Prometheus 6   

Democrats See Opening for Attack on Economy
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

WASHINGTON, July 3 � The jump in the unemployment rate gave Democrats a new opening today to attack President Bush's management of the economy and question the effectiveness of his signature tax cuts.

In strikingly similar terms, many of the Democratic presidential candidates attacked Mr. Bush's policies as misdirected and unfair. The continuing loss of jobs from the economy allowed them to call into question Mr. Bush's vow that his latest tax cut, the third in three years, would create a million new jobs.

"This president has a failed economic policy on his hands, and he has no inclination to be flexible and change it," Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, one of the nine Democratic presidential candidates, said in an interview. "He keeps doing more of the same thing he's been doing, which is more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. It's a repeat of the Reagan program times three. It didn't work then, and it isn't working now."