Bush credits progress to his cutting of taxes

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — President Bush yesterday said his economic policies were responsible for creating 308,000 jobs last month, welcome news for a campaign dogged for months with explaining a “jobless recovery.”

“The tax relief we passed is working,” Mr. Bush told an audience at Marshall University. “It’s making a difference in this economy.”

According to the Labor Department, 759,000 new jobs have been created in the past seven months, but until March, the monthly employment numbers barely crept above 100,000, greatly missing economists’ expectations.

In previous town hall-type meetings on the economy, Mr. Bush has stressed that he inherited a slowing economy that was thrown into a brief recession after the September 11 attacks, but yesterday, for the first time in months, he had data to back up his contention that his economic plan was working.

“This economy is strong and it is getting stronger,” Mr. Bush said. “You can understand why I’m optimistic when I cite these statistics. I remember what we’ve been through. We’re getting better.”

Democrats, however, complained that the overall economic record of the Bush administration has been a failure.

“After three years of punishing job losses, the one-month job creation announced today is welcome news for America’s workers. I hope it continues,” said Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts in a statement.

“But for too many families living through the worst job recovery since the Great Depression, [the economy] continues to be far too painful,” Mr. Kerry said, repeating his campaign promise to create 10 million jobs if elected president.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, said Mr. Bush is still on track to have the worst economic record since the Great Depression.

“Clearly the Republicans’ economic policies do not work and they are unwilling to consider proposals that will. America is ready for a change,” Mrs. Pelosi said.

Bush campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said last month’s job growth number is the result of “policies of this administration.”

While the economy has lost 2.6 million jobs since 2000, 75 percent of the losses were in 2001, said a Bush campaign official, and 40 percent were a result of the economic downturn after the September 11 attacks.

In Washington, the Bush administration yesterday gave the federal panel reviewing the September 11 attacks access to thousands of classified counterterrorism documents from the Clinton administration.

Bush officials granted the September 11 commission’s request to review the material after Bruce Lindsey, former legal adviser to President Clinton, said the administration failed to turn over all of Mr. Clinton’s records to the panel.

The commission’s lawyers will begin reviewing the material Monday and should know within a day and a half whether additional documents should be released, said commission spokesman Al Felzenberg. The panel isn’t making judgments until then, he said.

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