Campaign Notebook
Kerry touts tax-cut plan for business

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DETROIT — Sen. John Kerry returned to the campaign trail yesterday for a two-day swing though the battleground states of Michigan and Missouri to tout a new economic plan featuring tax breaks for U.S. businesses.

Kerry largely avoided the controversy over the investigation into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to focus attention on the first new domestic idea of his general-election campaign: cutting corporate taxes in exchange for eliminating incentives for businesses to move operations, income and jobs overseas.

Speaking at Wayne State University in Michigan, a state hit hard by unemployment, Kerry sounded at times like a tax-cutting Republican as he called for breaks for small business, manufacturers and "99 percent" of corporations. Kerry, hoping to convince voters he is not a tax-and-spend liberal, said he would reduce the corporate tax rate to 33.25 percent from 35 percent and provide small businesses tax incentives to hire new workers and provide health care to employees.

"Some may be surprised to hear a Democrat calling for lower corporate tax rates," Kerry said. "The fact is, I don't care about the old debates."

Kerry in the next month or so will offer a budget plan that will include additional new tax cuts, but also a hefty tax increase on individuals and many small-business owners making more than $200,000 annually.

Bush envisions high-speed Internet access for all by '07

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — President Bush, hunting for votes in hotly contested Sun Belt states, said yesterday his administration is 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. 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 Phoenix en route to a weekend at his Texas ranch.

During the last 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. But his call for "universal, affordable access" by 2007 was new.

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