Democrat Kerry Slams Bush's 'Excuse Presidency'
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Wed Sep 15, 2004 11:21 AM ET
By Patricia Wilson
DETROIT (Reuters) - Democratic candidate John Kerry unleashed a stinging indictment of President Bush's economic stewardship on Wednesday and urged his Republican rival to take responsibility instead of playing the victim.
"This president has created more excuses than jobs," Kerry said in a speech to the Detroit Economic Club.
Trailing in national polls seven weeks before the Nov. 2 election and heeding advisers who have urged him to be more forceful, Kerry said he was "taking the gloves off" in his presidential campaign battle with Bush.
He rejected the White House's "perfect storm" explanation that recession, war and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks caused tepid economic performance in the United States.
"The president wants you to believe that this record is the record of the victim of circumstances, the result of bad luck, not bad decisions," Kerry said in his speech. "Well, Mr. President, when it comes to your record, we agree -- you own it."
"His is the excuse presidency -- never wrong, never responsible, never to blame ... no, it's not our fault; no, there's nothing wrong; no, we can't do better; no, we haven't made a single mistake," Kerry said.
While the Iraq war has supplanted the economy as voters' No. 1 issue in many opinion polls, and national security is considered one of Bush's strengths, the Kerry campaign believes the president is vulnerable on domestic issues.
GLOVES OFF
The Democratic nominee underscored his hard-hitting broadside by writing in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal that "cleaning up President Bush's fiscal mess will not be easy."
He told the "Imus in the Morning" radio show, "I am absolutely taking the gloves off. I'm prepared to take them (the Bush team) on."
Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt dismissed Kerry's speech as a "dark view of the future" and said pessimism would not create jobs.
The Massachusetts senator touted his own economic plan of repealing Bush's tax cuts for Americans earning more than $200,000 a year, while keeping reductions for the middle class. He would use the savings to pay for health-care reforms.
Kerry also would cut the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 33.25 percent to reduce the cost of doing business in the United States, and he would end tax breaks that encourage employers to send jobs overseas.
Some economists are skeptical that Kerry can pay for his proposals and keep his pledge to cut the deficit in half by 2009. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has projected a record $422 billion shortfall this fiscal year.
MIDDLE-CLASS PITCH
Kerry's platform is designed to appeal to middle-class voters -- especially in battleground states -- many of whom have failed to reap much benefit from an economic recovery that has yet to generate robust hiring or wage gains.
Although unemployment has inched down in past months, almost 1 million jobs have been lost since Bush took office in January 2001, and Kerry said his record was the worst of any president since Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression.
"He chose and he chose and he chose and every single time it was middle-class Americans who paid the price," Kerry said. "George Bush accomplished all this in only four years. Imagine what he could do in another four years."
Kerry cited a litany of statistics -- job losses, 8 million Americans looking for work, 45 million without health insurance, 4.3 million more at the poverty level, 220,000 who could not afford to go to college last year, and a $1,500 decline in the average family's income.
"We know the truth," he said. "Nearly every choice has made it worse. You can even say that George Bush is proud of the fact that not even failure can cause him to change his mind."
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