"The president wants you to re-elect him. For what?" Kerry said. "Losing jobs? Building the biggest deficit in American history? Getting us into a war that you spent $200 billion on when he told you it would cost you $1 billion?"
"They did everything except talk about that. We've had insults, we've had anger from Republicans. And I'll tell you why," Kerry said. "Because they can't come to you and talk to you about having created jobs since they've lost them. They can't come to you and talk to you about creating health care since 5 million Americans have lost it.
"Their own labor secretary talks about exporting jobs overseas," he said. "They can't talk about their record because it is a record of failure. And so all they do is attack."
Kerry also defended his vote against $87 billion for the military and reconstruction effort in Iraq (news - web sites) that Republicans criticized as a vote against deployed troops.
"This president rushed to war without a plan to win the peace," Kerry said. "And I believe that because he didn't have a plan to win the peace, it was irresponsible to give him a blank check that gave $20 billion that was going to go be spent to Halliburton and all these other companies, that we needed accountability for this president."
