NEW ORLEANS- John Kerry ramped up his attack on President Bush’s domestic policies Thursday,… NEW ORLEANS- John Kerry ramped up his attack on President Bush’s domestic policies Thursday, and Bush returned the favor with stinging comments about Kerry’s plans, as they and others close to them grew more caustic in their comments.

Vicious partisan rhetoric erupted across the land, all but drowning out the two presidential candidates’ efforts to discuss policies they propose to address problems such as rising health care costs and taxation, which polls show are two of Americans’ urgent concerns.

Kerry, speaking in New Orleans to the National Baptist Convention, drew on Biblical imagery to compare Bush’s record on poverty to Jim Crow segregation laws. He said the president was like the passers-by who do nothing to help a beaten man lying in the road in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

“For four years, George W. Bush may have talked about compassion, but he’s walked right by,” Kerry said to the African-American church group. “He’s seen people in need, but he’s crossed over to the other side of the street.”

Bush, speaking earlier in Colmar, Pa., was comparatively mild. He accused Kerry of having a “hidden tax plan” that would burden small-business owners and stymie the nation’s economic recovery. He said Kerry has pledged more than $2 trillion in new spending on federal programs- which is true, most of it for health-insurance reform- and that, if elected, Kerry would have no choice but to pay for it by raising taxes.

“One of his key economic advisers said they won’t give the details on how they would raise spending and lower the deficit until after the election,” Bush said. “If they want to hold back information until the people vote, you can bet it won’t be good news for the taxpayers.”

However, talk about issues was overshadowed by more inflammatory rhetoric, most of it reverberating from Vice President Dick Cheney’s incendiary suggestion Tuesday that if voters elect Kerry, America is more likely to be attacked again by terrorists.

Kerry weighed in on that for the second day in a row, decrying Cheney’s comments in an interview with the Associated Press. “George Bush and Dick Cheney are engaging in shameful and irresponsible and outrageous behavior in trying to play the politics of fear and exploit the war on terror,” Kerry said.

Former Vice President Al Gore, who lost the bitterly contested 2000 presidential election to Bush, was even harsher in a Pittsburgh speech, calling Cheney’s Tuesday comment “a sleazy and despicable effort to blackmail voters with fear.”

Responding to such attacks, the Republican National Committee issued a statement charging that Democrats were saying such nasty things because they have no legitimate policies to peddle and are trying “to fill the vacuum of positive policies with character assassination.”

And the Bush campaign issued a statement in reaction to Kerry’s speech in New Orleans, which said in part: “John Kerry’s speech was filled with misleading, baseless attacks and attempts to divide Americans.”

It was that kind of day, with venomous rhetoric spewing across the landscape.

Kerry’s wife, Teresa, said “only an idiot” wouldn’t like her husband’s health-care reform plan, in remarks to the Intelligencer-Journal of Lancaster, Pa.

In Minneapolis, Republicans objected to a bumper sticker displayed briefly at Democratic Party headquarters that compared Bush to Adolf Hitler. It read: “Bush/Cheney- Most Hated World Leaders Since Hitler.” Republicans called it “a repulsive smear.” A Democratic Party official said the stickers were the property of one worker and were removed after two hours, according to the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, Kerry came under attack from White House spokesman Scott McClellan, who blamed the Democrat and his supporters for manipulating a new anti-Bush group called Texans for Truth that’s challenging Bush’s service in the Texas and Alabama Air National Guards over 30 years ago.

“I think you are absolutely seeing a coordinated attack by John Kerry and his surrogates on the president,” McClellan said. He suggested that Kerry’s fall in recent polls is making Democrats desperate.

Texans for Truth is an offshoot of MoveOn.org, an anti-Bush activist group, and its leader is a former Democratic consultant.

Nevertheless, new military documents released this week by the Pentagon and the White House cast new doubt on Bush’s service record, indicating that he disobeyed an order from his superior to take a physical exam, benefited from political pressure on his behalf to receive favorable treatment and failed to meet performance standards.

Bush didn’t mention the renewed controversy over his Guard service Thursday, concentrating instead on blasting Kerry as a tax raiser.

Speaking in Colmar, Pa., Bush rejected Kerry’s assertion that he will increase taxes only on the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. He said the Democratic nominee will be forced to increase taxes on many others to get enough revenue to pay for all his proposals.

“He says he’s going to raise taxes on the wealthiest 2 percent of the population. There’s just one problem with that,” Bush said. “My opponent’s tax increases would only bring $650 billion over the next 10 years and he wants to spend over $2 trillion. So you do the math. The plan leaves him more than $1.4 trillion short. Guess who’s going to wind up paying the bill?”

Kerry campaign officials said Bush’s remarks reflected desperation.

“George Bush’s false attacks are just another desperate attempt to cover up his wrong choices that have taken the country in the wrong direction,” said Phil Singer, a Kerry campaign spokesman. “Bush’s failed leadership has shifted the tax burden to the middle class, and under his plans, working families will face higher taxes as he works to impose a 60 percent retail sales tax.”

The Concord Coalition, a bipartisan budget-watchdog group, projects that Kerry and Bush would add about $1.3 trillion to the federal budget deficit over the next 10 years. Bush would do it mostly through tax cuts, Kerry through a combination of tax cuts and spending.

“You’re taking different routes to the same location,” said Robert Bixby, the organization’s executive director. “I don’t think either one of them has what I could call a plan to cut the deficit in half.”

Earlier Thursday, Kerry met in Des Moines, Iowa, with a small group of undecided voters to talk about rising health care costs, on a day when a new Kaiser Family Foundation report showed health care costs jumped 11 percent last year.

The voters told Kerry the cost of health care insurance is crushing them. One small-business owner said he fears he can no longer provide insurance to his workers.

“There really is a way to lower your costs, and there’s been no effort over the last four years to lower your costs,” Kerry said. “This is really a runaway system. There’s been no effort consciously to help you, and that’s what this race is about. It’s a very fundamental choice.”

Kerry’s plan relies on tax credits to help families and employers afford health care insurance.

Later, Kerry attacked Bush’s tax cuts in remarks before the Baptists in New Orleans. Bush, Kerry said, “reduced taxes for the few” and made life harder for the middle class and the poor, “taking us back to two Americas- separate and unequal.”

In addition, Kerry quoted the Gospel of Matthew’s warning to beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing.

“The president who turns away from African-American needs, who scorns economic justice and affirmative action, who traffics in the politics of division, and then claims he is a friend of black America cannot conceal his identity, no matter what clothes he wears,” Kerry said.

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