AMERICA’S fight against foreign tyranny will be placed on hold this week as President George W Bush braces himself for a domestic battle with home-grown congressional potentates whose legislative powers threaten his ambitious second-term agenda.

The president will deliver his annual state of the union address this week amid growing concern in Republican ranks about the cost of the Iraq war and the political fallout from the White House’s proposals for radical pension, tax and immigration reforms.

Despite solid Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, Bush has been warned by the moderate and conservative wings of his party that he cannot take their support for granted.

“The notion that Bush will marshal the Republicans into a phalanx behind him is not going to happen,” said Bill Kristol, one of the party’s most influential neoconservatives. “They are not just going to rubber-stamp whatever the administration does.”

Wednesday’s address is expected to focus on the policy detail that was deliberately left out of Bush’s inauguration speech. While many neoconservatives were thrilled by Bush’s pledge to spread democracy, other rightwingers were dismayed that he did not focus on the domestic issues that they believe are critical to the party’s election chances in 2006 and beyond.

One source close to the White House said that Bush was spending 90% of his time on foreign policy and only 10% on his legislative agenda. There were mutterings about hubris and overconfidence.

Bush will have little choice on Wednesday but to devote at least part of his speech to Iraq. Republican nerves are already fraying over the impact of war spending on the soaring budget deficit.

The administration last week added an emergency request for $80 billion to its military budget, pushing the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to at least $277 billion so far. Senator Chuck Hagel, a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2008, said he did not believe that the White House had a strategy for leaving Iraq.

Bush will also try to head off a possible Republican revolt against his plans for a partial privatisation of the state pension system.

Congressman James Sensenbrenner, Republican head of the house judiciary committee, is also picking a fight over Bush’s planned “guest worker” programme for illegal immigrants. Republican critics say that this would reward those who broke the law.

A coalition of conservative Christian groups is meanwhile threatening rebellion. A letter signed by, among others, the Rev Jerry Falwell, the Southern Baptist Convention and the American Family Association threatens to withhold support for pension and tax reforms if Bush does not campaign for a ban on gay marriage.

For some congressional observers these tensions signal a return to business as usual after three years of muted rivalries following the September 11 attacks.

“Until last year people felt that they had to pull together to help the president,” Kristol said.

“He is still driving the bus on foreign policy, but on domestic policy it is really Congress that appropriates the money and passes the legislation. People there feel much more like free agents now. The president is only one of a number of players.”

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