WASHINGTON, April 28: The US Congress returns from spring break on Monday to consider President George W. Bush’s measures to revive the ailing economy.
With the war in Iraq over, and Afghanistan out of focus, all eyes are now fixed on the battle the administration faces in Congress. And this battle could have far more devastating consequences for the president, if lost. It could cost him the presidency.
Aware that he needs to refocus on domestic issues, he has proposed a revival package for the economy. The problem is that not many, at least not in Congress, agree with his recipe. There’s a $200 billion disagreement between the president and Congress over how much to trim from Mr. Bush’s tax cut plan.
And political pundits in Washington are already predicting that economy, and not Mr. Bush’s war trophies, is going to be the key issue in the 2004 presidential election. Some of them also say that 43rd president Bush could meet the same fate as 41st president Bush, if the economy does not take off.
The White House, resigned that Congress won’t pass Mr. Bush’s original proposal for $726 billion in cuts over 10 years, is pushing for the $550 billion package passed by the House.
“It’s clear that Bush’s enhanced prestige as a wartime president will not turn Congress into a rubber stamp,” says the Los Angeles Times.
The Washington Post says that senior Republican leaders in the Senate have told the administration that they must slash his (proposals) to muster enough votes to win Senate passage of a 2004 federal budget.
“The Bush administration is understandably upset that its proposal for a $726 billion tax cut has effectively been watered down,” says the right-wing and pro-Republican Washington Times.
Besides reducing Mr. Bush’s tax cuts, the Senate Finance Committee is also likely to drop his cornerstone proposal to eliminate taxes on dividend income.
The Senate also disagrees with Mr. Bush’s proposal to expand oil drilling in Alaska’s wilderness. His “faith-based initiative” to promote aid to religious charities also has few supporters in Congress.
Political commentators say that Mr. Bush needs some good domestic victories on economic, health and other key issues directly affecting ordinary Americans to win the next elections.
“He’s got to focus on two or three things ... that he wants to be able to point to as accomplishments,” says Ralph Hellman, a business lobbyist who supports the Bush re-election campaign.
But even his own Republican Party is badly split over his domestic agenda. Advocates of the larger cuts are running attack ads implying that Republican dissidents are as anti-American as the French. One Republican who supports smaller cuts has compared his critics to toddlers having a tantrum.
Mr. Bush opponents in the rival Democratic Party are happy with this change of focus — from international to domestic issues — in American politics. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, they have been reluctant to criticize Mr. Bush’s war policies for the fear that criticism may annoy average Americans who wanted revenge. But domestic issues are different.
“You will see us lay out a case against the president’s economic policy and how it has failed,” says House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California.
Although the president’s proposed tax cut to boost the economy is the single biggest issue before Congress, the coming months are packed with other issues on his wish list. This week, the House plans to vote on Bush’s global initiative to combat AIDS. The Senate is expected soon to take up an energy bill, albeit one more modest than Mr. Bush had sought.
Mr. Bush has much at stake in getting Republicans to bury the hatchet and act quickly on his economic plan — and ensure that any benefits that flow from it emerge before the 2004 elections.
A key question for Mr. Bush is how hard to push for the dividend tax cut, which at a cost of $396 billion is the single biggest piece of the package.
He has made it the centrepiece, but many members of Congress — including some Republicans — are lukewarm because they do not think it would give the economy the much needed jump-start.