Washington — With 10 months to go before votes are cast, the political fight for control of Congress began in earnest Friday when Sen. Tom Daschle, the nation's highest-ranking elected Democrat, blamed the Republicans' $1.35 trillion tax cut package for most of America's economic woes.
Daschle, who blocked President Bush's economic stimulus plan last month, laid out a seven-point Democratic alternative that, among other things, would increase benefits for laid-off workers, provide tax breaks for companies that hired more workers and increase spending on homeland defense by $15 billion.
Bush's plan included a variety of tax breaks for businesses that the administration said would help spur job growth.
Senate Majority Leader Daschle, from South Dakota, dismissed Republican claims that the war on terrorism, not tax cuts, sapped the expected federal budget surpluses. But Daschle did not call for a repeal of the tax cuts, which were supported by 12 of the Senate's 50 Democrats.
The tax cuts "put us in an unnecessary fiscal bind at the worst possible time," Daschle said. The only alternatives now, he said, are to cut federal services or to drain the Social Security surplus.
"The Republican agenda in Washington is being written by a wing of the Republican Party that isn't interested in fiscal discipline," Daschle said. "They have one unchanging, unyielding solution that they offer for every problem: tax cuts that go disproportionately to the most affluent."
In a sign of just how difficult it will be for Democrats to run against a president with high popularity ratings, Daschle praised Bush and criticized only Republicans in general on policy matters, even though the tax cuts and other programs about which Daschle complained were authored by Bush.
With control of the Senate and possibly the House up for grabs in the November midterm elections, Daschle used his speech before the Center for National Policy in Washington to stake out Democratic turf in what promises to be a yearlong series of partisan recriminations about the economy.
Republicans did not hesitate to join the fight.
GOP leaders lambasted Daschle for squandering an opportunity to aid the economy last month when he refused to allow the Senate to vote on Bush's economic stimulus plan. They accused Daschle, a potential presidential candidate in 2004, of putting political ambition ahead of national interests.
"He has given a nice speech that does nothing to help put people back to work," House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said. "The American people want action, not more rhetoric."
President Bush, who will be touting his own "economic security" plan today, tried to stay above the partisan sniping Friday.
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