
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 8, 1991                   TAG: 9103080731
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

POCKET GAME/ AT HOME, THE AGENDA IS MODEST

PRESIDENT BUSH turned his attention Wednesday night from war to the home front. Invoking the quick success of the allied military in the Middle East, he asked Congress for quick action on his bills: "If our forces could win the ground war in 100 hours, then surely the Congress could pass this legislation in 100 days."

On both sides of the aisle, there was a standing ovation. But the mood dampened soon after the speech, as partisan sniping began. Congress is unlikely to grant Bush passage, Franklin D. Roosevelt-style, of an ambitious domestic agenda in 100 days. Mainly this is because Bush's party does not control the legislature. It's also because his domestic agenda is unambitious.

The bills Bush wants enacted by mid-June cover crime, civil rights, energy, transportation and education. The first two topics brought the White House and Congress into conflict last year: Democrats rejected many of the president's goals of harsher punishments for federal crimes - e.g., imposing the death penalty for drug-related offenses - and his proposal for warrantless searches. But they passed a sweeping civil-rights bill, reinstating affirmative-action programs that had been rolled back by the Supreme Court, only to see Bush veto it.

The president's energy plan is a disappointment. It puts too much stress on production, not enough on conservation. His other prime categories - highway and mass-transit programs, and the Higher Education Act - are up for reauthorization in any event. The White House is trying to grasp the initiative, and perhaps take credit for accomplishments, that Congress will be acting on anyway.

Properly, Bush ranks high the goal of revving up the economy. But he offers little along that line except the discredited idea of a capital-gains tax cut. Most social needs get short shrift.

Not all the nation's problems can be wrapped up neatly inside of 100 days. It will take months just for Congress to consider the president's sweeping, and much-needed, program of banking reform. But for much of the Bush domestic agenda, rhetoric substitutes for action.

In his State of the Union speech Jan. 29, for instance, Bush declared good health-care to be "every American's right and every American's responsibility."

But he offered no sweeping health-care reforms. His plan to combat infant mortality in 10 large cities would be financed by taking money from existing health programs that serve pregnant women, poor children and the homeless. Elsewhere in his proposed budget, the Bush initiatives depended on taking money from one pocket and putting it into another - on beggaring one area of need to relieve another.

In foreign policy, which always has been Bush's primary interest, the president has scored outstanding successes. But the nation also has pressing domestic problems. He should risk some of his remarkable popularity to lead at home as effectively as he has done abroad.

by CNB