President sets proper tone in first congressional address

President Bush maintained a delicate balance in his first address to a joint session of Congress, making an appeal for bipartisan support while not abandoning the principles on which he stood for election.
When we endorsed George W. Bush for president we acknowledged that Bush did not always say what we wanted to hear, but we were willing to overlook differences in policy because he offered the nation a new way of looking at things.
Tuesday night, President Bush proved us right. He appeared before Congress and the American people as a man who is ready to set a new and decidedly civil tone in the nation's capital.
Pretty picture: There was little to find unattractive in the broad picture the president painted of a nation where taxes would be cut for all, while at the same time more resources would be channeled to education, medical research, the military, drug enforcement and debt reduction. Within 10 years, he said, taxpayers would realize $1.6 trillion in tax relief and $2 billion in publicly held debt would be paid off. Paying off more than $2 billion would be impractical because of the nature of the remaining $1.2 trillion debt, Bush has said.
Pretty as the picture may be, there are some troubling shadows and a few dark clouds. The president pledged to hold overall spending increases to 4 percent. But to do that while spending more on education, a prescription drug plan for Medicare and other programs that both Republicans and Democrats support will require cuts somewhere else. The areas that would suffer those cuts include transportation, public housing, Medicaid and farm aid. Those programs also have some support on both sides of the aisle, and making cuts is never easy and never without political consequences.
Debate topics: The size and nature of the tax cuts will also be hotly debated. The Democrats are already approaching the $1 trillion mark in cuts they're willing to vote for, but how the cuts are spread across the economic landscape and which cuts will best give the economy the boost it now needs will be at issue.
The political reality is that compromises will have to be reached. In arriving at those compromises, we hope the president and Congress can agree that assuring a reduction in the national debt and protecting Social Security and Medicare are in the best interests of all Americans.