CAMPAIGN 2004 Kerry outlines plan for new jobs

A pollster says the economy is the top issue among Ohio voters.
CINCINNATI (AP) -- Cutting taxes on American businesses that create domestic jobs and ending a tax incentive that lets companies defer taxes if they move offshore are key points in Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's plan to create 10 million jobs in four years.
"When I close that loophole that encourages companies to actually take the jobs overseas -- when I close that -- we are going to take that money and give 99 percent of the corporations in America a 5 percent tax cut so they can compete more effectively and create jobs here in the United States of America," Kerry told a cheering crowd at a rally Tuesday on Cincinnati's riverfront.
Visiting a state hit hard by the loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs, Kerry told the crowd that 1.8 million jobs have been lost during President Bush's administration.
"He's created a lot of small businesses in America," Kerry said of Bush. "The only problem is, they used to be big businesses."
Republican response
Vice President Dick Cheney said during a Cincinnati visit Monday that 400,000 jobs have been created in recent months and that the Bush administration thinks the economy is moving in the right direction.
U.S. Rep. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said the nation could not afford Kerry's proposals unless he raises taxes, which Portman said would be devastating to an economic recovery.
Portman said he thinks "Ohio is going to be a tough state for Bush" but that an improving economy already is beginning to help the president in recent polls.
Eric Rademacher, co-director of the University of Cincinnati Ohio Poll, said polls consistently show that the economy is the top issue on the minds of Ohio voters.
"That is true everywhere in the state, whether you are talking to Democrats, Republicans or independents," Rademacher said. "We have found that Democrats view the economic situation far more negatively than Republicans, and voters in the Ohio counties hit hardest by job losses are more concerned with unemployment than people in the Cincinnati area."
Unemployment statistics
In Ohio, the unemployment rate was 5.9 percent in February, down from 6.2 percent in January, according to data released last month by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. Department Director Tom Hayes said the drop was largely because of a decrease in the size of the labor force, which includes those who are seeking jobs, and were not gains in employment.
In the Cincinnati metropolitan area, there were about 9,400 fewer people working in February 2004 than in January 2001, but those figures are not seasonally adjusted, according to Job and Family Services spokesman Jon Allen. He said statewide job-loss figures, which are seasonally adjusted, showed 236,000 fewer jobs in Ohio in February 2004 than in January 2001.
In the department's Job Outlook to 2010, the Cincinnati metropolitan area is projected to show a 14.3 percent growth in jobs in the 2000-2010 period, putting it third behind Columbus with 16.4 percent and the Hamilton-Middletown area with 16 percent. Service-producing industries will account for virtually all of the job growth, with manufacturing employment expected to decline.
Changed parties
George Bentley, 66, of nearby Cold Spring, Ky., attended Tuesday's rally. He said loss of jobs is one of the main reasons he switched his party affiliation to Democrat this year after decades of being a Republican.
"People I talk to are worried about the future," he said. "They don't have any security because they don't know how long they will have their jobs."
Sourushe Zandvakili, an economics professor at the University of Cincinnati, said he doesn't think the "outsourcing" of low-paying jobs to other countries is wrong.
"The problem is not the outsourcing of low-paying jobs. It is the fact that new, higher-paying jobs are not being created and Americans are not being educated and trained to fill new jobs," he said.