Pubdate: Thu, 20 Jul 2000
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2000 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053
Fax: (213) 237-4712
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
Forum: http://www.latimes.com/home/discuss/
Author: Doyle McManus, Times Washington Bureau Chief

GORE SAYS HE'LL SPEND MORE TO FIGHT CRIME

Campaign: He Accuses Bush Of Favoring Tax Cuts. The Democrat Plans A Texas
Visit To Focus On State Fiscal Woes.

RAYTOWN, Mo.--Vice President Al Gore said Wednesday that he will increase
federal funding for crime-fighting programs if he becomes president and
accused Republican rival George W. Bush of choosing to spend money on tax
cuts over the needs of law enforcement.

Gore said he wants to add to President Clinton's program of funding 100,000
more police officers--a target that has not been met--with an additional
50,000 officers and 10,000 new prosecutors nationwide.

"Here is my commitment: the toughest, most effective anti-crime strategy
this nation has ever seen, more police and more prosecutors to widen the
thin blue line between order and disorder," Gore told police officers and
local officials at City Hall in Raytown, a middle-class suburb of Kansas
City.

Gore estimated the cost of his law enforcement proposals at $1.1 billion
over 10 years and said Bush's proposed tax cuts would make it difficult for
a Republican administration to fund a similar program.

"We have to have responsible budgeting so that we don't put a tax cut for
the wealthy ahead of crime-fighting or health care or education," he said.

The vice president, who has increasingly focused his campaign on attacking
Bush's record as governor of Texas, said he will make a previously
unannounced visit to San Antonio today to draw attention to the state's
fiscal problems.

"How Gov. Bush has run Texas is relevant to the judgment the American people
will make as to how he would run the country if they ever gave him the
chance," Gore said.

Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer fired back: "We look forward to welcoming
[Gore] to the land where taxes are low and the budget is in surplus. . . .
Al Gore said he was making a progress and prosperity tour, but he's turned
it into a distort and destroy mission."

The two campaigns spent much of the afternoon firing volleys of Texas budget
numbers at each other. Gore aides said Texas is running into a $610-million
budget shortfall, and that the state has one of the smallest "rainy day"
funds in the country. Bush aides said the shortfall had been expected, and
predicted that the budget would show a net $400-million surplus by the end
of the current two-year budget cycle.

Whatever the outcome, Gore aides were visibly pleased to have started the
argument. One of their strategic goals at this stage of the campaign is to
poke holes in Bush's image as a successful governor.

"People don't know that much about George W. Bush," one senior Gore aide
said. "We're trying to affect their image of him. . . . We want to puncture
a hole in his campaign just as Boston Harbor punctured a hole in Dukakis."

He was referring to the 1988 presidential campaign, when Republican
candidate George Bush--the Texas governor's father--staged a trip to Boston
to point out that Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, the Democratic
candidate, had failed to clean his own famously polluted harbor.

On crime, Gore has sought to expand on Clinton's popular pledge to use
federal money to fund the hiring of 100,000 police officers, although the
administration has won funding from Congress for only about 60,000 jobs.

Gore said he would seek funding for the remaining 40,000 Clinton cops, plus
50,000 more.

"Part of the reason for crime in the streets is paralysis in our courts," he
said. Federal studies have found that many local prosecutors' officers are
understaffed, and prosecutors often argue that they could convict more
criminals if they had more lawyers.

Gore also said he would ask Congress to fund law enforcement task forces for
"hot spots," areas where the crime rate has not declined.

Gore, a technology buff, said he wants some of that money to give more
police departments "mapping technology"--a computerized technique that plots
crime patterns on a map and enables police to focus their work more
effectively.

In a Republican response, Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa charged that Gore
has paid little attention to crime during almost eight years as vice
president.

"The real crime here is the Clinton-Gore record on drugs," Grassley said in
a telephone conference call with campaign reporters. "He should explain why,
during the Clinton-Gore administration, the number of teenagers using drugs
nearly doubled."

The announcements were elaborations on a crime-fighting plan Gore announced
earlier this year. He has long proposed funding an additional 50,000 police
officers, but the details of his proposals for more prosecutors and for a
"hot spots" program are new.
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