President George W. Bush on Saturday came to the heart of the state that delivered him the White House in 2000 for his first full-scale campaign rally this year and opened a new line of attack on Senator John Kerry, saying his Democratic rival would raise taxes and choke off the economic recovery.
Before thousands of enthusiastic supporters in a city that could determine whether he can keep Florida in his column this year, Bush said Kerry had voted 350 times to raise taxes in his nearly two decades in the Senate and was now setting out plans that would lead him to push for higher taxes.
Clearly energized by the reception he received here and obviously relishing being in the thick of the political give-and-take, Bush listed what Republicans say are the most popular elements of the tax cuts the president has signed into law, including an increase in the child credit, a tax break for many married couples, an expansion of the lowest tax bracket and a cut in the taxes on dividends.
Kerry, he said, opposed them all.
"He also supported a 50-cent-a-gallon tax on gasoline," Bush added. "He wanted you to pay all that money at the pump, and wouldn't even throw in a free car wash."
Bush said Kerry's spending proposals and his support of budget-deficit reduction could lead to only one outcome.
"Given Senator Kerry's record of supporting tax increases, it's pretty clear how he's going to fill the tax gap," Bush said. "He's going to tax all of you. Fortunately, you're not going to give him that chance. Higher taxes right now would undermine growth and destroy jobs just as our economy is getting stronger."
Kerry has said he would support repealing Bush's tax cuts for people earning more than US$200,000 a year. In 1993, he voted for President Bill Clinton's deficit reduction package, which as Bush noted on Saturday amounted to the largest tax increase in US history. The 1993 package also succeeded in the view of many economists in helping to bring down the deficit, a development that Democrats say paved the way for the economic boom of the 1990s.
David Wade, a spokesman for Kerry, said Bush was attacking Kerry because he could not talk about his own administration's record, including the loss of more than 2 million jobs, or adequately answer questions about whether the White House had misled Americans about Iraq and other issues.
"These guys have dug an enormous hole for themselves in terms of their credibility with the American people," Wade said, referring to Bush's team. "And voters are smart: every time they launch one of these attacks, people have a pretty good sense that it's because they're afraid to run on their record. They're running away from the last four years, and they can't do it."
Bush got an almost rapturous welcome after being introduced by his brother Jeb, the governor of Florida, and Laura Bush. Standing before a sea of faces that were black, white, Hispanic, young and old, and with a sign in the background proclaiming the US to be "Safer, Stronger, Better," he said that with an election coming up, "I thought I'd come down for a little spring training."
Speaking here on the first anniversary of the war in Iraq, Bush forcefully defended his record on national security. And he repeated his attack on Kerry for having suggested, at least in the White House's view, that there were unnamed foreign leaders who were hoping for Bush's defeat.
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