President Bush took a break from the war on terror in his weekend radio address and in a trip to Atlanta on Monday to push an initiative aimed at increasing homeownership among minorities. “Now, we’ve got a problem here in America that we have to address,” Mr. Bush said, according to a White House transcript. “Too many American families, too many minorities do not own a home. There is a home ownership gap in America. The difference between Anglo American and African American and Hispanic home ownership is too big. And we’ve got to focus the attention of this nation to address this.” What is Mr. Bush proposing? A housing policy of warmed over gruel from the days when Secretary Cuomo was running the Department of Housing and Urban Development, back in the Clinton administration. Mr. Bush is proposing, for instance, something called the “Single Family Affordable Housing Tax Credit,” which he claims will encourage the development of affordable housing “in neighborhoods where housing is scarce.”

You have to pinch yourself to remember that back during the presidential campaign, Governor Bush — in one of the most emphatic points of the whole contest — strove to highlight a deep difference in worldview. The Democrats, he stressed, wanted to use the tax code to manage your behavior, while the Republicans wanted a flatter, fairer tax code. In his third debate with Vice President Gore, Governor Bush said, “We just have a different philosophy. Let me talk about tax relief. If you pay taxes, you ought to get tax relief. The Vice President believes only the right people ought to get tax relief. I don’t think that’s the role of the president to pick you’re right and you’re not right. I think if you’re going to have tax relief, everybody ought to get it.”

The “Single Family Affordable Housing Tax Credit” is the opposite of the philosophy Mr. Bush was selling the voters back in October of 2000. And Mr. Bush is also proposing $200 million in federal spending to help homebuyers with down payments. “One of the barriers to home ownership is the inability to make a down payment,” he said Monday at Atlanta. “And if one of the goals is to increase homeownership, it makes sense to help people pay that down payment.” This is demeaning to all those Americans of all races who have worked hard to save money for a down payment. Why should some work hard and save when the government will just give the money away to other people?

As it happens, Franklin Raines of Fannie Mae and Leland Brendsel of Freddie Mac were with the president at Atlanta, gushing at the president’s plan to expand their businesses. Fannie Mae’s home page now opens with a photo that says, “Javier and Tania’s past credit problems didn’t stop them from becoming homeowners.” Fannie and Freddie protest that they aren’t federally guaranteed, but any institutions that big with a name that begins with “federal” — that’s what the “F” in Fannie and Freddie stands for — are not going to fail without a taxpayer bailout. Better to approach the housing debate — not only nationwide, but here in New York City, where the mayor is proposing to expand housing subsidies even as the average tenant in New York’s public housing has lived there for 18 years — with some of the same principles that undergirded welfare reform in 1996. Starting with time limits, individual responsibility, a recognition of perverse incentives and the idea that the government doesn’t owe any able-bodied person a permanent subsidy. Or at least with the same principles that undergirded the campaign on which Mr. Bush sought the presidency.