Perot Sounds Like Candidate as He Scolds GOP on Economy

Sounding at times like a potential presidential candidate, Ross Perot attacked the Republican Party on Wednesday for failing to address the nation’s economic problems and predicted that his supporters will be the “swing vote” in the November election.

Perot aides, meanwhile, confirmed that the Texas billionaire is continuing to finance petition drives to place him on the ballot in all 50 states. In New York, for example, Perot last week spent $150,000 to pay for newspaper advertisements asking voters to sign state ballot petitions. He will spend another $30,000 this weekend on radio commercials in the state’s major media markets, said Kurt Meyer, chairman of the Perot Petition Committee of New York.

In an interview on NBC’s “Today” show, Perot criticized Bush Administration talk of a possible tax cut, saying it was “like an aspirin for cancer” and would only worsen the federal budget deficit.

While “neither party has a plan that even faces” the deficit, Perot said “nobody could go head-to-head in a debate and defend the Republican plan at this point. “That’s (a tax cut) giving the people candy. That’s telling the people what they want to hear. That’s wrong.”

Perot’s comments came as paperback copies of his economic plan, titled “United We Stand, How We Can Take Back Our Country,” were being shipped by Perot’s Dallas office to bookstores around the country for sale starting today.

The economic plan, developed by Perot’s former issues staff, calls for deep, across-the-board cuts in federal spending, increases in federal gasoline and tobacco taxes and reductions in some cost-of-living adjustments to entitlement programs.

Perot, who dropped out of the presidential race on July 17, saying he did not think he could win, left the door open Wednesday for getting back in “if both parties or either party wanders off the real issues.” If that happens, he said, “the American people have a place to come.”