Kerry, Cheney fight on taxes, gas costs
Senator continues focus on lost jobs, blasts Wal-Mart
SAN FRANCISCO -- Senator John F. Kerry and Vice President Dick Cheney sparred over taxes and gasoline prices yesterday as Kerry -- campaigning and raising more than $3 million in California -- pounded the White House for a fifth day in a row over job losses and extended his criticisms of the economy to a new target, Wal-Mart.
Cheney, speaking before a largely friendly audience of US Chamber of Commerce members, called Kerry "one of the most reliable protax votes in the United States Senate" and said the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee had backed higher taxes at least 350 times during his 19-year Senate career. Cheney also cited Kerry's occasional support for higher gas taxes -- at one point he spoke up for an increase of 50 cents a gallon -- as part of a coordinated Bush campaign effort to tap voters' frustration with rising prices at the pump. A dozen Republicans appeared at gas stations in battleground states yesterday -- including Missouri, Ohio, and West Virginia -- to tell voters that Kerry could hike prices even further.
"He has given the usual assurances that in those first 100 days he's planning, only the wealthiest Americans can expect higher taxes," Cheney said. "But voters are entitled to measure that campaign promise against Senator Kerry's long record in support of higher taxes for virtually every income group."
The Massachusetts senator struck back just one minute into his remarks to 350 students and teachers at a job training center in Sacramento, saying his economic plan would lower taxes for 98 percent of Americans and raise them on people earning $200,000 or more a year. He said he would use the new revenue to lower health care premiums and to fund education. He accused the White House of distorting his record in "phony 30-second advertisements" on television.
"They found Dick Cheney in an undisclosed location and brought him out to attack me," Kerry said, making light of the vice president's low profile after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist assault.
"With each attack, this administration is building up the truth deficit to go along with the jobs deficit and the fiscal deficit and their international intelligence-gathering credibility deficit," Kerry said. "This administration has one economic policy for America: 3 million jobs lost, and driving gas prices toward $3 a gallon." At a rally today in San Diego, Kerry plans to propose new pressure on oil-producing countries to increase output, as well as temporarily suspending filling the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve until oil prices decline. At a fund-raiser in San Francisco last night, Kerry noted gas in California is almost $3 a gallon. "If it keeps going up like that, folks, Dick Cheney and President Bush are going to have to carpool to work together," he said.Kerry also took aim at the popular low-cost retailer Wal-Mart as an example of corporate irresponsibility, comparing its wealthy owners unfavorably with a family-owned company in Ohio that covers the entire health care costs of its workers. "Five of the top 10 billionaires in America are all out of the same family, all [from] Wal-Mart -- each worth $20 billion in the latest ranking; that's $100 billion -- and they can't give their employees across the board health care even though other companies are struggling to do so," Kerry said, referring to a Forbes magazine list of the richest Americans. "Something's wrong in America when that's the kind of ethic we have." Kerry's remark echoed a comment last month by his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, that riled many Republicans. Heinz Kerry told a group in Minnesota that Wal-Mart stores "destroy communities," a comment that prompted Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas -- where Wal-Mart is based -- to issue a letter to the nation's 49 other governors accusing her of elitism and hypocrisy. Kerry's wife is heiress to the $500 million Heinz ketchup fortune, and many products by that company are sold in Wal-Mart stores. Huckabee also said Heinz Kerry owned $1 million in Wal-Mart stock; a Kerry aide said yesterday that she has sold the stock.
Kerry, who is on a cross-country trip touting his new plan to create 10 million jobs, remained locked in a virtual tie with President Bush in a theoretical head-to-head match-up, 47 percent to Bush's 46 percent, according to a poll released yesterday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. When third-party candidate Ralph Nader is factored in, the tie stood while Nader took 6 percent.
Nader said Sunday that he plans to meet with Kerry sometime next month to discuss defeating Bush in the fall.
After his town-hall meeting at the Sacramento jobs center, Kerry picked up about $300,000 at a fund-raiser nearby and attended one with 1,200 people in downtown San Francisco last night that netted at least $2.9 million. (Kerry aides expected to raise $6 million in his two-day trip to California.) At the Sacramento fund-raiser, the senator made a quip about new Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a friend who is related by marriage to the cochairman of Kerry's campaign, Senator Edward M. Kennedy.
`'Last week on `Meet the Press,' Ted Kennedy gave Arnold permission to run for president," Kerry told his audience. "It's taken me 20 years until last October to get him to give me permission."
Patrick Healy can be reached at phealy@globe.com. 