By Gregory Korte
Enquirer staff writer

Dick Cheney sits with his wife Lynne during their Cincinnati Town Hall Meeting. (Ernest Coleman/The Enquirer) • WCPO video of Cheney • Bush more qualified to fight terrorism war, Cheney says

Federal unemployment statistics fail to take into account the 400,000 Americans who make some money trading on the Internet auction site eBay, Vice President Richard B. Cheney told a Cincinnati audience Thursday.

"That's a source that didn't even exist 10 years ago," Cheney said in response to a question from a self-employed man who said the federal government would consider him "unemployed."

Cheney said the eBay sellers are but one example of how the establishment survey of U.S. employment undercounts self-employed workers by looking only at hiring by companies. He favors the household survey, which paints a rosier picture of the economy.

Ebay estimates that more than 430,000 users sell on the site as a full-time or part-time job.

Democrats scoffed at the notion that counting eBay sellers in the jobs picture would paint a better picture of the economy.

"It's a sorry excuse for a record of economic failure in this state," said Brendon Cull, a spokesman for the Ohio Democratic Party. "If you put the Bush job creation plan up for sale on eBay, there's not a single Ohioan that would buy it."

In an interview afterward, Cheney said the government's role in a rapidly changing economy was to encourage that transformation into a modern economy - not to "lock in the economy and prevent change."

"We're opening up brand-new industries that didn't exist 10 or 20 years ago. But that involves change," he said. "My grandfather went to work for a wagon maker in 1900 just as the automobile was coming in. Bad choice. He had to adjust and did."

Though his remarks were dominated by foreign policy, Cheney also touched on economic subjects while fielding seven questions from an invitation-only audience.

• Pressed twice to give specifics of President Bush's promise last week to simplify the federal tax code, Cheney said the administration did not have a "specific, detailed plan" ready to put before the country. He said the Treasury Department was studying proposals to simplify the federal tax code, and said fixing it would take a bipartisan effort.

• On the Democratic health-care plan: "The thing I worry about is that, ultimately, at the end of the day, what you have is a nationalized health-care system. I don't think you need government more involved in the relationship between a patient and his doctor."

E-mail gkorte@enquirer.com