Bush charts course for GOP rule following election gains

WASHINGTON -- President Bush, charting an agenda for the new Republican Congress, said Thursday that homeland security comes first and an economic-recovery plan with new tax cuts will wait until next year.

"There's going to be a huge laundry list of things people want to get done and my job is to set priorities and get them done," the president said in a jovial 45-minute news conference. It was his first appearance after Tuesday's election, when his GOP captured control of both the House and Senate.

Bush's insistence that the Senate deliver him a Homeland Security Department in its post-election session put him awkwardly at odds with newly empowered Senate Republican leader Trent Lott.

Lott, R-Miss., said Wednesday he did not intend to resolve the homeland security fight in the lame-duck session convening next week. But after Bush spoke, Lott told reporters that if he has any power to control the session's schedule, he would push the president's plan. "It would be a big leap but I'll make a huge effort to get it done," Lott said.

The president ignored a question about whether he'll use his new power on Capitol Hill to seek restrictions on abortion rights and, in a bristling response, he rejected suggestions that he'll now be delivering on the agenda of his party's conservative wing.

"I don't take cues from anybody," he said.

Bush shrugged off credit, mimicking in a singsong tone -- "George Bush won, George Bush lost" -- pundits who framed Tuesday's result as belated validation for a president elected without a majority of the 2000 popular vote.

"I really don't put this in personal terms," Bush said.

"I think candidates win elections because they're good candidates, not because they may happen to have the president as a friend -- or a foe, for that matter."

U.N. vote

He spoke with reporters on the eve of a U.N. Security Council vote on the U.S.-backed compromise resolution demanding that Iraq disarm under the threat of war.

Earlier Thursday, Bush talked by phone with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Jacques Chirac to lobby for the resolution. Both have been cool to Bush's insistence on confronting Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

"I'm loath to put words in somebody else's mouth," Bush said of the conversations. But, he added, "I'm optimistic we'll get the resolution vote tomorrow, let me put it to you that way."

If it comes to sending American troops into Iraq, Bush promised they "will move swiftly with force to do the job. You don't have to worry about that."

As for North Korea, which has admitted having a nuclear weapons program and cheating on its agreements with the United States, Bush reiterated his pursuit of a diplomatic resolution and acknowledged his different standards for North Korea and Iraq.

"I do care about North Korea," Bush said. "Each threat requires a different type of response."

In Tuesday's midterm elections, Republicans recaptured the Senate and increased their margin of control in the House -- a sweep that left Bush still in good cheer even two days later. He obliged one reporter's three follow-up questions, saying, "If the elections had gone a different way, I might not be so generous."

Republican leaders were optimistic that their election success would translate into passage of Bush administration proposals that had been stalled in the Democratic-controlled Senate. The old Congress reconvenes on Tuesday to wrap up some business before the new Congress, under complete Republican command, takes over in January.

Lott has been privately telling colleagues that he hopes the post-election session will wrap up by the end of next week, leaving homeland security and necessary government-spending bills for next year.

He's likely to get an earful, then, from Bush when the two meet Friday at the White House with House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.

As Bush emphasized to reporters, he wants the new Cabinet-level agency approved before Congress goes home for the holidays. The plan had been stuck because Democrats object to Bush's insistence upon denying collective bargaining rights to workers in the proposed agency.

"The election may be over, but a terrorist threat is still real," Bush said.

Despite the sagging stock market that has cost Americans billions in lost retirement savings, Bush said he stands behind his plan to allow younger workers to funnel some of their Social Security payroll taxes into stocks and other private investments.

"I still think the way to achieve security for ... younger workers is to give them the option of managing their own account," he said.

More broadly, he promised to offer "a new growth and jobs package" early next year. Aides said this will include making permanent last summer's 10-year, $1.35 trillion in income and inheritance taxes, plus new tax breaks for individuals who invest in the stock market.

Senior White House officials have left open the possibility that chief economic adviser Larry Lindsey, and even Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, would soon leave. All Bush said Thursday was: "My economic team came in during very difficult times. There was a recession, terrorist attack, corporate scandals. We have done a lot to return confidence and to provide stimulus through tax cuts ... and for that deserves a lot of credit."