Democratic VP nominee Biden campaigns in Mo.

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden vowed to address the economic anxieties of workers Tuesday in a state suffering through its highest unemployment rate in 17 years.

Biden was making a campaign swing through Missouri just one day after the Republican presidential ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin held a rally in the Kansas City suburb of Lee's Summit.

At a town-hall forum at a Columbia fitness and recreation center, Biden cast McCain as a recent convert to the Barack Obama change theme who nonetheless remains out of touch with the economic uncertainties facing many families.

Missouri's unemployment rate is among the top quarter nationally and spiked to 6.4 percent in July -- its highest rate since October 1991. The Obama-Biden campaign has been running TV ads in Missouri highlighting a McCain comment that the fundamentals of the economy are strong.

"There's too much anxiety, there's too much lack of sense of what is going to happen," Biden told a crowd of about 1,500. "I understand, Barack understands, but unfortunately, John McCain doesn't understand."

Added Biden: "I could walk from here to Springfield, and I don't think I'd find a single solitary person on the way who felt the economy was robust, strong and doing great unless I ran into John McCain along the way."

Biden called for an end to corporate tax deferrals, which he said allowed businesses to avoid or delay paying federal income taxes on some products produced offshore but sold in the United States. He highlighted Obama's plan to waive income taxes for seniors earning up to $50,000 annually and to provide tax credits of up to $4,000 of college costs for students who perform community service.

McCain did not discuss economic concerns in much depth a day earlier in Missouri but put them in context of his energy plan to expand offshore drilling and build numerous new nuclear power plants.

"With American ingenuity and resources and entrepreneurship and ambition we will create millions of jobs in America and we will get our economy going again," McCain said Monday in Lee's Summit.

Biden was making his first visit to Missouri since being selected as Obama's running mate.

Later Tuesday, during a visit to Mehlville High School in a middle-class area of St. Louis County, Biden noted that Republicans are trying to portray Democrats as the party of big taxes, even though President Bush has racked up hundreds of billions of dollars of debt every year of his administration.

"Spare me about telling me who is fiscally responsible. Spare me," Biden said.

Biden brought the crowd of about 1,300 to its feet when he said the U.S. was spending too much money in Iraq, a nation that he said has a huge surplus.

"I want to help the Iraqis rebuild their nation, but start spending your own money," he said.

At the St. Louis County rally, forklift driver Tom Wells, 52, of Festus, Mo., called the nation's economy one of his main concerns and believed Obama and Biden offer solutions that will turn things around.

"War, oil, mortgages, everything. It's all tied up with the economy," Wells said.

Missouri is a historic bellwether state, voting for every winning presidential candidate except one in the past century. Columbia is the site of the University of Missouri's flagship campus and is a traditional Democratic bastion in the center of Missouri. But Republicans have been making gains in Columbia's home of Boone County, transforming it into a particularly hot battleground.

In the 2000 presidential election, Democrat Al Gore carried Boone County over Republican George Bush by a mere 385 votes out of nearly 60,000 cast. Four years later, Bush carried Boone County over Democrat John Kerry by just 158 votes out of more than 76,000 cast.

Biden and Palin are to debate Oct. 2 at Washington University in St. Louis.

------

AP reporter Betsy Taylor in St. Louis County provided information for this story.