SCHOOLCRAFT, Mich. Republican U.S. presidential nominee George W. Bush blasted President Bill Clinton's veto on Saturday of a bill abolishing the marriage penalty on taxes for working couples, calling the move anti-family and "another squandered opportunity." As his "Victory Express" train rolled through the key electoral state of Michigan, the Texas governor at every stop reminded enthusiastic crowds of Clinton's veto and said that Vice President Al Gore, his democratic rival in the Nov. 7 election, was guilty by association.
"Today the Clinton-Gore administration chose to tax marriage," Bush said. "The message to America is families are important and marriage is essential. The president should not have vetoed it and our opponent Al Gore should have spoken out on it." "Instead of standing on the side of families, he stands on the side of big government," said Bush. "Had I been the president of the United States, I would have signed that bill." Clinton, locked in an election year tax cut battle with the republican-led Congress, vetoed the measure on Saturday, saying it was just the first of $2 trillion in cuts that would eat up the federal budget surplus and endanger the fiscal viability of the social security retirement program and other programs.
Pointing out "this is a moment of incredible prosperity," Bush said, "this current administration hasn't seized the moment.
They've squandered the moment." Reprising a refrain from his speech on Thursday accepting the republican presidential nomination, Bush added, "They had a chance to lead. They have not and we will." "Today, we learned of another squandered opportunity ... after the Congress worked so hard to send a signal to America marriage is important," he said.
Drawing prolonged cheers from crowds gathered outside railway stations in rural Michigan, bush said he did not think it was right "that men and women who are married pay more taxes than if they were single people." "What kind of tax code penalizes marriage?" he asked. "A bad tax code." Under the U.S. tax code, working married couples often pay more in taxes than they would if they were single. But many couples, mostly those with only one wage earner, pay a smaller tax bill than they would as single taxpayers.
A Tour of the Midwest Making his way across the midwestern battleground states of Michigan, Illinois and Ohio that will be instrumental in deciding who wins the U.S. presidential election, Bush also reached out across party lines, telling democrats that they were welcome to join him.
"This is a campaign that welcomes democrats," he told crowds outside the Michigan Railway Museum in Durand. "Our message isn't just a republican message, it's a message that speaks to all walks of life." Bush, a relative newcomer to the national political stage with 5-1/2 years as governor of the country's second-largest state, has based his White House bid on what he has called a "positive vision" of inclusiveness and compassion as well as the notion that he is "a different kind of republican." His 16-car train, pulled by two locomotives, rolled through Michigan on Saturday, a state he lost in his bitter primary battle with Arizona Sen. John McCain for the republican nomination. On Sunday his whistle-stop tour, a U.S. campaign tradition since the days of Harry Truman, went to Illinois.
Campaigning with his vice presidential running mate Dick Cheney, Bush has drawn enthusiastic receptions in tiny rural hamlets such as Holly and Fenton and crowds in the thousands in bigger centers such as Pontiac, East Lansing and Schoolcraft.
He never has trailed Gore in the polls, although they had drawn almost even in several surveys this summer.
Bush appeared to have received a bounce from the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia this week, with one poll giving him an 19 percentage point lead. Gore was expected to get the traditional bounce of his own after democrats gather for their convention in Los Angeles Aug. 14.
(Reuter)