Bush Says He Expects Tough Fight on Budget : Politics: He asks the nation’s governors to back his plan to shift domestic programs to the states.

WASHINGTON —  President Bush told the nation’s governors today that “we are going to have to fight together” to win congressional approval for his plan to transfer billions of dollars in domestic programs to the states.

“I am not naive” about the resistance that could face his plan on Capitol Hill, Bush said at a White House meeting.

“It is something that is very attractive to the states,” said Gov. Booth Gardner of Washington, after the meeting with Bush. “There’s a great deal of incentive for us.”

A Democrat who is chairman of the National Governors’ Assn., Gardner said the governors got assurances that, if they don’t like any part of the package, “we can trade for things we think are important.”

Gov. John Ashcroft of Missouri, a Republican and vice chairman of the NGA, said the programs Bush proposed shifting would save the states “about 4 million bureaucrat-hours of paperwork just to meet the federal reporting requirements.”

“I think the President is sincere in terms of wanting to give that degree of flexibility” to the states, Democratic Gov. L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia said on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America” program. “The question now is whether Congress will go along with it.”

Only a few hours before the White House meeting, the governors saw Bush’s list of about $21 billion in proposed block grant programs in the new $1.45-trillion federal budget submitted to Congress today. By 1996, the programs would be worth about $22 billion.

In proposing the transfer, Bush suggested that the federal and state governments could agree on about $15 billion in programs from that list.

The proposed grants were in five areas: $1.77 billion in education; $2.2 billion in Environmental Protection Agency construction grants; $9.66 billion in welfare, social services and energy assistance to low-income families; $6.90 billion for housing and community development programs, and $421 million for law enforcement assistance.

Bush told the governors that his plan would be “fully funded.