Sunday, January 28, 2007

As President Bush made his annual pilgrimage to the Capitol last week to apprise us of the state of the union, he sought to broaden the national conversation beyond Iraq, and on to economic challenges, such as making health care more affordable and curbing energy consumption.

He brought proposals that he said could help cure the nation's oil addiction by mandating the use of alternative fuels and tightening auto-mileage standards. He outlined a plan aimed at making it easier for people to buy health insurance, with the funding coming from taxes on those with what he called "gold-plated" medical plans.

Health-care reform, as the Clintons might tell you, can be a dizzying area for presidents, a potential political quagmire. Predictably, the Bush proposal kicked off a swirl of arguments over what it means. Not much, some Democrats said, asserting that it would neither help poor families nor cut the costs of care. Quite a bit, countered the administration, clearly enjoying the spectacle of the tax-cutting president cast as Robin Hood in the cause of the uninsured.

The only certainty: A lot of lobbyists are about to get reacquainted with the American health-care system.

Meanwhile, the energy industry was similarly abuzz over what to make of the president's attention. Oil refiners were not thrilled to hear that new rules could be in the offing mandating what they put in the blend. Producers of ethanol were gleeful as the president laid out plans to dramatically expand the use of alternative fuels over the next decade.

Bush presented his energy plan as a way to attack climate change, but environmentalists were unimpressed. They noted that Bush's central goal -- reducing American gasoline consumption by one-fifth over the next decade -- applies to projected usage and not the amount of gas the country burns today.

Despite the attention to energy and health care, Iraq remains a defining force in the nation's thinking, even in terms of economics. The Congressional Budget Office released a study showing that the federal budget deficit will drop to $172 billion this year and disappear by 2012. But the study assumed that ongoing military operations will never exceed the $70 billion budgeted for this fiscal year.

This week, Bush plans to press his agenda with visits to New York and Peoria, Ill. But as he pleads for time to turn things around in Iraq, as he prepares to send 21,500 more troops to the country, and as expectations build that he will soon ask Congress for another $100 billion for this year alone, Democratic budget leaders caution against fantasies of quick and easy deficit reduction.