By
Associated Press
WILMINGTON, Del. - With international issues threatening to drown out his agenda, President Bush tried to return attention yesterday to his domestic plans, plugging his tax and education proposals at a community center.
After a week's absence from the road, Bush resumed his campaign-style effort to pressure Democratic lawmakers by visiting their states. He traveled to Delaware with the state's two Democratic senators, Joe Biden and Tom Carper.
Both Democrats signaled the strategy would not work. When asked whether it would affect votes this week, Biden smiled and said, "Not mine." Brian Selander, a spokesman for Carper, said the senator was not likely to support Bush's 10-year, $1.6 billion tax package.
"I respect these two senators," Bush said. "I may not like every vote. Of course, they may not like every proposal."
As the argument intensified in Washington over his budget proposals, Bush renewed his pledge to encourage "a civil debate."
The president toured the H. Fletcher Brown Boys and Girls Club in north Wilmington, a predominantly black neighborhood. The club has a tutoring and mentoring program known as Power Hour that Bush praised.
"The great strength of the country takes place when somebody walks across a street or raises their hand and says, what can I do to help," Bush said. "It's the cumulative kindness of America that really makes our country different from every place else."
Bush walked through a computer lab, helping 12th-grader Cedrick Lusby work through an SAT preparatory computer program.
He then led a forum with students, teachers and club leaders.
In keeping with his custom, Bush was touting the local benefits of his tax and schools plans. According to the White House, 38,000 Delaware entrepreneurs would gain from his tax cut; $64.5 million in federal housing assistance would flow to the state; and the state's Head Start program would see a funding boost.
As Bush tried to pull the spotlight back to his domestic plans, global affairs were consuming much of the nation's attention.
As Bush traveled, a tense standoff was playing out on the Chinese island of Hainan. The Chinese were holding a spy plane and its 24 U.S. crew members following a collision early Sunday with a Chinese fighter jet.
Bush insisted Monday that the plane be returned without "further damaging or tampering" and demanded that China hand over the crew and plane.
When asked about Chinese government insistence that U.S. surveillance planes not fly so close to China, Bush ignored the question.
At the White House, ambassadors from the 15-nation European Union scheduled meetings on global warming yesterday with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman and other administration officials.
European leaders are trying to salvage a 1997 agreement for reducing global warming despite Bush's declaration that its mandatory cuts on carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels and short timetable are no longer acceptable to the United States.
Also yesterday, the White House set June deadlines for Mexico and Colombia to resolve U.S. charges that the nations are acting in violation of World Trade Organization rules. The Bush administration has told South Africa and Taiwan that it has "serious concerns" about their failure to open telecommunications trade.
