Bush hails improved economy

MILWAUKEE — President Bush claimed credit for a brightening economic picture Friday as he juggled three keys to his re-election — the economy, postwar Iraq and fund raising.

"Things are getting better," Bush said in an economic speech to a friendly audience of 1,000 small-business leaders. He gave a lengthy defense of his efforts to spur the economy through tax cutting, insisting: "The tax relief we passed was necessary for economic vitality."

Bush pointed to new figures from the Labor Department Friday that showed the nation's unemployment rate held steady at 6.1 percent in September, and U.S. companies added 57,000 jobs. It was the first hiring increase in eight months.

Democrats said Bush was giving himself too much credit.

"The administration's tax cuts have not created jobs as promised, but they have created huge deficits that will stifle growth in the future and burden our children and grandchildren with debt," said Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C.

Bush renewed his call for a six-pillared blueprint for boosting the economy by cutting health-care costs, reducing medical liability costs for doctors, decreasing class-action lawsuits, increasing domestic energy supplies, making all his tax cuts permanent and trimming back regulation of small business.

While Bush intended to spend his day raising money and talking up the economy, Iraq pulled at his attention as well.

His first speech here, unusually long at 46 minutes, also included what he characterized as favorable findings from an interim report on the search for unconventional weapons submitted Thursday by chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay.

The report said no weapons of mass destruction have been found, but Bush pointed to other findings that he said buttressed his decision to go to war.

"It states that Saddam Hussein's regime had a clandestine network of biological laboratories. They had a live strain of deadly agent called botulinum, and he had sophisticated concealment efforts," Bush said.

Underscoring the importance Bush attached to getting his interpretation out, Bush repeated these remarks almost verbatim Friday, first in a short address he gave at the White House and again in Milwaukee.

Bush's visit marked his eighth trip to this state he lost by 6,000 votes in 2000 and has wooed aggressively ever since.