Washington: Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton heaped praise on labour unions today and announced plans to create 3 million new jobs to rebuild the US infrastructure as she sought to appeal to working-class voters, an important voting bloc in this month's Pennsylvania primary.

Barack Obama, her rival for the party's presidential nomination, promised that he, too, would create jobs, using USD 60 billion he said would be saved by ending the Iraq war. Clinton said her 10-year jobs-creation programme, an "aggressive infrastructure agenda", was needed because "President Bush has stood by and watched as we've lost 3 million manufacturing jobs. And he s done nothing about the loopholes in our tax code that actually encourage companies to ship jobs overseas."

Obama latched onto the same theme, asserting, "If we can spend USD 10 billion in Baghdad every month, we can spend a few billion at home" on restoring the US infrastructure. The two Democrats bore down on economic issues in Pennsylvania in advance of the state's April 22 primary. While Obama trails Clinton by double digits in Pennsylvania polling, he leads nationally in the popular vote, convention delegates and number of state contest won with only 10 primary elections remaining.

Pennsylvania has the fourth-highest total of union workers in the nation, and they will have a strong say in how more than 4.1 million Pennsylvania Democrats vote to allocate 158 delegates to the Democratic national convention.

Source : PTI