Clinton Team Hits Road to Sell Plan : Budget: The President plans stops in California as he and his aides spread out across the nation seeking public support for the Administration’s economic proposals.

President Clinton and his Cabinet fanned out across the nation Thursday in an ambitious campaign to build public support for one of the largest tax increases in American history, with the President challenging Republicans unhappy about his plan to come up with a better one.

The cross-country sales pitch, a rapid blitz through 28 states, was unleashed less than 12 hours after Clinton presented to the nation his plan to boost taxes by $274 billion over four years and cut federal spending by $223 billion.

The President, members of his Cabinet and White House aides turned out from Boston to Austin, Tex., to Los Angeles in full campaign mode, imploring blue-collar workers and barons of Wall Street to send Congress an unwavering message that voters will stand behind the young Administration in its politically risky attempt to reverse 12 years of Republican economics.

To an enthusiastic crowd that filled Union Station in downtown St. Louis, Clinton threw down a challenge:

“I’ve already heard some people on the other side of the aisle say, ‘Well, he could have cut more,’ ” he said.

“Show me where, but be specific,” he said, echoing Missouri’s nickname as the “Show Me” state. “No hot air. Show me.”

“We need your help,” the President said, acknowledging the program’s potential vulnerability as a big tax-and-spend initiative. “We need you to tell your members of Congress that we will support you if you make the honest, tough, hard decisions.”

Throughout the day Thursday, Administration officials turned up for appearances around the country and on TV talk shows. Their goal: to counter Republican portrayals of the Clinton plan as a return to the “tax-and-spend” policies of Jimmy Carter and other Democratic administrations.

As Republican Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas had put it: “Cradle-to-grave government paid for by cradle-to-grave taxes.”

Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor of California and others hopscotched through their political home bases in the toughest test of the Clinton team’s political magic since the roughest days of the presidential campaign.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Jesse Brown shook hands early in the morning with disabled veterans in Chicago, and Robert E. Rubin, chairman of Clinton’s National Economic Council, returned to the canyons of Wall Street, where he made his millions.

The Administration team took heart from early overnight polls showing overwhelming support for the plan, though the sampling was done before the plan was subject to much public debate.

Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman got to the heart of the issue for the Administration while touring a biotechnology plant under construction in Boston: “If the American public continues to like the plan, then Congress will support the plan.”

Bentsen, who was a stalwart supporter of the oil industry while a Texas senator, marveled at his role in the debate today. “Whoever thought a Texan would be talking about an energy tax?” he said at a high school in Austin.

Administration strategists say the vote in Congress will be close, but--in a step they consider key to Clinton’s strategy--they add that the President may be able to neutralize the opposition by forcing Republicans to advocate specific spending cuts to replace any tax increases they might want to eliminate.

The challenge, however, also cuts another way if viewed as an indicator that Clinton is ready, as he often was as Arkansas governor, to negotiate changes in his programs.

White House aides, meanwhile, eagerly relayed to reporters traveling with Clinton accounts of telephone calls swamping Democratic congressional offices in support of the President.

The Democratic National Committee had worked hard in recent days to try to generate such calls, sending out hundreds of thousands of pieces of direct mail and contacting thousands of other supporters by overnight faxes.

Even as Democrats reported success in that effort, Republican offices reported waves of opposition. Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas said at one point that his office was receiving 17 calls opposed to the President for every pro-Clinton call.

Clinton’s visit to St. Louis was a key element in the sales process. St. Louis was the terminus of his first campaign bus trip last summer, and a massive rally near Union Station was one of the campaign high points. And Missouri, with its carefully balanced border-state politics, was one of the keystones to Clinton’s electoral victory.

In addition to touting his economic plan, Clinton repeated lines he used in his speech to Congress on Wednesday night to urge support for reforms in the political system--a stand that his aides hope will appeal to the 19.7 million voters, or nearly 19% of the electorate, who cast ballots for Ross Perot in November.

Reforms in campaign finance and lobbying laws will help Congress “in making courageous changes,” Clinton said. Current laws that allow businesses to take a tax deduction for lobbying expenses, he added, “are subsidizing interests that together undermine your future.”

From St. Louis, Clinton flew to Chillicothe, Ohio. After a rally there today, he will fly to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s hometown of Hyde Park, N.Y., in an attempt to wrap his program in the mantle of the hero of the New Deal.

On Saturday, he plans to hold a televised town meeting with children in Washington. Then, he is flying west, for stops in California and Washington state on Sunday and Monday.

Returning to the campaign trail seemed to serve as a tonic for Clinton, who relishes contact with people and who finds the restrictions of his office confining. He opened his speech by reading off signs held aloft by members of the audience praising his plan--carefully avoiding a few held up by protesters opposed to the new taxes.

“St. Louis is a special place for us,” he told the crowd. “I think it’s only fitting that I would come to my neighboring state in the heartland of America to start Day One of America’s new direction.”

Gerstenzang reported from Washington and Lauter from St. Louis.