Bush to use GOP gains to press priorities

by Jennifer Loven
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — President Bush, pressing forward with an agenda revived by the promise of Republican allies controlling both the House and Senate, spent most of yesterday plotting by telephone to try to get his homeland security and terrorism insurance plans through a lame-duck session of Congress.

The president dialed dozens of winners — and some losers — in Tuesday’s voting, mixing congratulations with strategic talk about what he might now be able to move through Congress, which meets next week to finish some business before the new Congress is sworn in January.

Bush paused in late afternoon to savor the possibilities over a cigar, aides confided.

The White House made much of his desire to reach out to Democrats in a postelection bipartisan spirit. Bush telephoned Mark Pryor, who scored the Democrats’ only Senate pickup by defeating GOP Sen. Tim Hutchinson in Arkansas. The president also extended an olive branch — and a breakfast invitation — in late-afternoon calls yesterday to outgoing Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt, who plans to announce today that he will not seek a new term as House Democratic leader.

Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said the president wanted bipartisan cooperation and expedited progress on long-frustrated policy goals like homeland security and terrorism insurance. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate Republican leader Trent Lott are due at the White House on Friday to map out a strategy with Bush.

One administration official said the White House will try to get lame-duck Senate approval of Bush’s long-stalled plans to create a Homeland Security Department and guarantee terrorism insurance to businesses. But the president and his economic team have decided to hold off on an almost-ready-to-go bundle of new tax cuts until the GOP formally takes over Congress in January, this official said.

“The president is going to continue to press for his agenda,” including Iraq, Fleischer said. “I think that was the message we heard last night from the country.”

Amid a brighter outlook at the United Nations for a tough stand on Iraq, Bush made plans to talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Security Council is to vote tomorrow on a resolution requiring tough new weapons inspections in Iraq coupled with a threat of “serious consequences” if President Saddam Hussein fails to comply.

The elections handed Republicans control of the Senate and broadened their majority in the House, after Bush put his popularity on the line and corralled the power of the White House behind candidates to secure just such a triumph.

Bush remained out of sight yesterday — “the president wants to be gracious,” Fleischer said — scotching tentative plans for a public appearance.

“The president got what he asked for, and now he’ll have to produce,” Democratic chairman Terry McAuliffe said. “He’ll have to come up with an economic plan, something more than terrorism insurance and firing Harvey Pitt. No more blame game.”

Fleischer hinted at new economic proposals in the works to make “the tax code fairer and lower and simpler and flatter,” whether incrementally or in a wholesale overhaul. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, set to resume chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee, was already talking about making last year’s tax cuts permanent.

With the elections over, intrigue immediately turned to who would leave the administration, which has seen few top advisers jump ship so far. The speculation focused on the president’s economic team.

Senior White House officials left open the possibility that chief economic adviser Larry Lindsey, and even Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, would soon leave the economic team. Two officials who have been insisting that O’Neill would remain at his job declined to say so yesterday. A senior Republican close to O’Neill said the secretary has no plans to leave his post, but one of the White House officials said O’Neill bears watching.

While publicly stating the president’s confidence in his economic team, Fleischer did nothing to tamp down the shake-up talk. Declining to confirm that changes were under consideration, he did not rule them out.

“After midterm elections, there of course typically is a change after elections,” Fleischer said. “The president praises his economic team, has confidence in his economic team and knows he gets good advice from them.”

One bit of pending business is finding a replacement for Harvey Pitt, the Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, whom Bush defended through months of bipartisan criticism for his handling of corporate accounting scandals. Pitt handed in his resignation letter to the president amid Tuesday’s election frenzy.

Fleischer said a new nominee could take weeks or months to find.