New Mexico

Bush calls for expansion of quick Internet access

President Bush, hunting for votes in hotly contested Sun Belt states, said Friday his administration was working toward wiring homes throughout America with high-speed Internet access by 2007.

“We’ve got to make sure this country’s on the leading edge of broadband technology,” Bush said in Albuquerque. It is vital, he added, to open “new highways of knowledge” to spread innovations in education, medicine and other areas, and keep the country competitive in global trade.

Bush also said the tax cuts enacted since he took office were largely responsible for the record high rate of home ownership, a bright spot in the economy he highlighted in New Mexico and again in Phoenix en route to a weekend at his Texas ranch.

During the past three years, Bush has sporadically sought to focus public attention on expanding the number of homes connected to high-speed Internet providers such as DSL and cable.

Detroit

Kerry reveals proposal to cut corporate taxes

Sen. John Kerry, seeking to shed his image as a “Massachusetts liberal,” on Friday proposed cutting corporate taxes and said he’d create 10 million jobs in four years.

Kerry chose Wayne State University in Detroit, a city hit hard by job losses, to propose changes in corporate tax policy that he said would slow the exodus of jobs to foreign countries and offer companies incentives to create jobs in America.

His plan would eliminate the ability of U.S. corporations to defer taxes on overseas income. That would raise an estimated $11 billion in revenue a year, covering the cost of reducing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 33.25 percent.

Kerry also announced an expansion of his earlier proposal to give tax breaks to manufacturers that create jobs in the United States. Businesses with fewer than 100 workers and industries vulnerable to outsourcing of jobs overseas also would be eligible.