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Detroit News: Link Included, No Copying Permitted http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080111/POLITICS/801110435

<p>We need immediate and real solutions to the economic challenges we face. But President Bush and House Republicans are, instead, planning more corporate and special-interest tax breaks for 2003 without even addressing the nation's needs.</p> <p>In the 1990s, Democrats proved that sensible, bipartisan action could help unleash the potential of the American people. Today, in the face of rising economic challenges, we need to take a page from what has worked, act on a bipartisan basis and restore economic growth while promoting fiscal responsibility over the long term.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democrats on Monday assailed President Bush's proposal to get low-cost generic drugs to consumers faster, calling it a loophole-laden imitation of the Senate-passed plan that he recently rejected.</p> <p>"It closes one door to the pharmaceutical industry in their attempt to delay generics but it opens up several others," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., an author of the Senate proposal. "I think that within three weeks the pharmaceutical industry will find a way around it. That's the tragedy."</p>

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Democrats plan to run TV ads in states where President Bush is campaigning for congressional candidates between now and Nov. 5, hoping to switch the subject to the stumbling economy -- and on their terms rather than his.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said Friday that President Bush was responsible for a "precipitous drop" in America's international stature and for an economy falling apart.</p> <p>Democrats will emphasize the country's weakened economy in the two weeks leading up to the elections for control of Congress, Daschle said.</p>

Polls indicate that Democrats have a chance to exploit the public's economic worries in the election campaign, but there's reason to doubt that they are doing so effectively. Speeches on the economy by Congress' two top Democrats on Tuesday got limited publicity and failed to deal with the economy's two most urgent problems - a scary stock market and falling capital investment. House Republicans were planning to push through measures to encourage investment, and President Bush probably will use the Senate's failure to pass them as part of his election-year economic defense. Bush also may make a speech on...

You had to sympathize with poor Tom Daschle when he erupted on the floor of the Senate last week. After months of playing Clark Kent to George W. Bush's Superman, the guy looked as if he were about to become unhinged.Sure, the majority leader had a valid point. The president was wrong to say the Democrat-controlled Senate is "not interested in the security of the American people" when everyone knows that Democrats care every bit as much about our security as Republicans do, patriotically ranking it second in importance only to their own job security. But Daschle's real frustration is...

WASHINGTON, Sept 29 (Reuters) - Al Gore, who launched a broad attack on President George W. Bush's Iraq policy last week, will give a "major" policy speech on the U.S. economy in Washington on Wednesday.Stepping up his political profile as he prepares to make a decision on another run for the presidency, Gore will give the address at Washington's Brookings Institution, spokesman Jano Cabrera said.Gore's Iraq speech in San Francisco last week galvanized Democratic concerns over Bush's plans for a military move against Baghdad and helped slow down what was expected to be quick congressional approval of a resolution on...

WASHINGTON, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Democrats said on Saturday that even as the nation prepared for a possible war with Iraq, lawmakers should not ignore the challenges facing the U.S. economy and pressing health care issues."The president rightly seeks to marshal our national resolve against the purveyors of hatred and violence who have made America their target," Sen. Robert Torricelli of New Jersey said in the weekly Democratic radio address. "But shouldn't we be equally as vigilant about attacking the economic challenges we now face?"Torricelli, whose ethics lapses put him in a tight race for reelection, said the nation's challenges...