Bush challenges Congress on the economy

President Bush punctuated his last State of the Union address Monday night by taking a big swing at the Democratic-controlled Congress, promising to veto any new taxes, drawing a line in the sand on secret spending measures and warning lawmakers not to tinker with his plan to stimulate the economy.

With the campaign to succeed him threatening to push him to the background in his last year in office, Bush devoted the bulk of his address to the economy, heeding opinion polls that indicate that it has surpassed the war as Americans’ foremost concern.

“Americans can be confident about our economic growth,” Bush said. “But in the short run, we can all see that growth is slowing.”

While the president went to bat for his military “surge” in Iraq, he devoted most of his speech to the economy, confronting Congress on two fronts, taxes and spending.

With his 2001 tax cuts set to expire, Bush reiterated his call that Congress make them permanent. And he declared that he would not allow any new taxes to become law.

“Members of Congress should know: If any bill raising taxes reaches my desk, I will veto it,” he promised.

Bush: Earmarks a betrayal of public trust
Bush also revived a common theme of presidents of both parties, challenging lawmakers to sharply curtail the practice of “earmarking” expenditures for their pet projects. But he went beyond the rhetoric of his predecessors by promising to veto any spending bill that does not succeed in cutting earmarks in half from current levels.

Moreover, he announced an executive order directing executive agencies to ignore any earmarks that are not voted on and included in a law approved by Congress.

Cartoons A look at Bush’s final State of the Union address. PoliticalCartoons.com

Most earmarks are slipped into the final reports on bills to direct funding to local projects like bridges, highways and schools, never having been debated on the floor or voted on by lawmakers. But Bush denounced the practice, declaring that “the people’s trust in their government is undermined by congressional earmarks.”

“If these items are truly worth funding, the Congress should debate them in the open and hold a public vote,” he said.

Aides said Bush decided against making his order retroactive to expenditures in the current budget for fear of igniting a political uproar at a time when he is pushing Congress to quickly approve, without changes, his $150 billion proposal to stimulate the economy.

Bush’s proposal is running into resistance in the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Democrats on the Finance Committee would likely seek to boost the president’s package of tax rebates by including Social Security recipients and by extending unemployment benefits.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a Republican presidential candidate who has emphasized many of the themes Bush sounded Monday night, welcomed the president’s message but faulted him for not pushing even harder.

“I may have given a little more urgency to getting this stimulus passed immediately,” McCain said in an interview on MSNBC. “Let’s get going on that.”

But former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, another Republican candidate, hailed Bush’s “efforts on behalf of an economic stimulus package,” calling it “a valuable first step.”

“I hope that the Democratic leadership in Congress will cooperate with the president in a swift and responsible manner,” Huckabee said in a statement.

Bush pulls back on entitlements
In other economic initiatives, Bush:

• Proposed a $300 million expansion of his No Child Left Behind education program to provide more options — mainly in “faith-based” and other parochial schools — for inner-city public school students.
• Announced that he would hold the annual meeting of the leaders of the United States, Canada and Mexico in New Orleans to highlight the city’s recovery from Hurricane Katrina.
• Called for reducing or eliminating about 150 federal programs that he deems wasteful
• Called on lawmakers to reauthorize programs to retrain workers left jobless by outsourcing.
• Urged more spending on alternative clean fuels and international programs to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.
• Proposed doubling spending on basic research in the physical sciences.

“To build a prosperous future, we must trust people with their own money and empower them to grow our economy,” the president will say.

But in a striking nod to his weakened position on Capitol Hill, Bush will not offer any remedies for the looming shortfall in entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

In previous speeches, Bush has made dramatic proposals to reform entitlement programs, which are projected to begin running out of money as the giant baby boom generation reaches retirement age. This year, however, he will explicitly step aside and yield the initiative.

“Now I ask members of Congress to offer your proposals and come up with a bipartisan solution to save these vital programs for our children and grandchildren,” he said.

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