Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama each used today's report of a shrinking U.S. economy to argue that their proposals for taxes and spending would put the country back on the path to growth.
Reacting to a government report five days before the election that showed the economy shrank in the third quarter by 0.3 percent, Obama laid the blame on the Bush administration and said McCain would bring more of the same policies.
``The question is, what will our next president do differently?'' the Illinois senator said in Sarasota. ``If you want to know where John McCain will drive our economy, just look in the rearview mirror''
McCain didn't directly mention the Commerce Department's number in his speech to supporters in Defiance, Ohio. He said his prescription of cutting taxes and spending would revive the economy, and accused Obama of being ``more interested in controlling wealth than creating it.''
The candidates hit two swing states today that were central to President George W. Bush's victories in 2000 and 2004 and a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll shows Democrat Obama with a 7 percentage-point lead in Florida and a 9-point lead in Ohio.
Economic Concern
Today's gross domestic product figure, the last major piece of economic data before Election Day, compares with growth of 2.8 percent in the previous three months. It puts another hurdle in front of McCain's effort to succeed his fellow Republican in the White House. As the credit crisis has intensified, he has fallen farther behind Obama in polls nationally and in battleground states.
McCain economic adviser Carly Fiorina, the former chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Co., said the decline wasn't a surprise.
``We've been expecting that we'd be going into a recession for some time now,'' Fiorina said in an interview.
She said McCain's emphasis on helping small businesses grow would speed any recovery.
``These numbers should remind people that it is business that creates jobs, not government,'' Fiorina said.
McCain, an Arizona senator, took aim at Obama's plan to raise taxes on the highest wage-earners, households with $250,000 or more in annual taxable income, and spend more on government programs.
Taxes and Spending
``If I'm elected president I won't spend nearly $1 trillion more of your money. Senator Obama will,'' he told the crowd. ``He can't do that without raising your taxes or digging us further into debt. I'm going to make government live on a budget just like you do.''
Obama sought to tie his economic prescriptions with those of former President Bill Clinton, who campaigned alongside Obama for the first time last night in Orlando while saying McCain's policies would be a continuation of Bush's.
``I've got an economic plan that's similar to Bill Clinton's, John McCain's got an economic plan that's similar to George Bush's,'' Obama told about 13,000 people at a rally in Sarasota. ``We've done the experiment. You've got eight years of Bush economics and eight years of Clinton economics, it's pretty straightforward.''
Gross domestic product grew by an annual average of 3.7 percent during Clinton's term, compared with 2.3 percent during the first seven years of Bush's presidency. For the first three quarters of 2008, GDP has grown at an average annualized rate of 1.1 percent.
Mortgage Relief
Both candidates said they wanted to direct more of the $700 billion rescue plan passed by Congress earlier this month to stopping home foreclosures. McCain repeated his stance that the government should ``buy up these bad mortgages and keep people in their homes.''
The two candidates are waging their battle mostly in Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio. The five states combined have 96 of the 270 Electoral College votes needed to claim the White House. All except Pennsylvania went to Bush in the last presidential election; Polls show Obama ahead in each, ranging from a sizable advantage in Pennsylvania to a slim edge in North Carolina.
There are at least a half-dozen other states that Bush won in the last election -- Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Missouri and Indiana -- where Obama is either running ahead of or about even with McCain in state polls.
As part of his ``closing argument'' to voters, Obama last night ran a 30-minute ad on three major broadcasting networks, the Spanish-language outlet Univision and three cable channels.
It was seen in 21.7 percent of households watching television in the biggest U.S. markets, according to ratings from Nielsen Co.
That compares with a 38.3 percent rating for the final presidential debate, Nielsen said in a statement today.
