I suppose Bush goes throught with the budget cuts Reagan was proposing at this time, but what about the tax cuts? He'd have the political capital to do them, and they were done in OTL (though OT's Reagan had political capital through merely surviving the attmept on his life), and he has his old friend Jim Baker as holdover chief of staff--but does Bush have the gumption to do the taxcutting?
I think yes--I also think the inevitable major tax raises which take place to address the budget crisis will be much more high profile than the payroll tax rises & eradication of corporate tax loopholes Reagan pushed through in '82, '83.
Forget about how effective Volcker was in slaying the inflation dragon--the '82 recession was vicious, and if Bush doesn't show as much optimism as the Gipper did, if he doesn't manage the competing personalities in economic policy as adroitly as Reagan and the 'troika' did in OTL, his re-election is going to be much closer. He might just end up scraping by, like Dubya did in 2004.
Now, the one bright side for a Bush administration at this time is the end of the conflict within the national security team. I can see him getting rid of both Haig and Weinberger, and choosing more team-spirited replacements. Having Scowcroftians at both Defence and State, and no Jean Kilpatrick at the UN wold seem to nip the neoconservative movement in the bud; however, Rumsfeld and Cheney in OTL have demonstrated that lifelong Republican gentlemen can be every bit as doctrinaire as ex-Trots and lapsed Democrats, so who knows what foreign policy cadre develops under Bush in the eighties.
An Iran-Contra scandal under a Bush who won re-election with 51% of the popular vote is very interesting.