Kerry takes battle to Bush over 'reckless' spending

[T_i_B]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=508888

With the recovery in the US showing gathering strength, John Kerry has opened a second economic front against President George Bush by accusing the Republican incumbent of fiscal recklessness, and running up huge deficits whose burdens would fall on generations to come.

In a major speech tomorrow, the presumptive Democratic nominee is expected to call for a return to the budget discipline of the 1990s, when Bill Clinton turned a record deficit bequeathed him by the first President George Bush into the first federal surplus since the Vietnam war era.

The strategy captures the reversal of roles between the two major parties over the past decade. In that time, the Democrats - long identified with runaway spending and deficits - have metamorphosed into the party standing for balanced budgets and tight spending controls.

Under this George Bush, the Republicans who had been regarded as the guardians of fiscal probity have become identified with high spending, and across-the-board tax cuts not matched by an equivalent cut in government spending.