Washington, DC -- President Bush plans to take up the volatile issue of defining marriage in his State of the Union address tonight, reminding listeners that he considers marriage to be the union of a man and a woman but stopping short of endorsing a ban on gay marriage, administration officials said yesterday.

The inclusion of marriage as a topic in the address is aimed at pleasing his most conservative supporters, many of whom have become increasingly vocal with their dismay about the rising level of federal spending. Some of them reacted furiously to his plan for a moon landing and Mars exploration, which Bush is not expected to mention tonight.

The speech, to be delivered at 9 tonight from the U.S. Capitol to a television audience of 60 million or more, is Bush's most important scheduled platform between now and his acceptance speech at the Republican convention in early September. So Republican officials see it as an unofficial curtain raiser on his reelection campaign.

A senior administration official said Bush will strike an "educational" tone about marriage and will not move beyond his previous statement that he would support an amendment to enshrine that definition in the Constitution if actions by courts or state legislatures made it necessary. Republicans said Bush is prepared to endorse such a constitutional amendment -- and some top advisers are eager for him to do so -- but officials said he will not do so in the immediate future.

The official said Bush will talk about "the issue of marriage" in the context of families and schools and other "institutions that are important in our society and reflect the character and strength of our country." Those remarks, which aides said have been in the speech since the first draft, will follow a discussion of changes that are going on in the world and in the country -- in foreign affairs, security, the economy and health care.

"The president believes that some of those changes in the big areas are a change for the better: We're becoming a more peaceful and secure world, and we're becoming a more prosperous country," the official said. "But there are some things in our society and in our country that don't change and need to remain strong. He'll be talking about families and about schools and about faith-based institutions."

Bush also plans to push Congress to take a series of steps, mostly repackaged from previous proposals, to restrain the cost of health care and, theoretically, make it easier for the uninsured to buy coverage. Bush will reintroduce a refundable tax credit for Americans who do not have employer-subsidized or public health insurance. The amount Bush will ask Congress to spend on it is not expected to rise from his previous proposals, officials said.

Officials said Bush's remarks will focus on the root causes of spiraling health care costs -- one reason for the rising number of uninsured. Bush will push anew for his plan to impose substantial nationwide restrictions on the monetary awards for pain and suffering, or noneconomic damages, in medical malpractice lawsuits.

The Democratic presidential candidates have made Americans without health insurance, estimated at 44 million, a major focus of their campaign platforms and advertisements, and have offered plans designed to cover most or all of them. But the White House contends that many uninsured are not poor.

"It's a lot of different groups and categories of people who are in very different circumstances," the official said. So, the official said, Bush will not have "a monolithic plan that says we're going to treat all 44 million uninsured the same and say all of them must have this insurance."

A new idea Bush will introduce is the more aggressive use of information technology to restrain growth in health care costs. "Medicine is one of the few industries left in America and the world that has been immune to the utilization of new technologies, which has brought down costs in all kinds of different industries," the official said.

Bush also plans to announce a new program of grants to help community colleges retrain workers for high-skilled jobs. In response to word of the State of the Union proposal, the liberal Center for American Progress released a chart asserting that Bush has "repeatedly slashed job training and vocational education programs."

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