Dean bashes Bush at Southwest Governor Howard Dean greets supporters during a town hall forum at Green Bay Southwest High School Monday (photo by H. Marc Larson). The leading Democratic candidate talks economy, security in a visit here By Ray Barrington News-Chronicle Democratic presidential frontrunner Howard Dean found a new topic to confront President Bush on during a visit to Green Bay on Monday - mad cow disease. Dean, in an appearance at Southwest High School, put aside his usual statements on the economy and the war in Iraq to discuss the issue, which took over headlines last week when a cow with the disease was discovered in Washington state. He said it was appropriate in a meat-packing town to bring up bovine spongiform encephalitis - "and I challenge President Bush to pronounce that correctly," he said to laughter from a supportive audience. "You can't blame the Bush administration for BSE but they're going to cost us a lot of money," Dean said, saying past policies allowing cattle unable to walk into the meat production system allowed the infected cow to be processed. He said testing of every cow - which, he said, would add 3 cents to a pound of beef - should be required. Dean's appearance, only the second by a major presidential candidate in the city prior to the Feb. 17 Wisconsin primary, drew about 250 to the Southwest High commons area with another 250 in the school's auditorium watching on a closed-circuit TV hookup. Dean stopped by the auditorium after his commons visit. The appearance was sponsored by the state Democratic Party, which rented the facilities from the Green Bay Area School District. Gov. Jim Doyle introduced Dean but said he was not endorsing him or any other Democratic president. Inevitably, there were plenty of Packers references during the day, with Dean noting that every one of his Monday visits to Wisconsin had come after a Packers victory. "Come back next week!" someone in the audience called, to cheers. And Doyle wondered whether the former Vermont governor would be willing to show up after a Packers-New England Patriots Super Bowl. "That will be a hard one for me," said Dean, who donned a Packers cap and foam cheesehead hat - with Dean stickers attached - during his visit. The format was a scripted question-and-answer session, with Doyle going to audience members, who read their questions off cards. Many were union members, with T-shirts proclaiming support for Dean from public employee, health care and painters unions. "We have a real rainbow audience," Dean said, referring to the shirt colors but joking that the health-care group's purple and gold - Minnesota Vikings colors - might be a bit offputting. Most of Dean's remarks - prompted by the audience comments - aimed at Bush on the economy and the war in Iraq. Dean emphasized that Bush's economic policy was doing as much to weaken national security as terrorism, saying that to finance Bush's deficit spending, the United States had to sell bonds to foreign countries including Saudi Arabia and China. "Can you imagine what happens to the dollar if they decided to dump that paper on the market?" Dean asked. Dean also repeated that while he had supported the 1991 Gulf War and attacks in Afghanistan after the 2001 terrorist attacks, he was opposed to the attack on Iraq because the theories behind it had been proven to be untrue. He also blasted Bush's 2003 tax cut as mostly assisting the rich, and for pushing educational testing while not supporting schools. He promoted ideas for a voluntary national health-care system aimed at those who do not have insurance - the young and the self-employed in large part - and a college plan that would feature loans limited in payback to 10 percent of the recipient's adjusted income after graduation, lower for those entering public service jobs such as police, fire and social work. In short, Dean said, Democrats had to offer something more than "Bush light" to take back the White House. "We need to stand up to him and not be afraid to be Democrats," he said.