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Obama, Clinton clash again
27/04/2008 12:02 - (SA)
Anderson/South Bend - Democrats
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton touted their economic agendas
and sparred over fuel taxes on Saturday as they crisscrossed
Indiana ahead of its must-win US presidential nominating
contest in May.
Clinton, a New York senator who trails Obama in votes and
number of delegates who will determine the party's nominee to
run in November's election, challenged the Illinois senator to
a televised debate without moderators. His campaign declined.
Obama gave a populist message as he tried to reach the kind
of working class voters who handed victory to Clinton in
Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary election.
"If the economy's growing and your incomes are going down,
what's happening? It means that somebody's making out like a
bandit," Obama told about 2 000 people in the city of Marion,
citing tax cuts under the Bush administration that benefited
the wealthy and not the middle class.
Obama spoke out against halting a tax on gasoline during
the summer months, a move supported by Clinton and presumptive
Republican nominee John McCain, saying it may not bring down
prices and would deplete a fund used for building highways.
"The only way we're going to lower gas prices over the long
term is if we start using less oil," Obama said in Anderson.
Indiana holds its nominating contest on May 6 and polls
show the race to be tight. Like other Americans, the state's
residents are concerned about high fuel prices, a mortgage
crisis, job losses and a sputtering economy.
Clinton launched an ad calling for a suspension of the
gasoline tax.
"Hillary Clinton knows it's time to act, take some of the
windfall profits of big oil to pay to suspend the gas tax this
summer, investigate the oil giants for price gouging and
collusion," the ad said.
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