Bush, Kerry Take Battle South
The campaign rhetoric was ratcheted up Monday, as President Bush charged Sen. John Kerry, his presumptive Democratic challenger, with being a flip-flopper on big issues. Kerry, meanwhile, accused the president of breaking promises to senior citizens.
Mr. Bush blasted Kerry for talking up the importance of intelligence gathering after trying to cut the intelligence budget in 1995.
"Once again Sen. Kerry is trying to have it both ways. He's for good intelligence yet he was willing to gut the intelligence services," Mr. Bush told a fund-raiser in Dallas, the first of two million-dollar Bush campaign events Monday in Texas.
The president accused Kerry of having proposed "deeply irresponsible" cuts in intelligence spending just two years after the first attack on the World Trade Center, part of a re-election effort to depict his Democratic rival as weak on national security and the war against terrorism.
The cuts were part of what Kerry called a "budget-buster bill" to strip $90 billion from the budget and end 40 programs that he said were "pointless, wasteful, antiquated or just plain silly."
Kerry's proposal, which followed the collapse of the Soviet Union and calls for a peace dividend after decades of spending to thwart the Cold War opponent, failed to attract any co-sponsors and did not come up for a vote.
"This bill was so deeply irresponsible that it didn't have a single co-sponsor in the United States Senate," Mr. Bush said.
Kerry spokesman Chad Clanton said the senator's bill was about opposing "business as usual in our intelligence community" and that he has supported $200 billion in intelligence funding over the past seven years – a 50 percent increase since 1996.
"He voted against a proposed billion-dollar bloat in the intelligence budget because it was essentially a slush fund for defense contractors," Clanton said. "Unlike George Bush, John Kerry does not and will not support every special spending project supported by Halliburton and other defense contractors."
Later Monday, the president was headlining another fund-raiser in Houston, with the two events pouring $3 million into his campaign account the day before Texas holds its presidential primary. In between the events, Mr. Bush was dropping by the popular Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.
Despite the political benefits of Mr. Bush's attendance, the White House considered it an official event. That means taxpayers will foot the bill for at least part of the trip.
Kerry was campaigning Monday in Florida, where he vowed to mount an early legal challenge in any district that might repeat the problems that bedeviled Democratic supporters in 2000.
"Not only do we want a record level of turnout to vote, we want to guarantee that every vote is counted," he told about 500 people at a town hall meeting in Hollywood, Fla.
Responding to a voter who asked, "What can you do to prevent them from stealing the election again?", Kerry, a lawyer and former Massachusetts prosecutor, said his campaign was assembling a legal team to examine districts which had problems.
"We're going to pre-check it, we're going to have the legal team in place. ... We're going to take injunctions where necessary ahead of time. We'll pre-challenge if necessary," the four-term Massachusetts senator said.
The 2000 recount looms large in nearly any political discourse in Florida. George W. Bush won the presidency by one electoral vote when a 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court ended a recount in the state. Mr. Bush spent millions of dollars fighting Al Gore's effort to have votes recounted, a legal battle that lasted for 36 days. Mr. Bush won Florida's 25 electoral votes by a 537-vote margin. This year, an additional two electoral votes are at stake.
Worries are already being raised about changes in Florida's voting methods since the disputed election. Kerry said he wants to be sure there is no chance of foul play.
"I don't think we ought to have any vote cast in America that cannot be traced and properly recounted," he said. "I intend to ask this legal team to do that, and we will identify those districts where people have had trouble voting in the past."
Florida and three states — Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas — select a total of 465 delegates to the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday.
Campaigning in state in which 17.6 percent of its population is 65 and older — the highest concentration of elderly in the nation — Kerry accused the president of breaking promises to senior citizens and called the prescription drug package approved by Congress a billion-dollar giveaway to drug companies.
"Our seniors deserve the best care America has to offer," he said. "What they do not deserve is another four years of broken promises and failed policies from George W. Bush." Kerry was joined by Florida Democratic Sens. Bob Graham and Bill Nelson, both of whom have been mentioned as a potential running mate.
Mr. Bush is campaigning equally as hard in the state, making it one of his most frequent stops to raise money. He's counting on help from his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, who easily won a second term in 2002.
A new poll conducted by the Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times released Sunday showed Kerry with a slight lead in the state, 49 percent to 43 percent.
In other campaign news, long-shot Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich was taking a few days off the campaign trail to undergo tests for an intestinal ailment. A spokesman described the illness as "not serious."