Kerry rips Bush on job losses at state AFL-CIO conference
By MATTHEW BARAKAT - Associated Press Writer - RICHMOND, Va. - August 17, 2003

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry told Virginia labor leaders Saturday that President Bush has the worst job loss record of any president since Herbert Hoover.

"We are going to prove to America that the only person who deserves to be laid off is George W. Bush," the Massachusetts senator told the Virginia AFL-CIO conference on the first of the day's four campaign stops across the state.

"The only jobs George Bush has created are the nine of us running for president of the United States," Kerry said, referring to the crowded field of Democrats seeking their party's presidential nomination.

During Hoover's administration, the nation plunged into the Great Depression.

In addition to the loss of 3.1 million American jobs since Bush took office in January 2001, Kerry cited a litany of corporate executives' excesses and contrasted them with the plight of ordinary workers whose paychecks are being consumed by exploding health care costs.

In a Kerry White House, he said, "We're not going to see corporations that desert the American worker be rewarded with government contracts, and it won't take me 2 1/2 years to believe that someone from Enron belongs in jail."

Kerry has been the most frequent visitor to Virginia of any of the Democratic candidates, with at least four appearances dating to the keynote address at the state party's annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Richmond in February.

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