Bush Adopts Some Priorities Of Congressional Democrats

Democrats did marvel that Bush proposed a significant tax boost, but they were not about to embrace what they called a tax increase on the middle class while the president was simultaneously calling for Congress to make permanent the first-term cuts on income and inheritance taxes on the super-rich. The White House said its proposal would affect the highest 20 percent of incomes, starting at around $75,000 to $80,000 a year. That threshold is well above the U.S. median income, but to senior Democrats from high-cost West Coast and Northeastern districts, those are their constituents' incomes.

"I'm all for progressive tax policy," Stark said, " but they are being rather selective here."

Perhaps the biggest problem Bush faces in Congress is the question of trust. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, called it a "large credibility gap."

"He's good at identifying the challenges we face as a country," he said. "But he has failed to enact concrete solutions. The challenges he talked about tonight he's talked about for the past six years."

The president's call for an extension of the landmark No Child Left Behind education law might have been expected to be well-received by one of the its authors, House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.). But in an era of no-growth domestic budgets, Miller was not impressed.

"The task of renewing the law will be made much more difficult if the president's budget fails to provide a substantial increase in funding for schools to carry out their responsibilities under the law," Miller warned.

Staff writer Lyndsey Layton contributed to this report.