Clinton Renews Pledge of Tax Cut for Middle Class : Economy: ‘Give me four years to deliver,’ he tells ‘town hall’ gathering in San Diego. Relaxed, confident President discusses immigration, gangs, defense cutbacks.

President Clinton promised a San Diego television studio audience Monday night that he would deliver on his campaign promise of a middle-class tax cut within his four-year term, but said for the moment he needs to get the federal budget back in balance.

Clinton, accused in a live TV “town hall” of breaking his promise with unprecedented tax hikes, acknowledged that he had backed away from his campaign vow. But he insisted he had no choice because of the larger-than-expected federal deficit, and promised he was laying the groundwork to make good on his words eventually.

“I’ve got four years,” he said. “Give me four years to deliver on the middle-class tax cut.”

The hourlong public question and answer session on KGTV Channel 10 came during the first day of a two-day campaign style Western trip by Clinton, who is hitting the road to build support for his economic agenda.

Today Clinton is to visit Los Angeles Valley College in Van Nuys with Los Angeles mayoral candidate Michael Woo to discuss worker training, then stop in South-Central Los Angeles before heading back to Washington.

Few of the 60 questioners in the TV session asked such pointed queries as Lorne Fleming, the self-employed businessman who asserted that Clinton’s planned tax hikes were setting off a Carter-style “malaise” in San Diego County. None in the audience asked about the nettlesome question of America’s role in Bosnia, nor did anyone ask Clinton about opening the military to homosexuals.

But the session, which was carried on six stations and the Cable News Network and C-SPAN, gave the President a chance to detail his views on a series of local issues, from immigration to gang warfare, to the developmental restrictions forced by the Endangered Species Act. And it allowed Clinton to stress again the need for the Congress to enact his budget plan.

The town hall format allowed Clinton to meet the public in the manner he likes. For much of the hour, he was relaxed and clearly self-confident, with one hand thrust in his pocket.

Clinton expressed sympathy when Kay Guarino, a La Jolla homemaker, wondered why her taxes where going to subsidize the education and health care of illegal immigrants “when our own citizens are doing without.”

“The United States does not have the means to enforce its own immigration laws,” Clinton said, noting that his defeated $16.3-billion stimulus program had sought money to help California with its immigration related expenses.

When Daniel Eaton, a San Diego attorney, asked what Clinton intended to do about the feeling of minorities that they were not treated fairly by law enforcement authorities, Clinton cited his hiring of Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and other Justice Department officials.

“Look at the employment decisions I made,” he said. Reno and the others “will change the whole feeling about justice in this country.” And he vowed to hire more minority judges.

Ariel Zuniga, a gang member, asked what Clinton would do to create the jobs that would provide an escape route for those who want to give up the gang lifestyle.

Clinton described his effort to get more money for summer jobs, to increase spending for education and training, and to create tax-advantage “empowerment zones” to develop distressed communities. “All of us want to be in gangs, we just need to be in positive gangs,” he told Zuniga.

To two unemployed aerospace workers, Clinton outlined how he believes California to be punished in two ways: By closure of its bases and by cutbacks by its many once-prospering defense contractors.

“That’s why you boomed in the Eighties, and that’s why you’re getting the shaft now,” he said. When the defense cuts began in 1987 “there should have been a strategy in place right then,” Clinton said. “I’m having to play catch-up.” But he said he believed that there would be an “enormous number of jobs” created in the years ahead by new technologies.

Gen. Victor H. Krulak, a retired Marine from Pt. Loma, was worried about the defense cuts. In the past, he said, the government cut too much from the military in peacetime, with the result that “the next crisis brings a lot of the terrible white crosses.”

Clinton said he and his Joint Chiefs of Staff believed the government can’t cut much more than is envisioned in its five-year budget plan. “The general feeling is we’re right on the limit of what we can do,” he said.

About 300 demonstrators greeted Clinton at the entryway to the television station, waving banners for causes such as a halt to illegal immigration, cutting federal spending and increasing research into breast cancer. One held a sign that said “God Bless Bob Dole.”

But though San Diego is known as a bastion of political conservatism, reaction to Clinton from those who questioned him during the program was generally positive.

Barbara Lowerison, who had asked the President to help locate her brother, Charles, an Air Force pilot shot down over Vietnam in 1967 and still listed as an MIA, was confident that Clinton will break what she called the “gridlock and cover-up conspiracy,” involving MIAs.

“I’m hoping that since he avoided the draft, and he’s got a lot of problems with the military right now, that he’ll jump on this bandwagon and make the Vietnamese tell the truth. We’ve been stonewalled by five administrations, and, finally, we have one that says it will do something, but the proof is in the pudding.”

Beverly McDonald, a 26-year-old welfare mother, had complained that she wanted to get off welfare, but every time she found a good job, authorities cut back her child care. Clinton told her he was glad she wanted to get to work, and said he hopes to revamp the welfare system to reward those seeking job training.

“I was pretty much satisfied (with his answer),” McDonald said. “He knows how much we need child care and how we don’t all just want to stay on welfare.”

The President arrived in California Monday afternoon pledging again to make special efforts to help the state with its economic problems, but asking that residents in turn agree to the sacrifices demanded in his pending budget plan.

He reminded a crowd of several hundred that greeted him at the North Island Naval Air Station in Coronado that he had vowed his help for California’s problems during his campaign.

“We are going to work our hearts out in Washington in order to move this state together,” he said.

At the same time, Clinton renewed his call for Americans to support his budget against resistance from congressional Republicans and others.

“When you hear people say ‘No, no, no,’ ask where they were for the last 12 years,” he said. Referring to his Republican predecessors, he said “the most popular thing to do in public life is to cut taxes and raise spending. But sooner or later your string runs out.”

Clinton’s appearances marked the second straight week of forays into the country to drum up support for an economic program that has lost ground in the polls.

He spent much of Monday at an appearance in Los Alamos, N. M., pointing to the Los Alamos National Laboratories, where the atomic bomb was developed during World War II, as proof of the potential of his five-year, $20-billion defense conversion plan.

Clinton said the 50-year-old laboratory’s early move into commercial enterprises proves that defense industries can be successfully converted to commercial use in the aftermath of the Cold War. But he also used the occasion to stress his No. 1 theme, that Congress needs to pass his economic program to cut the deficit and step up spending that will strengthen the economy.

But as he spoke about defense conversion, Clinton repeatedly moved into discussion of the need for sacrifices to cut the federal deficit. “Everybody’s for deficit reduction in general, it’s the details that swallow us whole,” he told a crowd of several thousand.

Clinton came close to a faux pas at one point in his remarks, calling Los Alamos “Los Angeles.”

A chorus of boos followed. But Clinton tried to make a graceful recovery:

“I’m going there tomorrow,” he explained to the crowd. “And if I say ‘Los Alamos’ there, will you cheer?”

In San Diego, after the TV town hall, Clinton appeared at a reception for local politicians and supporters at the television station, then attended a dinner at the home of Larry and Sheila Lawrence. The Lawrences own the Hotel Del Coronado and are Clinton supporters.

Times staff writer Tony Perry in San Diego also contributed to this story.

Clinton in L.A.

Here is President Clinton’s schedule for today’s visit to Los Angeles:

* 10:30 a.m. Greeted by Mayor Tom Bradley upon arrival at Los Angeles International Airport

* 11:15 a.m. Tours Los Angeles Valley College in Van Nuys and speaks with students

* 2 p.m. Arrives playground at 2705 W. Florence Ave.

* 3:15 p.m. Returns to airport