these days), many of the same Democrats who excoriated Bush during last year's campaign—portraying him as a smallminded fellow lacking any comprehensive vision of where to point the nation —now readily sing his praises...

...So if Bush wants genuine results and not, as Reagan wanted, a phony issue, he has to show a modicum of good faith toward the Democrats, who control the legislative budget-making process...

...He must also work with them to retard the growth of inefficient payouts to special-interest groups...

...Small wonder that House Speaker Jim Wright of Texas, in his banal televised response, could manage little more than to point out that Bush had poached some hallowed Democratic ground...

...The centerpiece of the Bush proposals is a "freeze" on aggregate outlays for hundreds of programs—making up, in all, about 12 per cent of the budget—at their fiscal 1989 levels...

...But it is also possible that—four decades after an all-powerful America checked the tide of Soviet expansion—Bush will depart from his Coolidge-like stance to alter his concept of the true threats to America's future...

...They note, for example, that in the 1988 fiscal year Federal spending rose by $60 billion simply as a consequence of such built-in factors as inflation adjustments and the rising pool of retirees...

...You cannot capture the Oval Office without caring how future generations will look upon your stewardship...

...From the Democratic perspective, however, the Bush package is further evidence that he seeks to take all the credit for offering the citizenry a heaping dish of vanilla ice cream (such good stuf f as beefing up education and repairing the environment) without also having to take the blame for shoveling out the spinach (cutbacks in Medicare payments, farm programs, Civil Service retirement benefits, and so forth...

...Seasoned politicians hope many people will accept the revenue increases amid their general sense of relief that at long last major structural repairs are being undertaken...

...Andrew J. Glass, a frequent New Leader contributor, is head of the Cox Newspapers bureau in Washington...

...Granted, neither the original Reagan package nor the 193-page addendum submitted to Congress by Richard G. Darman, the ambitious Bush budget director, can be seen as serious blueprints for action...

...But Bush lacks Reagan's knack for avoiding the basic responsibilities of governance and not getting called to account for his failures...

...Such an approach, he feels with some justification, better suits the national mood than the dogoodism of a Michael Dukakis...