GREEN BAY, Wis. - President Bush's economic team rolled by bus across America's heartland Tuesday, touting a new round of tax cuts as the medicine needed to cure a sick economy.

Bob Baker holds a sign reading "Read Bush's Lips: No New Jobs" (WBAY-TV Photo)

However, the president's traveling team stirred up skepticism along the way, from factory workers who have seen more than 2 million manufacturing jobs disappear over the past three years and from other critics who contend that Bush's tax cuts mainly have helped the wealthy while creating soaring budget deficits.

But as they tried to talk up the economy, the administration team had to contend with another dose of bad economic news: A drop in consumer confidence.

Treasury Secretary John Snow, Commerce Secretary Don Evans and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao dismissed the decline, saying the survey was taken before American workers and families started to see the benefits from the latest round of Bush tax cuts.

The two-day bus tour in Wisconsin and Minnesota, both of which Bush narrowly lost in the 2000 election, was timed to coincide with the lower payroll tax withholding, which took effect this month, and with the mailing of child-tax credits of up to $400 per child. Both are elements of the $330 billion tax-cut package Congress passed in May.

The Cabinet secretaries traveled in a two-bus caravan; their bus was decked out with leather bench seats, bunk beds in the rear and a mirror on the ceiling.

During a stop at a Harley-Davidson motorcycle manufacturing plant in a Milwaukee suburb, Snow insisted that stimulus from tax cuts would help the economy grow.

"We think (the tax cut) is going to increase demand, and the end product will be lots of new jobs," Snow told small-business owners at the tour's second stop, in a suburb of Green Bay.

Questions at the motorcycle plant focused on the huge loss of manufacturing jobs and the soaring U.S. trade deficit, especially the trade imbalance with China.

Michael Retzer, a consultant for Ram Tool, told the Bush officials of his worry that the first $200 billion of tax cuts scheduled for the next couple of years would be dwarfed by a merchandise trade deficit running over $500 billion annually.

Small groups of demonstrators - holding signs that said: "Read Bush's Lips ... No New Jobs" - showed up at the tour's suburban Green Bay stop.

Later, in Wausau, Wis., about 40-people stood in 85-degree sunshine across the street from a fast-food restaurant where the Bush team spoke to invited guests. The protesters chanted, "What jobs? What growth? Bush or progress, can't have both."

Roselie Bentley of Wausau went to the restaurant to hear the team but couldn't get in because she didn't have an invitation. "We have tried tax cuts in the past and I don't know that they are the real impetus for spurring growth," she said.

Ryan Nesbitt, who works for the water department in Wausau, said the economy isn't all "doom and gloom."

"I think it is important that the president knows he is doing the right thing," said Nesbitt, who carried an American flag. "I think we have been way overtaxed."

Democrats, who for the most part opposed Bush's three rounds of tax cuts that total more than $1.8 trillion through 2011, criticized the bus tour.

"George Bush and his team should spend more time fixing the economy and less time touting a job growth record that doesn't exist," said Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who is campaigning for president.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California said the Bush team was trying to mask that the economy has lost roughly 3 million jobs since Bush took office, while the federal budget has gone from surpluses to record deficits.

"It's difficult to understand why the Bush administration is promoting the president's mishandling of the economy," Pelosi said.

Rep. John Spratt of South Carolina, ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said, "Unemployed workers and their families cannot wait much longer for the long-awaited economic recovery that the administration keeps promising."

Reacting to the criticism, Snow said: "Rather than a feel-good trip, this is a dialogue trip" to allow administration officials to listen to the concerns of American workers.

Earlier Tuesday, Evans promised: "We are here to tell you how we want to bring you a roaring economy. There is not anything more important to this president than to make sure we are doing everything we can to make sure everybody who wants a job has a job."

At the Green Bay round table, small-business people raised concerns about rising health care costs. Snow responded that "health care costs are out of line." He said the surge in benefit payments companies have to make means they have less of an ability to hire more workers.

Copyright © 2003 The Associated Press

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