President Bush wagered his political future Tuesday night on the belief that the nation`s economy will recover with only minimum government interference and he offered Congress and the country repolished proposals but no major initiatives.
Urging Americans to trust in his leadership just as they did during the Persian Gulf conflict, Bush confidently used the same slogan of that battle to talk about problems with the economy: ”I know we`re in hard times, but I know something else: This will not stand,” said the president, whose popularity has plummeted in tandem with national confidence in an economic recovery.
Nevertheless, Bush spoke with the aura of presidential authority that he has summoned for his most important speeches.
Rather than declare a sweeping new domestic order for the nation, Bush relied on traditional Republican policies of promoting business investment, curbing federal regulations and promoting a deep cut in the capital gains tax. His pragmatic speech seemed to have more a vision of next November than of the next decade. He offered no specific program to increase jobs, though he did order the Internal Revenue Service to reduce the withholding tax, an action that could pump $25 billion into the economy before the end of the year.
That money, which the White House estimated at about $345 for each married taxpayer and $172 for single filers, is ”to help pay for clothing, college or to get a new car,” the president said.
Despite hints over the last 2 1/2 months that he would lay out a comprehensive recovery plan, Bush proposed limited tax credits for the poor and increasing tax deductions for the middle class.
If anything, the surprise in the State of the Union speech was that Bush did not make any radical attempt to revive the economy, though he did make some symbolic gestures, such as ordering a budget and personnel freeze for the federal government.
Bush received moderate and polite applause from the joint session of Congress, a far different atmosphere than a year ago when he was inundated with affection and respect.
Instead of a head-on economic attack, Bush insisted, ”We are going to lift this nation out of hard times inch by inch and day by day and those who would stop us had better step aside.”
Bush`s themes, from crime control to cutting the defense budget, seemed pointed against whichever Democratic challenger emerges from the primaries. His speech was often interrupted by Republican standing ovations as the Democrats sat in disapproval.
Facing a challenge by conservative Republican Pat Buchanan in New Hampshire in less than three weeks, Bush embraced his party`s right flank with ideological themes-such as opposing abortion-from the Reagan years.
He announced changes in the military, cutting back on such expensive programs as the B-2 Stealth bomber. The defense cuts, amounting to $50 billion over the next five years would go ”this deep and no deeper,” Bush said.
He set March 20 as a deadline for Congress to pass his proposals. ”From the day after that, if it must be: The battle is joined,” said Bush. ”And you know, when principle is at stake, I relish a good, fair fight.”
Setting aside his own predictions that this speech would define his overall plan for the nation, Bush admitted there was nothing ”new or dazzling” in the speech. And he urged Americans to trust his leadership on domestic issues as they have in foreign affairs. Bush declared, ”I am doing what I think is right; I am proposing what I know will help.”
The administration built up expectations for two months by delaying policy announcements and saying they would all be unveiled in this speech. But Bush did not produce the national health-care proposal that had been anticipated. White House Chief of Staff Sam Skinner said it would not be unveiled until Feb. 6.
”The American people were expecting meat and potatoes on the menu tonight and instead they got pot luck and leftovers,” said Senate
Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) who immediately rejected the president`s call for speedy congressional action. ”There is certainly no need to hurry and pass this plan.”
Accusing the Republican administration of being ”adrift in domestic policy,” House Speaker Thomas Foley (D-Wash.) and other Democrats doubted Bush`s proposals would work.
”For too long, we were told to wait, that things would get better on their own,” Foley said about Bush`s attitude over most of the past 18 months. ”There was even an effort to talk us out of the recession, or to tell us that it wasn`t really happening at all.”
Foley said the Democrats will push for middle-class tax cuts and continue to oppose capital gains tax cuts, which he said mainly benefit the wealthy;
seek to pass national health insurance; and vote to protect abortion rights if the Supreme Court weakens them.
Critics called Bush`s proposals arrogant and heavily weighted to helping the rich find more tax loopholes or complained they were mere Band-Aids in an election year that would end up costing the economy more in the long run.
They complained that Bush employed a cynical manipulation, fostering immediate gratification at the expense of the future by increasing the federal deficit that is now estimated to have hit a record $352 billion this year alone.
More details of the president`s proposals will be revealed in his $1.5 trillion budget for 1993, which will be released Wednesday.
It was not all confrontational. Earlier in the day Bush agreed to provide an extension of $2.7 billion in unemployment benefits, a compromise worked out by two Illinois representatives-Dan Rostenkowski, Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and House Republican leader Robert Michel. When Bush announced the agreement, both Democrats and Republicans gave him a standing ovation and he remarked, with some humor, ”at last.”
White House aides admit the president has been peeved recently about having to defend himself on the economy while people ignore the triumph of the Persian Gulf conflict and his handling of the collapse of the Soviet empire.
Bush fears comparisons to the business failures and unemployment of Herbert Hoover. But he seemed to heed the advice of budget chief Richard Darman and former White House Chief of Staff John Sununu to do nothing and let the economy rectify itself. His more recent activist approach began as the number of jobless rose and predictions of a recovery sounded hollow.
With his popularity at the lowest point of his presidency, Bush needed the speech to give him a boost going into the New Hampshire primary. He has mobilized his re-election campaign to promote his proposals over the next several weeks and he himself will be campaigning later this week.
While worrying about conservative Republicans, Bush also has to deal with public perceptions that he had concentrated too much on foreign affairs and cares too little about the problems of Americans with middle and lower incomes. He has yet to recover from the public relations pounding after his disastrous visit to Japan in which his attempt to tie foreign policy in with domestic policy payoffs failed.
