Clinton Wins Backing of 13-Million Strong AFL-CIO : Democrats: Candidate attacks Bush for recent promises that run counter to longstanding Administration policy.

Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton picked up the endorsement of the 13-million voting members of the AFL-CIO on Thursday, and he used the occasion to deride President Bush’s contention that Bush should be trusted to fill out the spare details of his economic plan after his reelection.

Continuing his three-day escalation of assaults on Bush’s proposals, Clinton said that it was folly to take the President’s word that he would find appropriate budget cuts to offset the spending he has pledged.

The Arkansas governor also took special aim at the campaign promises the President has made in recent days, some of which have reversed longstanding Administration policy.

Singling out the President’s newfound support for the V-22 Osprey aircraft, the M-1 tank, F-16 jet aircraft sales to Taiwan and a wheat farmers’ subsidy program, Clinton recollected with arched eyebrows that each was announced in the state most economically affected by the switch.

“Now, I’m a Baptist, so I believe in deathbed conversions. But this is amazing,” he said, strongly implying to several hundred labor leaders that the change of heart in each case was prompted by Bush’s political ambitions.

“I tell you what,” he joked, “no matter what happens, our campaign has done some good for some people in this country.”

Later in the day, Clinton flew to Florida’s Homestead Air Force Base, which was ravaged when Hurricane Andrew plowed through the southern part of the state last week. Along with a coterie of television cameras, he toured the affected area, which has been the recipient of two visits from President Bush since the storm struck. (Story, A24)

Clinton has targeted the President’s economic proposals for special attack in recent days as he strives to portray Bush as a man who has deserted hard-working Americans. That theme rang loud and clear through all of Clinton’s remarks as he formally accepted labor’s endorsement, which was a foregone conclusion.

At one point, the Arkansas governor compared Bush’s promise to enunciate his budget cuts after the election to another famed election-year gambit, President Richard M. Nixon’s so-called “secret plan” plan to end the Vietnam War in 1972.

In a tone of light but clear-cut sarcasm, Clinton declared that Bush’s vague budget proposals were “a typical thing for a former head of the CIA” to do.

“Now he’s got a secret plan for the economy,” he said.

The Clinton campaign on Thursday released a four-page written blast directed at the President, accusing him of a “trillion-dollar pander” to American citizens. And the Democratic candidate reinforced that theme as well.

“When you put a price tag on all his promises, he’s promising somehow to give us a trillion dollars worth of stuff over the next five years that he will make up for in budget cuts,” he said. “You know who he’s going to send the bill to, don’t you--the same people who’ve been taking a beating for the last dozen years.”

At the same time, Clinton glossed over some of his own views in front of the labor leaders. Most notably, only in passing did the Arkansas governor discuss the North American Free Trade Agreement, the tentative accord between the United States, Mexico and Canada approved by the Bush Administration and opposed by organized labor.

Clinton has in the past held himself out as willing to stand up to the political pressure exerted by labor, which has been one of the bulwarks of Democratic presidential campaigns. He has specifically cited his support for allowing the Administration to negotiate the agreement on a “fast-track” basis, which many other Democrats opposed.

He has refused to sign off on the accord that was reached, however, and before labor groups has tended to sound more reluctant about the treaty than he does before other audiences. Labor opposes the agreement because of fears that it will deplete American jobs.

The Arkansas governor made the argument Thursday that a proper agreement would be beneficial to the American economy.

“With Europe becoming more integrated and maybe more closed, with Asia becoming more integrated and maybe more closed, we have to have some markets and that’s why I hope we can get the right kind of agreement with Mexico,” he said.

During the labor event Thursday, the Bush campaign posted representatives in the foyer of the room in which Clinton was speaking. They handed out flyers calling on Clinton to clarify his position on the free trade agreement and citing a Washington Post article that said labor officials did not plan to confront the candidate about it because they did not wish to embarrass him.

In his remarks, Clinton effectively answered the Bush campaign criticism by saying that he would not endorse an agreement which he has not yet read.

“I wouldn’t trust him with an agreement I haven’t read,” he said. “He (Bush) taught me four years ago that I can’t read his lips.”

The labor speech was the first event in a long campaign day for Clinton. After the labor address and tour of South Florida, Clinton was to hold private meetings in Miami. He was not due to the governor’s mansion in Little Rock until after 2 a.m.

But the day had its rewards. While Clinton has never been a favorite of labor, the AFL-CIO meeting took on elements of a love fest. Union President Lane Kirkland saluted the Arkansas governor as a man who will favor working-class Americans.

“They sense that you share their values as well,” Kirkland told Clinton. “This endorsement comes with our iron-clad commitment to work for you and to work hard in every state of the union until victory is yours in November.”

Clinton acknowledged his differences with organized labor within minutes of taking the dais at a Washington hotel where the group met.

“While I know we have not always agreed and will never always agree on everything, I believe we share a common commitment to the working men and women and their children and their parents, to opportunity and dignity, to equality and most of all to the forgotten middle class,” he said.

“We’re going to make Bush and Quayle and their crowd remember those folks on Nov. 3.”

Clinton basked in the glow of support from the labor officials, who hooted and applauded as he attacked Bush.

“Mr. Bush says this election should be about trust and I believe that’s right,” he said. “The election should be about who is to be trusted to get our economy moving again, to build a high wage, high growth, high opportunity future instead of letting this nation drift as it now is.”

Clinton wryly noted that Bush, when he first ran for President in 1980, had attacked then-competitor Ronald Reagan as the purveyor of “voodoo economics.”

“Twelve years later, he’s become the high priest of voodoo economics, sticking pins in the middle class,” he said.