On Ronald Reagan's 90th birthday and the 20th anniversary of the launching of his big tax-cut initiative, President Bush is preparing to send Congress his own proposal for across-the-board reductions in tax rates.

This is more than a coincidence. It is a further certification -- if one is needed -- of the central and enduring role Reagan has played in the conservative politics that has dominated American government for a full generation.

You would not know that from looking at the makeup of the new administration. Alumni of the 1989-92 Bush White House and agencies and retreads from the Gerald Ford years in the 1970s far outnumber the Reaganauts around George W. Bush. There was burnout by the end of Reagan's eight years in office, and few who served with him have the energy or desire to return to government service.

But there's been no burnout for Reagan's ideas -- even when Democrats held power. President Clinton took up Reagan's effort to "end welfare as we know it," and saw it accomplished in 1996. Vice President Gore campaigned in 2000 on his "reinventing government" project, a variant of the Reagan plan to reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy and shift responsibilities to the states.

Now that the Republicans are back, Reagan's ideas will loom even larger in Washington. The Bush tax cut is 100 percent Reaganomics, resting on two ideas that Reagan taught his party.

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