As George W. Bush and Al Gore continue to crisscross the country, each candidate is arguing his opponent would damage the nation’s robust economy.

The vice president told an enthusiastic crowd of 50,000 supporters crammed into Chicago’s Daley Plaza today that Bush’s fiscal policies would turn back the nation’s economic clock and threaten the unprecedented prosperity presided over by the Clinton-Gore administration.

“My opponent likes to say we were a lot better off eight years ago than we are today,” Gore said. “He recommends that we go back to the kinds of policies that we had eight years ago.”.“My message and yours to George Bush,” he continued, “is we are not going back — we are forward and onward and upward to better times!”

The Texas governor, meanwhile, continued his efforts to paint the Democratic candidate as a big-spending liberal, telling voters it was high taxes that would jeopardize economic growth — not his tax-cut plan, as the vice president has argued.

“ Working people in America are paying more in taxes at all levels than [for] the basic necessities of life and that’s not right,” he said at a rally in Glen Ellyn, a suburb of Chicago, this afternoon. “If you keep overtaxing the people, pretty soon it’s going to have a bad effect on our economy.”

“The surplus is not the government’s money!” he bellowed. “It’s the people’s money!”

Buoyed by a lead in the polls, the Republican candidate appeared as energized as he has ever been on the stump, as he worked to maintain his narrow lead through the remaining days of the campaign. The latest ABCNEWS tracking poll, released tonight, showed Bush with a 49 percent to 45 percent lead over Gore.

难点词汇：
　　opponent 对手　　 　　cram 拥挤 　 　　　fiscal 财政的　　　　　Democratic 民主党的
　　jeopardize 使冒危险　 buoy 鼓励 　　　　 stump 政治演说的讲台