EW YORK - As the two presidential candidates continue to battle for the mantle of fiscal conservative, Vice President Al Gore went to the nation's financial capital yesterday to make the case for himself while George W. Bush sounded bipartisan themes in Ohio.
Tagging Bush as a reckless tax cutter, Gore promoted himself as the candidate with the fiscally responsible agenda and experience to keep the economy humming.
Gore's speech to the Association for a Better New York is the first of several policy addresses in which he plans to compare himself with Bush.
''The Bush tax plan could shatter confidence in our economy, sending a message to the world that under George W. Bush, the era of fiscal responsibility is over,'' Gore said. ''It could raise interest rates, hurt investment, put all our prosperity at risk, and drive us into inflation and recession.''
Meanwhile, Bush was in Dayton, Ohio, promoting a tax credit to banks that give up to $300 in matching funds to low-income people who save.
''In this campaign I have shared my goal of continuing our economic success and expanding its blessings to reach all those who live in the shadow of prosperity,'' said Bush, who traveled with four Democratic members of the Texas Legislature.
Ari Fleischer, a Bush spokesman, said Gore had exaggerated the cost of Bush's tax cut by $800 billion, and contended that Gore's spending proposals would cost 50 percent more than the cost of Bush's tax cut.
''While Governor Bush is practicing bipartisanship by campaigning with a group of Democrats who worked with him to increase spending for education and health care, cut taxes, and balance the Texas budget, Al Gore today exaggerated and distorted the governor's balanced budget proposal,'' Fleischer said.
The challenge for each candidate is to convince the public that he will do a better job steering the economy, said Marshall Wittmann, a political analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington.
''I'm not sure people credit the current prosperity to politicians,'' Wittmann said. ''It's more likely they'll look to Bill Gates than Bill Clinton.''
Bush has proposed cutting taxes by $2.1 billion, according to Gore, or $1.3 billion, according to Bush. The tax cut and its ramifications for federal spending are the crux of the two candidates' disagreement on fiscal policy. Bush has argued that the federal surplus should be returned to taxpayers. Gore argues that Bush's tax cut plan is ''bigger than anything Newt Gingrich ever tried to get away with'' and would leave next to nothing to protect Medicare and Social Security.
It is the same case that Arizona Senator John McCain made against the Bush plan in the New Hampshire primary. McCain, who described his own economic plan as ''mature,'' said Bush's tax cut was too big, and that the nation should use the bulk of the surplus to pay down the debt and preserve Medicare and Social Security first.
Bush continues to press his tax cut as a gesture of fairness to taxpayers in a time of federal surpluses and as a tonic for the economy. Gore, meanwhile, has stressed the importance of balancing the budget every year, eliminating the national debt by 2013, using any interest savings from reducing the debt to shore up Social Security, and maintaining Medicare.
Gore framed his argument yesterday as a choice between returning to the rough economic times of former President Bush, or continuing the nation's longest economic expansion in history under the Clinton-Gore policies. Gore decried Bush's proposals as ''fiscal fiction,'' and said the Social Security trust fund would become ''completely insolvent'' under Bush's stewardship.
Last night, Gore traveled to Boston, where he attended a Democratic National Committee fund-raiser at the Park Plaza Hotel. The event cost $5,000 a person and was expected to raise about $750,000, a DNC spokeswoman said. Besides Gore, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino attended, as did former Philadelphia Mayor Edward Rendell, the DNC chairman. The 150-person dinner was hosted by Alan Solomont, the Boston businessman.
Gore's daughter Sarah, an undergraduate at Harvard, also attended.
