Bush accuses Kerry of seeking higher taxes

BOSTON — President Bush stomped onto his presidential opponent’s home turf yesterday, calling Sen. John Kerry a tax-and-spend liberal who vacillates on key issues.

Mr. Bush called Mr. Kerry one of the main opponents of tax relief in Congress, noting that during Mr. Kerry’s 20 years of representing Massachusetts in the Senate, he has voted more than 350 times for tax increases, “including the biggest tax increase in American history.”

“He supported a 50-cent-a-gallon tax on gasoline. He wants you to pay the extra money at the pump, but he wouldn’t even throw in a free car wash,” the president said to laughter and applause from 1,000 supporters at the Park Plaza hotel in downtown Boston.

Mr. Bush also chided Mr. Kerry for being on both sides of every issue.

“His answers aren’t always so clear, but the voters will have a clear choice in November,” Mr. Bush said.

“The man who sits in the Oval Office sets the course of the war on terror and the direction of our economy,” Mr. Bush told supporters at a $1.2 million fund-raising dinner. “The other side hasn’t offered much in the way of strategy to win the war or policies to expand our economy.”

The Kerry camp immediately released a carefully worded statement that said the senator “has never sponsored or voted for a gas-tax increase of that magnitude.”

“Sen. Charles Robb introduced legislation in 1993 that phased in a 50-cent increase. John Kerry did not vote for or co-sponsor this bill,” according to the e-mail, titled “Misleading America Again.”

But the Bush-Cheney team responded with a release titled “The Raw Deal,” citing a 1994 Boston Globe article in which Mr. Kerry said a rating by a budget watchdog group “doesn’t reflect my $43 billion package of cuts or my support for a 50-cent increase in the gas tax.”

In his first trip to Mr. Kerry’s home state since the senator became the presumptive presidential nominee, Mr. Bush said he has not given up on the notion on winning the liberal state, which last voted for a Republican presidential candidate in 1984.

“Nobody should take this state for granted in 2004,” he said. “We want you out there turning the voters out.”

But David Wade, spokesman for Mr. Kerry, said Mr. Bush is not right for the state.

“Massachusetts wants jobs, health care, balanced budgets and promises kept on homeland security and education. In other words, Massachusetts wants the same kind of change America wants, and it starts by electing John Kerry president.”

Both at the fund-raiser and in Nashua, N.H., Mr. Bush defended his administration against new accusations that he underestimated the threat from the al Qaeda terror network and then rushed to blame Iraq’s Saddam Hussein for the September 11 terror attacks. He also defended his overseeing of an economy that has lost 2.2 million jobs.

“We’re trying to do our solemn duty to protect America,” he said at New Hampshire Community Technical College.

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