WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry on Tuesday pushed for the repeal of President Bush's tax cuts for wealthy Americans to finance the $87 billion the president is seeking for the military and reconstruction of Iraq.

As the Senate was poised to consider the aid package, Kerry and Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., planned to offer an amendment to the $87 billion request that would repeal tax cuts for individuals making more than $300,000 a year.

"The Bush administration is asking us to pay more and more for its failures - another $87 billion that the American people are being asked to shoulder alone and which America's middle class is being asked to shoulder disproportionately," Kerry said in a speech at the Brookings Institution.

The Massachusetts senator used the speech to assail the Bush administration's diplomatic efforts and its handling of postwar Iraq. The decorated Vietnam War veteran, who later opposed the conflict upon his return from combat, also compared Bush's efforts to another Republican president - Richard M. Nixon.

"The administration's plan will neither win the peace nor keep our troops safe," Kerry said. "It seems more like Richard Nixon's secret plan for peace that led to more war than it does Harry Truman's Marshall Plan for peace and stability. The issue isn't what we're spending, it's what we're buying."

Kerry called for a U.N. Security Council resolution that would give the United Nations more authority in the rebuilding of Iraq and the development of a new government.

He also said the United States should seek a U.N. resolution authorizing a multinational force under U.S. command, and he called for a specific timetable for self-government by the Iraqis and accelerated efforts to equip and train Iraqi security forces.

"Today, our soldiers lives, the future of Iraq and the solidarity of free nations are being threatened not by a tinhorn dictator, but by a tin-eared administration which insists that it is always right, refuses to admit when it is wrong and over and over again misleads the American people," said Kerry, who later added, "There's a great, growing impatience for the right decisions to be made."

Recent claims that an individual in the Bush administration leaked the name of a CIA operative "beyond the pale and unacceptable," Kerry said.

The disclosure of the intelligence officer's identity by the media came soon after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, undermined Bush's claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa. The administration later acknowledged its claims about the uranium were untrue.

"President Bush's father called those who expose the names of national security sources 'traitors,"' Kerry said. "And this President Bush needs to start going after any traitors in his midst - and that means more than an inside once-over from his friend - and Karl Rove's client - John Ashcroft."

A Bush spokesman said the administration will cooperate with a Justice Department probe of the alleged leak.