Quayle Sees Loss of Jobs Under Clinton : Campaign: On Southland swing, he tells El Segundo aerospace workers that Democrat’s defense cuts would furlough thousands.

Vice President Dan Quayle, capping a full day of campaigning in the Los Angeles area, told hundreds of Northrop Corp. aerospace workers Tuesday their jobs would be in jeopardy if Democrat Bill Clinton is elected President.

Speaking in a cavernous hangar at Northrop’s plant in El Segundo, Quayle said that Clinton, backed by a Democratic Congress, would cut the U.S. defense budget so drastically as to furlough thousands of employees.

“We won’t let them do it!” the vice president shouted as the crowd of 400 Northrop employees roared their approval. “We will continue to build F-18s at this plant as long as George Bush is President.”

He added: “We think America is still the best in national security and we’ll keep America strong. But security also means job security.”

Quayle was emphasizing a theme developed earlier in the campaign when Bush himself spoke in favor of a strong defense industry in an appearance in Orange County. Clinton and his running mate, Sen. Al Gore, instead have been speaking in favor of “defense conversion,” pushing conversion of aerospace companies from military production to civilian manufacturing.

At his first public appearance of the day, a Republican breakfast in Encino, Quayle said the Democrats “would slash defense irresponsibly and destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process.”

“They talk about putting people first,” he said. “But the first thing they’d do is put people on the street. Voters, especially here in Southern California, should know that voting for these defense cuts will turn the aerospace and defense job situation into a wasteland.”

Quayle told his breakfast audience that he wanted to give them “a wake-up call” on what a Clinton victory would mean.

“You would no longer have a gridlock Congress, as we have today,” he said. “You would have a runaway Congress and a rubber-stamp President.”

He said that for the last four years, “our President has been the safety valve against the big-spending, empower-government attitude on Capitol Hill. A Clinton victory would mean a return of the Carter whiz team that put this country in an economic, military and competitive ditch.”

Quayle also visited St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood and greeted patients in the cardiac and physical therapy wards. Running 40 minutes late at the time, he laughed when a woman shook his hand and said, “Thank you for finally showing up.”

He spoke briefly at a fund-raising dinner for the National Republican Congressional Committee before departing for Fresno Tuesday evening.