“President Bush said Tueday that he was optimistic about the long-term health of the beleaguered American economy as he heard from a selection of 240 carefully chosen guests who praised his policies at an economic forum created to showcase his concerns,” writes Elisabeth Bumiller in today’s New York Times.

” ‘I think one of the things you’ll hear is that even though times are kind of tough right now, that we’re America,’ Mr. Bush said at the three-hour forum at Baylor University, a short helicopter ride from his ranch, where the president is on what the White House calls a working vacation for most of the month. ‘We’ve got the hardest-working people in the world. We’ve got the best tax policy in the world. I mean, we got a lot going for us.’ “

“The president offered no new programs or ideas to repair the economy, although he did choose the literal center stage of the forum to announce that he would not release $5.1 billion in emergency spending requested by Congress to fight terrorism, saying he wanted to move toward a balanced budget as soon as possible.”

” ‘We’ll spend none of it,’ Mr. Bush said.

“The money represents a minuscule part of the government’s $2.1 trillion annual budget, and administration officials said the action was a signal that the administration that has plunged back into deficits could crack down on spending.”

“Even as Mr. Bush expressed confidence in the economy and defended his policies, the Federal Reserve issued a more pessimistic assessment. It said the decline in the stock market’s and disclosures of corporate wrongdoing had prolonged a sharp slowdown that might require it to cut interest rates further.”

“Stock prices fell after the announcement, with the Dow Jones industrial average dropping 206.43 to close at 8,482.46.”

“Mr. Bush heard no dissent and no debate at an event where the theme was that the economy was going through difficulty, but that things were headed in the right direction. The forum has been heavily criticized by the Democrats and a number of Republicans as a staged pep rally for the second Bush White House, which is ever mindful of the fate of Mr. Bush’s father. Former President Bush was enormously popular after the Persian Gulf war but lost the 1992 election in large part because of voters’ perceptions that he no longer had control of the economy.”