President Bush will come to Lancaster County next week to talk about ongoing budget issues he has with the Democratic Congress, sources told the Intelligencer Journal Tuesday.

Bush will speak to the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce & Industry during an invitation-only speech. A venue has yet to be chosen.

Tom Baldrige, president of the Lancaster Chamber, declined to comment Tuesday night.

Dave Dumeyer, chairman of the Lancaster County Republican Committee, said that although the local GOP is uninvolved in Bush's visit, the president's fifth visit to the county shows how much he values support here.

"There's something about Lancaster that he likes; 145,000 votes might have something to do with that," Dumeyer said.

To say Lancaster is Bush Country is to put it mildly. When running for re-election in 2004, Bush received 145,591 votes or about 47 percent of all registered voters. Four years earlier during his first run at the White House, the county gave him 115,900 votes or nearly 43 percent of all registered voters in the county.

White House spokesman Alex Conant said Bush's schedule for next week would be released Friday. He could not confirm Bush's potential Lancaster appearance until then.

Bush's visit next week would occur while he's wrangling with Congress over the federal budget. Congress is expected to pass stopgap legislation to keep the federal government operating past Oct. 1, the end of the fiscal year, but both sides appear far apart on many key issues.

One issue is funding for the war in Iraq, on which many Democrats are anxious to change direction in or end it outright, making the relationship between Bush and Democrats a prickly one.

Bush has threatened to veto a range of spending legislation such as the farm bill. A particularly contentious topic is the government-sponsored health insurance for children program, known as SCHIP.

A compromise bill out of the House and Senate earlier this year would raise cigarette taxes to generate a $35 billion expansion of SCHIP over five years, while Bush is proposing only $5 billion.

SCHIP is set to expire Sunday unless the White House and Congress can find a compromise.

"President Bush is expected to veto legislation this week or next week to continue and expand the children's health insurance program," Democratic Sen. Bob Casey Jr. of Pennsylvania said Tuesday. "There are almost 7,000 Lancaster County kids in the children's health insurance program, and many more uninsured children would get coverage under the expansion bill. The president should explain to these children and their parents why he is vetoing their health care."

E-mail: dpidgeon@lnpnews.com