BUSH SEEKS COMPROMISE, EXCEPT ON IRAQ STRATEGY

WASHINGTON —  President Bush, seeking to regain political ground lost to the new Democratic-led Congress, called Tuesday for bipartisan action on energy and other domestic issues but forcefully defended his unpopular decision to send more U.S. troops to Iraq.

Delivering his annual State of the Union address before both houses of Congress -- with the nation’s first female speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), seated behind him -- Bush acknowledged that millions of voters deserted his Republican Party in November. He also asserted that as president, he could still set the nation’s agenda.

“We’re not the first to come here with a government divided and uncertainty in the air,” he said. “Our citizens don’t much care which side of the aisle we sit on, as long as we’re willing to cross that aisle when there is work to be done.”

But on the nation’s most divisive issue, the war in Iraq, Bush stuck to his guns. “Many in this chamber understand that America must not fail in Iraq because you understand that the consequences of failure would be grievous and far-reaching,” he said.

Hours before the president arrived at the Capitol, the Democrats’ designated spokesman brusquely dismissed Bush’s plan to add 21,500 more troops to Iraq as feckless.

“They don’t have a plan,” Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia told reporters. Webb, a Vietnam veteran whose upset election in November was key to giving the Democrats their Senate majority, added, “What they have put on the table is more a tactical adjustment.”

As Bush gave his address, the atmosphere inside the House chamber was cordial. The president drew cheers from members of both parties when, at the start of his speech, he noted that he was the first president to begin his State of the Union address with the words “Madam Speaker.”

On domestic policy, Bush presented a series of proposals that aides said were designed to appeal to Democrats as well as Republicans, with the aim of enticing at least some of the president’s opponents to acknowledge that his ideas were worth considering.

He proposed cutting the nation’s consumption of gasoline 20% within 10 years by requiring energy companies to use more alternative fuels such as ethanol, which can be produced from grains and grasses, and by raising fuel efficiency standards for autos.

He also expanded on a proposal he unveiled Saturday to make spending on health insurance tax-deductible up to a ceiling of $15,000 per family, a plan that would make insurance more affordable for some but more expensive for others.

Democrats largely applauded Bush’s energy proposal but criticized his healthcare plan as a threat to traditional employer-provided insurance.

For Bush, the stakes went beyond those individual issues: He sought to demonstrate that in the final two years of his presidency, he can still command enough popular support to compel both Democrats and Republicans to pay him heed.

During his first six years in the White House, Bush enjoyed the support of a solid GOP majority in the House and, for most of that time, the Senate. He wielded his personal popularity and fundraising prowess to keep his party in line. But now he faces a Democratic congressional majority that wants to overturn many of his policies -- at a time when his own popularity has been damaged by the war.

Webb, in his official televised response after the speech, made only a brief nod toward the bipartisanship Bush called for.

Instead, the senator focused on two issues on which he said the parties stand “in contradiction”: the state of the economy and Iraq.

“Wages and salaries for our workers are at all-time lows as a percentage of national wealth, even though the productivity of American workers is the highest in the world,” he said.

On Iraq, he charged that Bush “took us into this war recklessly” despite warnings from many senior military officers.

“The majority of the nation no longer supports the way this war is being fought, nor does the majority of our military. We need a new direction,” he said.

Still, Democrats did not dismiss all of Bush’s policy proposals out of hand.

On energy, his call for reducing gasoline consumption by 20% in the next decade rested on two initiatives:

He proposed raising the federal government standard for motor fuel to require the nation’s energy supplies to include a much higher percentage of alternative fuels such as ethanol. The White House estimated that its proposed standard would reduce the amount of gasoline used in cars by 15% over 10 years.

Second, Bush called on Congress to give the Transportation Department the authority to raise federal fuel efficiency requirements for passenger cars, which White House officials estimated would reduce gasoline consumption an additional 5% over 10 years.

It was not clear whether the fuel efficiency proposal would get much of a hearing on Capitol Hill. Even when Congress was controlled by Republicans, lawmakers and the administration were at loggerheads on the issue.

Environmentalists welcomed the administration’s support for reduced energy consumption. In earlier years, it has focused energy policy almost exclusively on increasing U.S. energy production.

“This could be the breakthrough we have been waiting for on fuel economy,” said David Friedman, a research director at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

But Friedman, along with other environmentalists and some Democratic lawmakers, said Bush’s proposal fell short of their hopes of broader action against global climate change.

On healthcare, Bush outlined a two-part strategy to reduce the number of people in America who do not have health insurance, now nearly 47 million. But he stopped short of making a commitment to covering all the uninsured.

The first part of his plan would create the new health insurance tax deduction of $15,000 for families and $7,500 for individuals. That would make it easier for people who don’t have coverage through employers to purchase private plans. But those with employer plans that have annual premiums worth more than the deduction would have to pay taxes on the difference.

The second part of Bush’s health plan calls on each state to design its own plan to cover uninsured residents. To support the states, the federal government would redirect a portion of the billions of dollars it now spends on care for the poor and uninsured.

For instance, instead of paying hospitals and other providers to treat the uninsured after they get sick, states could use the funds to help the poor obtain private coverage.

On the issue of immigration, Bush returned to familiar territory, reaffirming a proposal he made in his 2004 State of the Union address, only to find that his own party was divided on his ideas.

The president emphasized the need for a guest worker program to fill America’s future labor needs. He also called for unspecified measures to “resolve the status of the illegal immigrants who are already in our country,” without offering a path to automatic citizenship or “amnesty.”

Advocates and opponents of Bush’s vision for overhauling the nation’s immigration laws said his comments did little to advance the debate, leaving it to Congress to work out a solution.

There was no sign Bush’s comments swayed the GOP lawmakers who want to focus solely on tougher enforcement of immigration law and who last year thwarted efforts for the broader approach pushed by the president.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) harshly criticized Bush’s position, saying he “has destroyed his own base.”

Other Republicans also criticized parts of the president’s address, a sign of his decreased clout.

Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, a longshot presidential hopeful, reiterated his opposition to the troop escalation in Iraq, saying that “we need to be building unity here first.”

But Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a leading contender for the GOP presidential nomination who has been known to be a party maverick, said, “I agree with the president on everything.”

On education, Bush cited the No Child Left Behind law he passed with Democratic help in the early stages of his presidency as an example of how the two parties can and should work together on domestic policy. He called on Congress to renew the law, which expires this year.

At the same time, Bush risked Democrats’ ire by calling for a so-called voucher system that would let parents use government money to send their children to private schools. The president did not use the term “voucher,” but he called for “giving families with children stuck in failing schools the right to choose something better.”

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the principal Democratic sponsor of the 2001 education law, charged that Bush’s proposal would siphon funding from public schools “for a private school voucher program.”

After outlining his domestic proposals, which aides described as the core of the speech, Bush delivered a vigorous reiteration of his view of the war in Iraq and the worldwide struggle against terrorism -- evidence of the president’s passion for the issue, which he has called his central mission.

The fight against terrorism “is more than a clash of arms, it is a decisive ideological struggle,” he said. “And the security of our nation is in the balance.”

He said the war in Iraq, with its sectarian fury, “is not the fight we entered in Iraq. But it is the fight we are in.... It is still within our power to shape the outcome of this battle. So let us find our resolve, and turn events toward victory.”

He stressed that he and U.S. military commanders had chosen the new strategy in Iraq after discussing “every possible approach.”

“In the end, I chose this course of action because it provides the best chance of success,” he said.

Following tradition, each party invited special guests to watch the speech from the galleries.

First Lady Laura Bush’s guests included basketball star Dikembe Mutombo and New York City hero Wesley Autrey, who recently jumped onto subway tracks to save a man from being hit by a train.

Pelosi’s guests included AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and several relatives of the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

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doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com

maura.reynolds@latimes.com

Times staff writers Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Stacy Anderson, Nicole Gaouette, Noam N. Levey, Johanna Neuman, Paul Richter, Adam Schreck and Richard Simon contributed to this report.

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Bush’s proposals

Energy: Slash U.S. gasoline use by 2017 by using more alternative fuels and more efficient cars. Double the Strategic Petroleum Reserve’s capacity.

Health: Make employerfinanced healthcare benefits taxable income after a deduction. Reduce the number of uninsured by shifting funds to states.

Foreign policy: Sought time to give his strategy in Iraq a chance to work.

Spending: Switch to federal budget surpluses by 2012. Sharply curtail “earmarks.”

Source: Times reporting

Los Angeles Times