By Martin Crutsinger
The Associated Press

GREEN BAY, Wis. - President Bush's economic team rolled across America's heartland Tuesday, touting a new round of tax cuts as the medicine needed to cure a sick economy.

But the president's traveling team stirred up skepticism along the way, from factory workers who have seen more than 2 million manufacturing jobs disappear in the past three years and from other critics who contend that Bush's tax cuts mainly have helped the wealthy while creating soaring budget deficits.

The administration team, on a bus tour to talk up the economy, had to contend with another dose of bad economic news: Consumer confidence plunged as Americans grew more worried about a wave of layoffs that drove the unemployment rate to a nine-year high of 6.4 percent last month.

The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index fell to 76.6 in July, a seven-point drop from 83.5 in June, the New York-based business industry group reported Tuesday. Analysts had expected an increase.

Treasury Secretary John Snow, Commerce Secretary Don Evans and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao dismissed the unexpectedly large drop in confidence, saying the survey was taken before Americans started to see the benefits from the latest round of Bush tax cuts.

The two-day bus tour in Wisconsin and Minnesota, both of which Bush narrowly lost in the 2000 election, was timed to coincide with the lower payroll tax withholding, which took effect this month, and withmailing of child-tax credits of up to $400 a child.

During an appearance at a Harley-Davidson motorcycle manufacturing plant in a Milwaukee suburb, Snow insisted that stimulus from tax cuts would help lift the economy.

None of the questions the team received at the first stop on the tour, the motorcycle plant, was about the tax cut. Instead, they focused on the huge loss of manufacturing jobs the country has suffered and the soaring U.S. trade deficit, especially the trade imbalance with China.

Michael Retzer, a consultant for Ram Tool, told the Bush officials of his worry that the first $200 billion of tax cuts scheduled for the next couple of years would be dwarfed by a merchandise trade deficit running over $500 billion annually.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California said the Bush team was trying to mask that the economy has lost roughly 3 million jobs since Bush took office, while the federal budget has gone from surpluses to record deficits.

"It's difficult to understand why the Bush administration is promoting the president's mishandling of the economy," Pelosi said.