By Carl Weiser
Enquirer Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - President Bush comes to Cincinnati Monday to push one of his administration's more controversial ideas: a $1.2 billion program to promote marriages in poor communities.

Then he goes to a $25,000-a-couple fund-raiser in Indian Hill.

Bush plans to spend the afternoon at Cincinnati's Talbert House, which helps people suffering from mental illness or drug addiction, or who have recently come out of prison.

"The president is going to be talking about his compassion agenda, highlighting his goals to create a more compassionate society," White House spokesman Jim Morrell said. "He will be touching on his Healthy Marriage Initiative as well as focusing on ways of building a culture of personal responsibility."

President Bush is expected to discuss the initiative with about a half-dozen Talbert House clients.

The president's Health Marriage Initiative would offer free- or low-cost premarital counseling to parents on welfare. It would teach them how to resolve conflicts, be good parents and keep a marriage going.

Some critics see it as government meddling in private relationships.

Others see it as a waste of money. Some see it as condescending toward single parents or poor people.

But the Bush administration's top marriage official, who may be at Monday's event, said Thursday the program wants to create healthier marriages, which in turn cuts down on child abuse, drug use, delinquency and child support enforcement.

"It's not to require anyone to get married. It's not about wagging our finger in people's faces and saying they should be married. It's not about trapping people in abusive relationships. It's not about running a federal dating service," said Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families in the Department of Health and Human Services.

"This is a prevention strategy to ensure more kids are growing up in a healthy environment."

No one's against healthier marriages, said Gwen L. Robinson, president and chief executive of the Cincinnati-Hamilton County Community Action Agency. But the problem in many poor communities is that the men are unemployed, sick or incarcerated - and no marriage counseling will help the women and mothers they leave behind.

"The real issue is economics," she said. "When I talk to a single mom, where is the father? The father is somewhere in the picture, but he's not able to be the real financial support. He's not there for them."

A 2002 poll of Ohioans on how to improve welfare programs found that just 12 percent thought encouraging marriage should be Congress' top priority. The majority - 58 percent - said Congress should concentrate on expanding welfare-to-work programs.

Only 14 percent said they would be willing to pay more taxes to encourage marriage.

The poll of 700 likely Ohio voters was conducted for the Cleveland-based Center for Community Solutions. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Nationally one in two marriages today ends in divorce despite a decade of marriage education programs focused on reversing the trend.

Meanwhile, children who reside with single mothers are five times more likely to be living in poverty, according to an analysis of Census 2000 data by the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Talbert House president Neil Tilow said he couldn't comment until he learned more about the president's visit. In May, the agency played host to Bush's drug czar, John Walters.

The visit to Talbert House will be in the afternoon before Bush visits the fund-raiser at investor Bill DeWitt's home.

This will be Bush's 18th visit to Ohio as president.

"It's great to have the president back in Cincinnati," said Rep. Rob Portman, the communications director for the Bush re-election campaign in Ohio. "It gives the president a chance to reach out to the voters of Ohio and it gives the voters a chance to interact with the president."

John Kerry's Ohio spokesman, Jennifer Palmieri, noted that the presumptive Democratic candidate had been talking with Ohio families about helping them with after-school programs, health care and tax credits for child care.

Kerry had a roundtable Wednesday at a Columbus child care center.

"I would say that President Bush was a week behind on Kerry in talking about strengthening America's families," Palmieri said.

"That's what John Kerry came to Ohio to talk about. But he's actually four years behind."

E-mail cweiser@gannett.com