Bush trades Texas peace for battle on economy

Patricia Wilson Crawford

TEXAS: After 12 days in the pastoral privacy of his Texas ranch, US President George W Bush on Monday was heading for Washington and the public rough-and-tumble of an election-year debate on the economy.

Back at the White House, his first order of business was not the three-month-old military campaign in Afghanistan but the recession and rising unemployment in the US since September 11.

Mindful that the weak economy and Americans’ financial worries will play a crucial role in November elections when control of both the House of representatives and the Senate is up for grabs, Mr Bush hopes to capitalise on his wartime popularity to build support for his domestic agenda, including an “economic security” plan.

In Ontario, California, the Republican President laid down an unequivocal political marker for democrats in Congress. “Not over my dead body will they raise your taxes!” Mr Bush shouted to roars of approval at a town hall meeting.

The bald declaration instantly invited comparison to his father’s pledge 14 years ago — “Read my lips: no new taxes” — a broken promise that contributed to former President George Bush’s reelection defeat.

But members of the administration’s economic team fanned out across television on Sunday to portray the President as a champion of American workers, describing his “over my dead body’’ vow as a beacon of support and underscoring that Mr Bush would not allow Democrats to roll back his $1.35 trillion tax cut even though there has been no concerted effort to do so.

“The President is simply telling the American people he’s going to fight for them,” commerce secretary Don Evans said on the ABC programme. “He’s doing nothing more than sending a clear message throughout this country that when it comes to the taxpayers, or the workers, the farmers, the ranchers, all across this land, he’s gonna fight for them.”

Election-year debate over Mr Bush’s stewardship of the economy was launched by Senate majority leader Tom Daschle on Friday when the South Dakota democrat blamed the tax cut for the return of Federal budget deficits and called it the root cause of the economy’s deterioration.

Mr Daschle, considered a likely candidate for the White House in 2004, blocked a pre-Christmas vote on Mr Bush’s $90 billion economic stimulus package of tax cuts and jobless benefits, saying it was too heavily weighted in favour of corporations and did too little to help the unemployed buy health insurance.

Mr Bush fired back, ridiculing Mr Daschle’s assessment of the tax cut and urging Americans to rally behind his economic agenda the way they rallied behind his war on terrorism, saying it was “time to take the spirit of unity” to Washington.

White House advisors are well aware that Mr Bush’s sky-high wartime approval ratings will not last and want to use the political capital now to move other legislation on his domestic agenda, including the stimulus package and an energy plan.

Democrats are solidly behind Mr Bush in the anti-terror campaign but believe he is vulnerable on the economy. They are hoping to communicate that without seeming overly partisan.

— Reuters