Obama takes on rivals over economic woes

By Andrew Stern

JANESVILLE, Wisconsin (Reuters) - Buoyed by a string of eight consecutive victories, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama bashed rival Hillary Clinton over the ailing U.S. economy on Wednesday and also took aim at Republican front-runner John McCain.

The Illinois senator, a day after sweeping three more Democratic presidential contests, unveiled an initiative to produce 5 million new jobs in the green energy sector and promised to create a development bank that would invest $60 billion to rebuild the nation's infrastructure.

"We are not standing on the brink of recession due to forces beyond our control," Obama said in Wisconsin, which holds the next Democratic nominating contest on Tuesday.

"It was a failure of leadership and imagination in Washington -- the culmination of decades of decisions that were made or put off without regard to the realities of a global economy."

Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president if he wins the November election, made his remarks at a Janesville, Wisconsin plant that produces General Motors' popular sport utility vehicles and has been seen as vulnerable to being closed.

He used the occasion to criticize both his main rivals, Democrat Clinton and Republican McCain, saying they had wasted billions of dollars and cost thousands of lives by supporting an unnecessary war in Iraq as U.S. senators.

He accused Clinton of changing her stance on the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, saying she supported it when it was signed but now says "we need a time-out on trade."

"I don't know about a time-out, but I do know this -- when I am president, I will not sign another trade agreement unless it has protections for our environment and protections for American workers," Obama said, adding he would end tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas.

Clinton aides said Obama's ideas for an infrastructure development bank and 5 million green energy sector jobs were taken from her own campaign proposals.

"If Senator Obama cannot produce his own ideas on the campaign trail, how will he solve new problems as president?" asked Neera Tanden, Clinton's policy director.

McCAIN MOMENTUM

McCain, riding his own wave of momentum after sweeping the Republican primaries on Tuesday in Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Maryland, fired back on Iraq, saying developments showed Democrats had been premature in demanding a withdrawal of U.S. forces.

"They said that we would never succeed militarily, then we began to succeed militarily," McCain said in Washington after picking up the endorsement of Republican leaders in the House of Representatives.

While Obama campaigned in Wisconsin, Clinton focused on contests in the heavily populated states of Ohio and Texas in three weeks as her best hope to stop Obama's surge.

Tuesday's victories gave Obama scores of additional pledged delegates to the Democratic Party's presidential nominating convention in August.