Obama, McCain attack each other on economy

Dayton, Ohio: Republican presidential nominee John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama on Monday slammed each other's economic plans as wrong for the current downturn as they campaigned in a state considered a key to victory in eight days.

Trailing in the polls, McCain appeared with a team of economic advisers at a Cleveland hotel and vowed to quickly take steps to restore confidence in the wilting US stock market, keep people in their homes and create jobs if elected on November 4.

Obama, enjoying a lead in national polls and in many battleground states, began making what his campaign called a "closing argument" and urged his supporters: "We can't afford to slow down, sit back. We cannot let up for one day or one minute or one second in this last week."

"In one week, at this defining moment in history, you can give this country the change we need," he said.

Obama said that 21 months after he began an uphill climb that has culminated with him "so close" to the White House that, "My faith in the American people has been vindicated."

The two candidates were making their case in Ohio, a state that has been critical to Republican presidential victories in the last two elections. No Republican has won the White House without carrying Ohio.

Obama holds a lead in Ohio and in several other states that President George W. Bush won in 2004, putting Arizona Sen. McCain in a perilous position.

Each was also heading later to Pennsylvania, where Obama holds a comfortable lead but McCain hopes to score an upset.

Obama held steady with a 5-point lead over McCain among likely US voters nationally in a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby national tracking poll released on Monday.

McCain said Obama was "measuring the drapes" in the White House and that electing him would leave a "dangerous threesome" of Democrats in charge of the US government, including House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, and that they would need to raise taxes to pay for ambitious spending plans.