Cheney visits Yakima, touts economy
Cheney's speech, coming one day after the Democratic National Convention ended, also outlined several campaign goals, such as making the administration's tax cuts permanent.
It was the vice president's second trip to Washington state this week; he attended a fund-raiser for GOP gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi in Kennewick on Monday.
"The president and I have some important differences with the folks you saw in Boston this week," Cheney told about 2,000 supporters in the Eisenhower High School gymnasium.
"It starts with Sens. Kerry and Edwards voting yes when the president asked the Congress to authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein," he said. "But then, when it came time to vote for funds that would provide our fighting men and women with body armor, ammunition, and jet fuel and spare parts, Sens. Kerry and Edwards voted no."
In his speech yesterday, Cheney said Bush's tax cuts have created 1.5 million jobs this past year, including 55,000 in Washington state.
"Our economy is growing stronger every day," Cheney said. "The Bush tax cuts are working."
In an e-mail response, Robert Perez, a spokesman for the Washington State Democrats, said the Bush-Cheney economy has hurt the state. "Dick Cheney has come to Washington to try and convince us that everything is swell," Perez said. "He chose a pretty bad day. The Bush-Cheney budget deficit just swelled to $445 billion, and consumer spending has fallen to the weakest rate since the slowdown of 2001."
As for the Iraq votes, "both Sens. Kerry and Edwards focused their votes on fiscal responsibility," Perez said in an interview.
"Sen. Kerry and Sen. Edwards wanted to roll back the part of the Bush tax cut that was targeted at the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans ... in order to pay for the $87 billion needed to pay for the war in Iraq."
Kerry, the Democratic nominee for president, has said his first vote on Iraq was based on inaccurate intelligence given to elected officials.
Cheney said he would work with Congress to make permanent the Bush tax cuts. Cheney also said the administration would work toward ending frivolous lawsuits and creating an energy policy that would "make the United States less dependent on foreign sources of energy."
"Our opponents have a very different vision for the country," Cheney said. "They talk about jobs, yet they never explain how they would put a single American back to work. They opposed our tax-relief package, and now they're proposing massive increases in federal spending. Their big idea for the economy: to raise your taxes."
LaDon Linde, 43, an Outlook dairy farmer who attended the rally, said he was pleased with Cheney's consistency.
"Even though I may not agree with every one of their positions, I do know where they stand on the issues," said Linde, referring to Bush and Cheney. "I have confidence that they won't change their minds next month."
Washington, which backed Democrat Al Gore in 2000, is seen as one of several battleground states in 2004. Kerry and Edwards, the Democrats' nominee for vice president, yesterday began a two-week tour that will end in Oregon and Washington.
In 2000, nearly 59 percent of voters in Yakima County voted for Bush, and about 38 percent voted for Gore. Bush won a majority of voters in Kennewick's Benton County, too, where about 62 percent voted for Bush and nearly 33 percent voted for Gore.
Matthew Rodriguez: 206-464-3192 or mrodriguez@seattletimes.com.
Researcher Gene Balk contributed to this report.