Bush 'Compassion' Agenda: An '04 Liability?
By ELISABETH BUMILLER - [The New York Times]
WASHINGTON, Aug. 25 - President Bush is running for re-election as a "compassionate conservative" who has sought to bring a new Republican approach to poverty and other social ills. Indeed, his campaign Web site is lush with a "compassion photo gallery" showing him reading to schoolchildren, helping out at a soup kitchen and visiting an AIDS treatment center in Africa.
But supporters, some administration officials among them, acknowledge that Mr. Bush's "compassionate conservative" agenda has fallen so far short of its ambitious goals, in a number of cases undercut by pressure from his conservative backers, that they fear he will be politically vulnerable on the issue in 2004.
At the same time, some religious supporters of Mr. Bush say they feel betrayed by promises he made as a candidate and now, they maintain, has broken as president.
"After three years, he's failed the test," said one prominent early supporter, the Rev. Jim Wallis, leader of Call to Renewal, a network of churches that fights poverty.
Mr. Wallis said Mr. Bush had told him as president-elect that "I don't understand how poor people think," and appealed to him for help by calling himself "a white Republican guy who doesn't get it, but I'd like to." Now, Mr. Wallis said, "his policy has not come even close to matching his words."
Joshua B. Bolten, White House budget director and formerly Mr. Bush's chief domestic policy adviser, responded in an interview last week by saying that "I think that is one of the most unfair criticisms that has been leveled against the president."
At issue is Mr. Bush's willingness to demand financing from Congress on his signature "compassionate conservative" issues, like education reform and AIDS, with the same energy he has spent to fight for tax cuts and the Iraq war.
Critics say the pattern has been consistent: The president, in eloquent speeches that make headlines, calls for millions or even billions of dollars for new initiatives, then fails to follow through and push hard for the programs on Capitol Hill.
On one central piece of such legislation, the so-called faith-based bill to help religious charities, Mr. Bush, after two years of objections from Democrats, retreated this spring and agreed to strip the bill of provisions specifically related to religious groups. Instead, it now largely offers tax incentives to encourage giving to charities of all kinds.
On a proposal this summer to extend a $400-a-child tax credit to low-income families, Mr. Bush at first demanded that Congress appropriate the money, then backed off in the face of opposition from his conservative allies in the House, most notably the majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay of Texas. The issue is now bottled up in a dispute between the House and the more moderate Senate, and several Republican senators have called on Mr. Bush to step in and break the impasse.
Financing for another item on Mr. Bush's compassion agenda, the national volunteer program called AmeriCorps, faltered this summer under similar opposition from Mr. DeLay. Although Mr. Bush forcefully called for expanding that Clinton-era program in his 2002 State of the Union address, he was largely silent last month amid objections to a $100 million emergency infusion that it needed to maintain its current level of operations. The House rejected that spending, leaving AmeriCorps with an uncertain future.
"Even the president is not omnipotent," Mr. Bolten said of the House opposition to the AmeriCorps money. "Would that he were. He often says that life would be a lot easier if it were a dictatorship. But it's not, and he's glad it's a democracy."
Senator Evan Bayh, an Indiana Democrat who called on the White House to intercede with Republicans to help AmeriCorps, rejects that argument, saying Mr. Bush has simply been unwilling to spend political capital by standing up to Mr. DeLay.
White House officials say that given difficult political terrain, Mr. Bush has done well. James Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, said the president "takes every occasion to publicly announce how important these compassion agenda programs are to him." On some issues, Mr. Towey added, "Congress will go a lot farther on funding what he asks for than others."
Education reform is one compassion issue that has left Democrats particularly bitter. In January 2002, with great fanfare, Mr. Bush signed his No Child Left Behind Act, a landmark bill that mandated annual testing of children in Grades 3 through 8 and greatly enlarged the federal role in public education. Democrats like Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Representative George Miller of California were crucial to its passage, and say they went along with the president on his assurances that the government would give states enough money to comply with it.
But the White House has now asked for $12 billion to continue that financing next year, $6 billion less than the legislation authorizes.
"We raised this in the Oval Office, we raised this in our meetings with the president," Mr. Miller said. "He assured us that the funds would be there if the reforms were there. This is calculated conservatism, and they calculate just as much as they can get away with. You can dress it all up, but at the end of the day he broke his promise. It's not much more complicated than that."
Mr. Bolten, the White House budget director, responded by saying that the president had asked for "some very substantial increases" in education spending ? in fact, such spending has risen during his administration ? and that the government's budget deficit "would be really way out of control" if the White House asked that all bills be financed to the limits allowed by law.
Democrats have also been angry over Mr. Bush's AIDS legislation, saying that on this issue, too, he has delivered less than promised. Last month, they note, the president toured Africa and heavily promoted his recently enacted bill to fight global AIDS, a measure that authorizes spending of $3 billion a year for five years.
"I'm here to say you will not be alone in your fight," Mr. Bush said on July 12 in Nigeria, to applause. "In May, I signed a bill that authorizes $15 billion for the global fight on AIDS."
"The House of Representatives and the United States Senate," the president added, "must fully fund this initiative, for the good of the people on this continent of Africa."
But that very week in Washington, the White House asked for only $2 billion, $1 billion less than authorized, for the first of the five years.
Representative Jim Kolbe, the Arizona Republican who is chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee overseeing foreign assistance, argued that $2 billion was more than enough for the outset of the program. "I think we're showing sensible compassion," he said.
White House officials say that in September, after Mr. Bush returns to Washington from a monthlong working vacation at his Texas ranch, he will move to resolve differences between House and Senate bills that would add a drug benefit to Medicare. Mr. Bush, Republicans say, is eager for a bipartisan piece of legislation in time for 2004 that he can cite as a part of his compassion agenda.
The president will also promote his smaller compassion proposals, like his call for $50 million a year for three years to provide mentors to children of prisoners, a program for which Congress provided only $10 million in 2003. Mr. Bush will also push his new Access to Recovery drug treatment plan, which calls for $200 million a year for three years; so far, the House has agreed to provide $100 million for the program next year, but a Senate committee has voted it nothing.
The president, his aide Mr. Towey said, has pioneered a new Republican approach to social programs, "and like any pioneer, it's tough going."
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