President Bush's quest to aid the poor by substituting self-help programs for government handouts is sparking friction among White House aides, administration officials and conservative members of Congress. It even prompted a call by Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., for Budget Director Richard Darman either to recant a recent speech or resign. A group of conservative policy makers inside the White House, with strong backing from HUD Secretary Jack Kemp, is pressing to make ``empowering'' initiatives in housing, education and welfare the centerpiece of Bush's next State of the Union address. The general philosophy, say those backing the concept, is to give people tools to help themselves, rather than having government social programs do it for them. For example, housing legislation signed by Bush on Wednesday aims to help poor people buy public housing apartments or vacant homes. ``A cornerstone of our effort to reduce the heavy hand of government is this idea of empowering people, not bureaucracies,'' the president said in signing the measure. The debate was sparked partly by a speech last April by James P. Pinkerton, Bush's deputy assistant for policy planning, in which he said the idea is to enact ``policies that empower people to make choices for themselves.'' But the concept drew a public rebuke earlier this month from Darman, who ridiculed the slogan of ``the new paradigm'' as pretentious and meaningless. Darman dismissed the idea of boosting the use of vouchers and decentralized policymaking as a throwback to old initiatives that did not work in the 1960s. ``We now find ourselves encouraged to embrace several programmatic ideas that are returning from a quarter-century hiatus, but which have not yet been seriously tested or evaluated,'' Darman said in a Nov. 16 speech to the Council for Excellence in Government, a private watchdog group. The ideas are ``little more than slogans,'' he said. Darman's words infuriated conservatives. Gingrich denounced the Darman speech as ``an assault on members of his own party'' and demanded Wednesday night that Darman either recant or resign. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said Darman and Gingrich had smoothed over their differences in a telephone conversation today, and that Darman was not withdrawing the speech. ``Director Darman and Newt had a long conversation this morning and they `re great and good friends, and there's no problem,'' said Fitzwater. Asked if Bush stood by his budget director, Fitzwater said, ``Sure.'' In an era when communist regimes around the world are collapsing, Bush is warming to the theme of putting power back in the hands of people and out of the grip of centralized bureaucracies. The National Affordable Housing Act - including $25 billion this year and $27 billion in fiscal 1992 - provides grants for low-income families to buy their public housing units or homes that are vacant or have been foreclosed. The measure provides $155 million for such projects this year and $885 million for 1992. It also authorizes $123 million this fiscal year and $258 million for 1992 to provide housing and services for the homeless. And, it contains a new block grant program, authorizing $1 billion for this year and $2.1 billion for 1992 to promote partnerships by federal, state and local governments with private groups and industry to meet housing needs, the White House said. Earlier Wednesday, Kemp briefed members of the Domestic Policy Council on possible initiatives under consideration for the State of the Union address and fiscal 1992 budget. Bush named Kemp on Aug. 6 to head a task force on empowerment. The ideas that Kemp and the White House conservatives are touting, including vouchers to give parents wider choice in education, inner-city enterprise zones and tenant ownership of public housing, are hardly new. In fact, former President Reagan went to bat for most of them to no avail. But their advocates are banking on rising public dissatisfaction with government to give new life to these old ideas. ``The new paradigm enables the GOP to move forward in these areas and do good, without going back to the Great Society of noble rhetoric and unintended consequences,'' Pinkerton said in April. For Republicans, he said, ``fighting taxes and communists has brought us about as far as it can. ... The future growth of the Republican party depends on our ability to address voters' concerns about other important issues, such as health, child care, education and pollution.''
