Bush likely to play it safe in State of the Union

WASHINGTON – For President Bush, big ideas like overhauling Social Security were last year’s game plan.

This year, buffeted in the polls and with control of Congress on the line, Bush is lowering his sights dramatically for Tuesday’s State of the Union address. Gone is talk of restructuring the popular retirement program, or rewriting the tax code – the idea that was supposed to be this year’s headliner, now considered too controversial for Bush.

Instead, Bush will highlight more modest proposals, including some recycled from his past speeches. The main thrust will be market-based health-care initiatives, primarily expanded tax breaks for medical spending.

But even those proposals, long favorites of conservatives, would have a limited effect, helping just a portion of the 46 million uninsured find coverage, analysts believe.

The speech comes at a crucial moment for Bush, even Republicans agree.

It’s a high-profile chance to reassert his political leadership, they say, while laying out an agenda to hold on to both houses of Congress, despite public disillusionment over Iraq and the economy.

Still, it’s a dramatic downshifting for a president who went into last year’s State of the Union newly re-elected and fiercely determined to press his advantage – but who now finds that his weakened political state and the looming midterm elections have forced him to retrench.

“It’s recognizing that it’s an election year, so don’t rock the boat too much because you don’t want to throw out issues that become campaign issues that people are deeply divided on,” said former Sen. John Breaux, D-La., who co-chaired Bush’s tax-reform commission, only to see the White House put the plan on hold.

“It’s a question of whether to go for the long ball or the play-it-safe type agenda. It looks like a play-it-safe agenda,” he said.

Bush has taken a series of political hits in the past year, primarily because of a rising death toll in Iraq, economic anxiety among many Americans, and the lingering effects of the Hurricane Katrina response.

Even Bush’s push to overhaul Social Security with new private accounts crashed badly amid stiff, bipartisan political resistance.

Bush did show signs of repairing some political damage from Iraq with a series of speeches last month, and he brought conservatives disgruntled over a previous Supreme Court choice back into the fold with the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito.

But a pair of polls last week showed that Bush hovers at some of his lowest ratings ever – 43 percent in a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg Poll released Friday.

More than that, the poll found that Americans by a 2-to-1 margin believe the country needs to move in a different direction from the one Bush has set.

The public feels more negative toward Congress, prompting Republican concern about losing the House or the Senate; 55 percent of Americans disapprove of the institution’s performance, according to the Times/Bloomberg poll.

Republican pollster David Winston said the White House has failed to convince Americans that things in Iraq and in the economy are going as well as Bush says they are. If Bush can do that, Winston believes, Republicans will see a steady uptick in the ratings, and, he said, “The State of the Union is critical in terms of deciding that one way or the other.”

Republicans also hope that by focusing on tax breaks for health care – as opposed to something as controversial as Social Security – Bush can defang Democratic opposition, and give Republicans in Congress a rallying point on an issue Americans rate as a top concern.

Democrats are poised to attack Bush’s proposals as insufficient to address the increasing numbers of uninsured Americans, or to fix problems in the new Medicare prescription-drug program. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said Bush’s plan boils down to three words: “On your own.”

Bush advisers have signaled that he is considering expanding tax breaks to help uninsured people buy their own insurance, and allowing Americans to set aside more money tax-free in designated accounts for medical expenses.

Bush has indicated that he might increase the amount allowed in federal Health Savings Accounts, a Bush-initiated program from 2004 where consumers deposit tax-free dollars and purchase a high-deductible policy for major expenses.

The White House claims that people who are spending their own dollars on health care would would push for lower prices. Such a plan would move away from the traditional employer-purchased health insurance to a system where workers could take their own policies from job to job.

With these health care initiatives in the works, plus others expected to address rising energy prices and the need for keeping government spending in check, the White House rejects the notion that Bush is pulling back this year.

“Winning the war on terror, keeping the economy strong and modernizing systems like education and health care and pensions are a far cry from school uniforms and V-chips,” said White House spokesman Trent Duffy, referring to two of President Clinton’s notable small-bore initiatives.

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