WSJ: Bush Aides Strive For a Domestic Agenda

[question everything]

Tax Incentives to Help Reduce Ranks Of Uninsured, Tuition Proposals Are Being Considered

By JACKIE CALMES
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 21, 2004; Page A4

WASHINGTON -- Where's the beef?

Concerned that foreign affairs are dominating President Bush's administration and re-election campaign, advisers are struggling to craft a domestic agenda that he will soon begin promoting in his bid for a second term -- even as they are trying to salvage initiatives in the current term. Health advisers, for example, were brought in over the weekend to work on, among other things, tax incentives Mr. Bush might propose to reduce the growing ranks of the uninsured, now numbering about 44 million. The goal is for Mr. Bush to lay out his second-term vision at the Republicans' New York convention late next month, and perhaps preview proposals before then to maximize attention.

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Vastly complicating the internal debate is the deficit. The Social Security idea, for example, carries transition costs of more than $1 trillion over 10 years, to pay the benefits of current retirees that otherwise would have been covered by current workers' payroll taxes. In his stump speech, Mr. Bush often says, "Tell your friends: I have a plan. I know where I want to take this country." But both Republicans and reporters increasingly have been asking Bush aides just what that plan is, beyond the president's reiterations about making his tax cuts permanent, fighting terrorism and other proposals.

The queries contrast with Mr. Bush's 2000 campaign, when his five-point agenda was well-known: income-tax cuts, education overhaul, help for faith-based social agencies, overhauling Social Security and Medicare to avert their insolvency, and creating a prescription-drug benefit under Medicare. Similarly, in two campaigns for Texas governor, Mr. Bush emphasized a limited agenda. Now, less than four months before the election, his domestic advisers labor to give the self-described "war president" something new to talk about on the home front.

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Republicans who criticize Mr. Bush's lack of a clear domestic agenda won't do so for the record. But Doug Bandow, a scholar with the libertarian Cato Institute, which until the past year was often in sync with the administration, says, "It strikes me that what he's proved in governing is he doesn't really have a domestic agenda" amid the post-9/11 distractions of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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--Greg Hitt contributed to this article.

Write to Jackie Calmes at [e-mail]

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