Carson, Calif. ? John Kerry said Thursday that President Bush’s musing about a national sales tax was an insult to financially struggling voters and would amount to “one of the largest tax increases on the middle class in American history.”

The Democratic presidential nominee, during a speech at California State University, Dominguez Hills, tried to reverse partisan stereotypes by portraying the Republican president as the tax raiser and himself as a tax cutter.

Kerry said if Bush wanted to create a national sales tax without increasing the deficit, people would end up paying at least 26 percent more for purchases on top of state and local sales taxes.

“We know exactly who that’s going to hurt,” Kerry said. “That’s going to hurt small business. It’s going to hurt jobs. It’s going to hit the pocketbooks of those who need and deserve tax relief most in America.”

Bush has suggested that overhauling the tax code would be a second-term priority if he is re-elected. While campaigning in Florida Tuesday, he said replacing the income tax with a federal sales tax was “an interesting idea that we ought to explore seriously.”

Kerry seized on Bush’s comments even as White House officials downplayed the idea and denied that any such plan was under consideration.

Kerry said Bush had failed to offer a plan for improving the economy in his second term. He said the president’s tax cuts had resulted in a tax increase on the middle class because their state and local taxes had been increased to compensate for loss of revenue from the federal government. He said a national sales tax would only further burden the middle class.

“I call it one of the largest tax increases on the middle class in American history,” Kerry said. “And this is coming from an administration that has offered almost no new ideas for our economy, and the few ideas that they have offered have only hurt middle class families. This new idea is no different.”