Kerry Questions Bush's Honesty on Health Care, Iraq
Tue Sep 14, 2004 12:51 PM ET
By Patricia Wilson
MILWAUKEE (Reuters) - Democratic candidate John Kerry on Tuesday sought the upper hand in his battle over character and leadership with President Bush, by questioning his Republican rival's honesty on issues from health care to Iraq.
Campaigning in Wisconsin, where a new poll showed him trailing Bush by 8 percentage points seven weeks before the Nov. 2 election, Kerry said the administration had hidden the true out-of-pocket costs for senior citizens on Medicare.
He accused Bush of "immoral" policies that would take money from the Social Security retirement system and transfer it to "the wealthiest people in the country" through tax cuts, but said voters would see through trickery.
"Here in Wisconsin, you are people of great common sense" Kerry said at a senior center in Milwaukee. "You know how to tell the truth and see the truth and understand it and make a choice about it."
Public opinion polls show Bush has a big advantage over the Massachusetts senator on leadership, and a smaller edge on qualities like trustworthiness and honesty.
The Republican president has regularly assailed his opponent as an indecisive flip-flopper, while independent groups supporting Bush have accused Kerry of misrepresenting his service in Vietnam. Kerry's attacks on Tuesday represented a new attempt to gain an advantage on character issues.
Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt accused Kerry of resorting to "a series of deeply personal negative attacks" because he lacked "an agenda for the future."
Kerry has charged that Bush misled Americans on Iraq, said one thing and done another on gun control and favored the rich and powerful over the middle class and the needy. The Democrat has vowed to be a president who always "tells the truth.'
Bush's failure to push for renewal of a ban on assault weapons, despite surveys showing it was favored overwhelmingly by Americans, "goes to the character of the president and the leadership we ought to have in this country," Kerry said.
IRAQ COSTS
Kerry said Bush had not leveled with Americans about the financial cost of the Iraq war, by telling them it would be paid for with Iraqi oil. Instead, Kerry said, Americans were footing a bill that he predicted would top $200 billion.
"With a mess growing greater and greater on the ground every single day, with elections harder to hold, with more of the country held by terrorists, by jihadists, by insurgents, that $200 billion is not the end of the story," he said.
Faced with mounting violence in Iraq, the Bush administration is expected to ask Congress for approval to shift $3.46 billion from Iraqi rebuilding projects to improve security, increase oil output and prepare for January elections.
Kerry said Bush was being dishonest about the real cost of the Medicare old-age health insurance program. He cited new reports that showed America's seniors could expect to pay 37 percent of their Social Security benefits on Medicare expenses by 2006, and he accused the administration of withholding the figures.
"Once again, this administration hides the truth from the American people," he said.
Kerry also charged that Bush was unable "to tell the truth" about health care. The president called Kerry's plan "a government takeover of health care with an enormous price tag," after the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank, estimated its cost at more than $1.5 trillion.
"Yesterday, he started advertising, saying we have some big government program and so forth ... I have no new bureaucracy at all in my program," Kerry declared.
He called Bush's plan to help seniors meet the rising cost of prescription drugs a $139 billion giveaway to big drug companies that did little to cut expenses, and said: "They're being dishonest with you, they're hiding the truth from you ... they're cheating the American people of the truth."