Kerry Challenges Bush to Weekly Debates

Sen. John F. Kerry on Thursday wrapped up a Midwest campaign swing by challenging President Bush to weekly debates, then traveled to Santa Monica where he raised about $3 million for the Democratic effort to capture the White House.

At a lunch today in San Francisco, Kerry also plans to raise money for the party.

Kerry’s debate proposal came at a campaign stop in the Minneapolis suburb of Anoka. Amid sparring this week over Kerry’s record as a Navy lieutenant in Vietnam and his protests against the war after he returned, he cast the challenge as a way to keep the race focused on issues that matter.

“America deserves a serious discussion about its future,” Kerry said. “It does not deserve a campaign of smear and fear.”

He suggested debates on healthcare, education, national security, the environment and other topics, every week until the Nov. 2 election.

The Commission on Presidential Debates has scheduled three Bush-Kerry debates: Sept. 30 in Miami, Oct. 8 in St. Louis and Oct. 13 in Tempe, Ariz.

The panel has slated another for Vice President Dick Cheney and Kerry’s running mate, Sen. John Edwards, on Oct. 5 in Cleveland.

Kerry’s campaign has accepted that schedule, Bush’s has not.

Bush spokesman Steve Schmidt said there would be “time for debates” after the Republican National Convention next week in New York. But renewing Bush’s charge that Kerry tends to straddle issues, he said Kerry “should take the time to finish the debates with himself.”

At Kerry’s question-and-answer forum with 200 invited guests in Anoka, the hometown of radio personality Garrison Keillor, a man asked the Massachusetts senator whether it was true he “waffles.”

He dismissed the charge as part of the “standard Republican playbook” for campaigns, saying the GOP used it against President Clinton and Al Gore, the 2000 Democratic presidential contender.

“They just say it. And if you spend enough money and say it enough, people like you are going to ask the question,” Kerry said.

Citing a frequent “flip-flop” alleged by Republicans, Kerry said he voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993, but objected to what he said was the Bush administration’s failure to enforce labor provisions in it.

“It’s not waffling to say that something that you voted for ... ought to be done properly,” he said.

The forum’s theme was healthcare, and Kerry criticized Bush’s record on that subject.

Kerry seized on a census report released Thursday saying the number of Americans without health insurance had grown by 1.4 million last year, to 45 million. (He did not mention that the report also found the number of insured grew by nearly 1 million people.)

“We now have about 45 million Americans who go to bed every night worried, wake up in the morning, don’t know what choices they’re going to make,” Kerry said. “In fact, we scheduled this meeting here today, on a Thursday, so it wouldn’t interfere with your weekend trip to Canada to buy prescription drugs, folks.”

Kerry faulted Bush and the president’s Republican allies in Congress as blocking Democratic proposals to let Americans buy lower-cost foreign prescription drugs, a concept Kerry supports.

Framing healthcare as a matter of values, Kerry asked: “Can you explain that in terms that are rational? What’s the value of making it harder for seniors to get less expensive drugs in America?”

“The value,” he said, “was to make sure that the powerful, great big friends and the big drug companies get taken care of.”

Kerry also criticized Bush and congressional Republicans as adopting Medicare reforms that barred the government from making bulk purchases of prescription drugs to cut patient costs.

“They actually wrote in a prohibition,” he said. “That’s a value choice, my friends.”

“And when John Edwards and I are in there,” Kerry said. “So help me, we’re going to let people use the marketplace.”

The Bush campaign responded with a statement by Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.). He said Bush was committed to “expanding access to affordable healthcare,” and deserved credit for “the most sweeping reform of Medicare in the program’s history.”

After the forum, Kerry campaigned in St. Paul at the Minnesota State Fair, where a thick scent of deep-fried food filled the air. Kerry bought a corndog, slathered it with ketchup and mustard, took two bites, and handed it off to an aide.

Then a heckler called, “Lies, lies, lies. Kerry is a liar,” but many others shook Kerry’s hand or posed for snapshots with him.

At the Santa Monica hotel dinner, Tony Bennett warmed up the crowd with by singing “Fly Me to the Moon” and three other songs with a backup quartet.

Today, Kerry will campaign outside San Francisco in Daly City, where he plans to release a package of proposals to crack down on predatory lenders and tighten regulation of credit card companies, aides said.

The plan would require disclosure on credit-card statements of how long it would take, and how much it would cost, to repay a loan by making minimum payments.

It would also prohibit misleading marketing tactics in selling insurance to U.S. troops.

Times staff writer Matea Gold contributed to this report.

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The article states inaccurately that the number of Americans without health insurance had grown by 1.4 million last year. The figure, based on Census Bureau data, refers to the number of people in America and does not specify whether they are citizens.

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