ONTARIO, Calif.?Firing back in an election-year debate over the recession, President Bush on Saturday painted Democratic opponents as tax raisers and pointedly vowed he won’t allow his tax cuts to be rolled back. “Not over my dead body will they raise your taxes,” he shouted to California workers.

He called for bipartisan unity but deflected talk of compromise on an economic stimulus package, blaming the Democrats for blocking it.

With unemployment at a six year high of 5.8 percent last month, Bush told a packed high school gym in Portland, Ore., “If you’re unemployed, it’s 100 percent, and I’m worried about that.”

Bush urged “unanimity and clarity of purpose and resolve” in confronting the recession. He made taxes the centerpiece of his California and Oregon swing, with rhetoric that was reminiscent of his tax-cut campaign last year, and of his father’s “read my lips” pledge.