READ HIS LIPS

LAST MONTH President Bush went before the nation and declared that "Our most serious problem today is cocaine and, in particular, crack." In that same speech, he added that, "As president, one of my first missions is to keep the national focus on our offensive against drugs." He urged parents to talk to their children about drugs, not the next day or the next week, but that very night. He underscored this sense of urgency by asking Congress to embrace his national drug strategy and "move it forward immediately." The president also asked: Who is responsible for the drug crisis? "Let me tell you straight out," he said. "Everyone who uses drugs. Everyone who sells drugs. And everyone who looks the other way."

It was the president -- and no one else -- who "looked the other way" yesterday when he vetoed the District of Columbia's fiscal 1990 appropriations bill. The president mentioned Dooney Waters in that drug speech, the young boy who was growing up in a crack house in this area. He held up a bag of crack that had been purchased in Lafayette Park and said it is "turning our cities into battle zones, and it is murdering our children." The city's appropriations bill contained funds to hire 1,000 police officers, funds to finish and begin construction on 1,800 prison beds, funds for drug education and prevention programs in city schools, and funds for a treatment program for pregnant crack addicts; and the president vetoed it. Why? Because the bill allows the city to spend its own funds on abortions for poor women.

"There seems to be an incredible inconsistency here," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.). Congress "came up with a strategy" for the District, "and we came up with the money. Unfortunately, the president did not come up with a signature." Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) said, "The president is vetoing a bill that will help make D.C. a national model for fighting drugs." Now, both senators, their colleagues and the House should maintain their consistency through a vigorous attempt to override the veto.

When the White House made the veto announcement, President Bush was in Costa Rica for -- of all things -- a celebration of that nation's 100 years of democracy. Where, we ask, is the president's sense of the right to democratic rule of the citizens of the District of Columbia? With his veto the president has engaged in a gross infringement on that right and on home rule. The District deserves to have the same right as the states on the question of spending its own funds on abortion. Now the city will have to borrow another $200 million, bringing the total borrowed to cover the fiscal year funding delay to $400 million. Every part of the crime-fighting package contained in the city's budget will be delayed by the president's terrible choice.

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.